It had been intended that Adey and Wilde should go down to Newhaven and take the morning boat to Dieppe. But Wilde’s sudden interest in a Catholic retreat, as well as his general excitement at seeing so many old friends again, meant that the train was missed. Arrangements had to be altered, and Wilde and Adey crossed instead by the night boat.6 Wilde telegraphed ahead to let Ross know that he ‘must not mind all foolish unkind letters’.7
When the steamer docked at half past four the following morning, Ross and Turner were there, on the landing stage. Wilde lit up at the sight of them. ‘His face,’ Ross recalled, ‘had lost all its coarseness, and he looked as he must have looked at Oxford in the early days.’ After the usual ‘irritating delay’ Wilde stalked off the boat, a conspicuous figure, with his ‘odd elephantine gait’ and imposing height. He was holding a large sealed envelope, containing his long letter to Douglas. ‘This, my dear Bobbie, is the great manuscript about which you know.’ He went on, ‘More has behaved very badly about my luggage and was anxious to deprive me of the blessed bag which Reggie gave me.’ At this he gave out a great ‘Rabelasian’ laugh. The remark set the tone for much more high-spirited banter over the next couple of hours, as Ross and Turner piloted him through the customs formalities, and brought him back to the modest Hôtel Sandwich in the rue de la Halle au Blé, where they had arranged for an array of sandwiches to be set out, together with a bottle of red and a bottle of white wine. Perhaps it was the pathos of this modest but carefully ordered spread that caused Wilde’s determined euphoria to falter: he ‘broke down’ and wept.8
The tears, however, were short-lived. Wilde’s spirit was unfurling with each new hour of freedom. He relished the beautiful spring weather, the sea breeze, the apple blossom in the Normandy orchards, the sights and sounds of life. He was touched by the solicitude of his companions. He found his little room at the hotel filled with flowers. Ranged on the mantelpiece were all the books that Ross and Turner had collected; towards the centre, placed to ‘catch his eye’, were two volumes by Max Beerbohm: his collected essays and The Happy Hypocrite.9 There were letters from ‘Bernie’ Beere and other friends. He also discovered two suits sent by Frank Harris, together with a cheque for £50. Although not the promised £500, it was still a generous gesture, and Wilde wrote at once to thank him. He wrote also to Ada Leverson, anxious, on his ‘first day of real liberty’, to acknowledge her sweetness and goodness in being ‘the very first to greet [him]’. Other letters followed over the coming days, as Wilde hastened to thank his friends for their kindness and support.10
Adey returned almost immediately to London, but Ross and Turner stayed on for the week. It was all they could manage: both of them faced the disapproval of their families, and the possible loss of their allowances if it became known that they were consorting with Wilde. Nevertheless during their time together the three friends made a happy trio. There were endless jokes about Reggie’s gift of the monogrammed dressing case, and Ross’s unfailing kindness (Wilde insisted on canonizing him as ‘St Robert of Phillimore’, after his mother’s new Kensington address). All Wilde’s great love and admiration for Ross returned: ‘No other friend have I now in this beautiful world,’ he declared. ‘I want no other.’11 It was intoxicating to be back in the world of talk. Ross recalled that Reading was Wilde’s abiding subject during those first days of freedom. The prison became – in his more fantastical moods – ‘a sort of enchanted castle of which Major Nelson was the presiding fairy. The hideous machicolated turrets were already turned into minarets, [and] the very warders into benevolent Marmelukes’.12
Not that the realities of the place were forgotten. When Wilde learnt, from an article in the Daily Chronicle, that Warder Martin had been dismissed for giving biscuits to a young child who had been brought into the prison, he wrote a long, impassioned, letter to the paper, defending Martin’s action, and discoursing on the iniquities of locking up both children and ‘imbeciles’ under a regime so oblivious to their needs. ‘People nowadays do not understand what cruelty is,’ Wilde contended:
It is the entire want of imagination. It is the result in our days of stereotyped systems of hard-and-fast rules, and of stupidity. What is inhuman in modern life is officialism. Authority is as destructive to those who exercise it as it is to those on whom it is exercised. It is the Prison Board, and the system that it carries out, that is the primary source of the cruelty… The people who uphold the system have excellent intentions. Those who carry it out are humane in intention also. Responsibility is shifted on to the disciplinary regulations. It is supposed that because a thing is a rule it is right.
He urged a change to the rules, to acknowledge the specific needs and conditions of the very young and the mentally impaired.13
Ross and Turner had tried to discourage him from making a public statement on the matter, anxious that he should not draw attention to himself. But Wilde was not to be deflected, and much to his gratification the letter (which was printed above his own name) provoked extensive comment and prompted questions in parliament.14 As a piece of writing – cogent, humane, rich in allusion and language – it also gave public notice that his literary power was still intact. Wilde felt ready to be drawn back into the life of letters. He enjoyed a stimulating déjeuner with Aurélien Lugné-Poe, who was passing through Dieppe. ‘I was quite charmed with him,’ Wilde informed Adey. ‘I had no idea he was so young, and so handsome.’15 The actor-director, having mounted the premiere of Salomé, was anxious to produce a new piece from Wilde’s pen, and this was an idea that Wilde readily embraced. He was keen that his ‘artistic re-appearance’ after prison should be in Paris, not in London. It was ‘a homage and a debt’ that he felt he owed to the ‘great city of art’ that had preserved his reputation even during the dark days of his imprisonment.16
Peace and quiet, however, were needed for work. Dieppe, with its distractions, was unsuitable. He was too conspicuous in the little tourist-filled town to escape notice. There was also the question of economy. Ross was growing alarmed at Wilde’s capacity for expenditure. With typical generosity he was insisting on sending small sums of money – from £1 to £3 10s – to many of his Reading ‘pals’ – as well as to Warders Martin and Grove. The Dieppe markets, too, were a temptation. As Wilde facetiously related to Turner, ‘Robbie’ had found him among ‘the sellers of perfumes, spending all my money on orris-root and the tears of the narcissus and the dust of red roses’ to fill the vials in the fabled dressing case. ‘He was very stern and led me away. I have already spent my entire income for two years.’17
After a week Wilde moved 5 miles along the coast to the little village of Berneval-sur-Mer. There were no English visitors to recognize him, and very few French ones. When Ross left him, installed in the modest but salubrious Hôtel de la Plage, he endured a momentary pang of bitterness, as he grasped his ‘terrible position of isolation’, but the mood soon passed. The place had its charms, and the mere fact of freedom was delicious.18 Only days after the move he was writing to Ross (back in London):
I am going tomorrow on a pilgrimage. I always wanted to be a pilgrim, and I have decided to start early tomorrow to the shrine of Notre Dame de Liesse. Do you know what Liesse is? It is an old word for joy… I just heard of the shrine, or chapel, tonight, by chance, as you would say, from the sweet woman of the auberge, a perfect dear, who wants me to live always at Berneval! She says Notre Dame de Liesse is wonderful, and helps everyone to the secret of joy. I do not know how long it will take me to get to the shrine, as I must walk. But, from what she tells me, it will take at least six or seven minutes to get there, and as many to come back. In fact the chapel of Notre Dame de Liesse is just fifty yards from the hotel! Isn’t it extraordinary? I intend to start after I have had my coffee, and then to bathe. Need I say that this is a miracle? I wanted to go on a pilgrimage, and I find the little grey stone chapel of Our Lady of Joy is brought to me. It has probably been waiting for me all these purple years of pleasure, and now it comes to meet me with Li
esse as its message.
The old buoyancy, merriment and invention were evident in every line. Frank Harris, when Ross showed him the letter, considered it ‘the most characteristic thing’ Wilde ever wrote; ‘more characteristic even than The Importance of Being Earnest’. And if Wilde missed Ross and Turner, he continued ‘talking’ to them – as well as to other old English friends – in a ceaseless flow of scarcely less characteristic missives. Not that he was bereft of real company. There were the simple but charming denizens of Berneval, from the local customs-house officers to whom he lent Dumas novels to the local Catholic priest with whom he discussed religion and stained glass. He also found friends at Dieppe. Of course many of the expatriate holiday crowd were embarrassed by his presence, and sought to avoid him, but others were bolder. The unflappable Norwegian painter Frits Thaulow (‘a giant with the temperament of Corot’) and his engaging wife welcomed Wilde into their happy family home, even hosting a reception for him, to which they optimistically invited both the mayor of Dieppe and the president of the town’s chamber of commerce.19 Mrs Stannard (the ‘John Strange Winter’ about whom Wilde had discoursed with the Reading warder) was similarly generous; she and her husband regularly invited Wilde to meals at their apartment.20 He was greatly touched by these marks of kindness, and the small flavour they afforded him of family life. He came to set a special store by female company, both for itself and for the ‘respectability’ that it bestowed upon him. He was delighted, too, to find himself among children again, entertaining the Stannards’ three daughters and one son with a stream of improvised tales and jokes.21
There was also a more bohemian element around the town. Ernest Dowson, who was staying for the summer at nearby Arques-la-Bataille, came over to Berneval for an extremely jolly visit, with Charles Conder and a young composer called Dalhousie Young. Young, though previously unknown to Wilde, had not only published a polemical pamphlet in his defence, but had also contributed £50 to the fund put together by Adey for his support.22 They all stayed up until three in the morning, and that charmed night was followed by others. Wilde was much taken by the generous ‘Dal’ Young, and also by his sympathetic wife, though he felt unable to accept their too generous offer to put up the money for him to build a little villa at Berneval.23 He was pleased to see Conder again, relishing how the delicate vagueness of his art was matched by the delicate vagueness of his personality. He was amused, too, at his wonderful lack of business acumen: ‘Dear Conder,’ he declared, ‘With what exquisite subtlety he goes about persuading someone to give him a hundred francs for a [painted] fan, for which he was fully prepared to pay three hundred.’24
But it was with the bibulous and tubercular Dowson that he forged the closest bond. Wilde admired his work and was stimulated by his company. It was necessary, as he declared, ‘to have a poet to talk to’. He approved of Dowson’s ‘dark hyacinth locks’, his green suit and his blue tie. ‘Why are you so persistently and perversely wonderful?’ he asked after one of their absinthe-fuelled meetings. ‘There is a fatality about our being together that is astounding – or rather quite probable.’25
William Rothenstein was another of those who made a ‘pilgrimage to the Sinner’ at Berneval. He arrived together with Edward Strangman, ‘a charming sweet fellow’ who, to Wilde’s delight, had plans for translating Lady Windermere’s Fan into French. And André Gide, having been the last of Wilde’s French friends to see him before his fall, came up from Paris specially, in order to be the first to greet him after his release. They talked late into the night of prison life and literature. ‘Russian writers are extraordinary,’ Wilde declared. ‘What makes their books so great is the pity they put into them. You know how fond I used to be of Madame Bovary, but Flaubert would not admit pity into his work, and that is why it has a petty and restrained character about it.’ Wilde also invited Arthur Cruttenden, one of his recently released Reading ‘pals’, over for a short visit. Cruttenden, a former soldier, had been imprisoned after getting drunk and ‘making hay’ in the regimental stables: ‘the sort of thing,’ Wilde declared, ‘one was “gated” for at Oxford’.26
Although Wilde claimed that he neither dreamed of – nor wanted – ‘social rehabilitation’, the modest lines of his new life made it clear how much he had lost. That grand social world of fashionable dinners and aristocratic receptions, of first nights and private views, that he had both enjoyed and adorned, was lost forever. He had to face a new reality. As part of his post-prison pose, Wilde wore two conspicuous rings: one he claimed brought good fortune, the other ill luck, and he insisted that he was presently under the influence of the ‘evil ring’; that having been, for so many years, the happiest of men, he was now (very deservedly) the most unhappy.27
There was, however, a general consensus among his friends that he was in remarkably good shape and even better spirits. Gide found him like the ‘sweet Wilde’ of the early 1890s, rather than the arrogant sensualist of more recent years.28 Dowson reported to Henry Davray that the most noticeable change from Wilde’s ‘old’ self was ‘the extreme joy he [now] takes in the country and simple things’.29 To Rothenstein Wilde listed among his principal blessings ‘the sun and the sea of the beautiful world’.30 He relished his regular morning swim, having rented a bathing hut on the Berneval plage.31 He even began to quote Wordsworth.32As he cautiously admitted to one correspondent, ‘I suppose I am getting happy again. I hope so.’33
He had embraced contrition, after his own self-dramatizing fashion. ‘I drank the sweet, I drank the bitter,’ he declared, ‘and I found bitterness in the sweet and sweetness in the bitter.’34 Prison, he claimed, had taught him both ‘pity’ and ‘gratitude’. He kept up a regular attendance at the village church. ‘I am seated in the Choir!’ he told Ross. ‘I suppose sinners should have the high places near Christ’s altar.’35 The old curé was hopeful for his conversion, and though Wilde was tempted, he declared himself still unworthy.36 Nevertheless he chose to regard St Francis of Assisi as his new model for life.37 It became his line that, whatever the tragedy of his fall, he had ‘no bitterness’ in his heart against anyone: ‘I accept everything,’ he would tell his friends. ‘I really am not ashamed of having been in prison. I am thoroughly ashamed of having led a life quite unworthy of an artist… sensual pleasures wreck the soul: but all my profligacy, extravagance, and worldly life of fashion and senseless ease, were wrong for an artist. If I have good health, and good friends, and can wake the creative instinct in me again, I may do something more in art yet.’38
But beneath the apparent peace and contentment of Wilde’s new life tensions remained. Wilde had written to Constance immediately upon his arrival in France, hopeful of a swift reconciliation. In a ‘very beautiful’ letter, ‘full of penitence’ and touched with an ‘almost spiritual enthusiasm’, he had suggested that they might meet. The gentle-hearted Constance – who, only days before her husband’s release, had asserted that it would be ‘impossible’ for her ‘to go back to Oscar’ – was inclined to relent. Her brother, Otho, however, counselled caution. He thought the mood of Wilde’s letter ‘too overwrought and high pitched to last’.39 Certainly it should be tested by a delay. Constance temporized. She replied to Oscar’s letter enclosing photographs of the boys (‘such lovely little fellows in Eton collars’, Wilde thought them), and promising that she, at least, would meet him in due course. Further letters followed (at the rate of one a week), but no immediate plan for a visit. Wilde was disappointed: ‘She says she will see me, twice a year,’ he informed Ross, ‘but makes no promise to allow me to see [the children].’ This was a blow. ‘I want my boys,’ he lamented. ‘It is a terrible punishment, dear Robbie, and oh! how well I deserve it.’40
Others, meanwhile, were only too eager to see him. At almost the same moment that Wilde heard from Constance, he received a letter from Douglas (then in Paris). He acknowledged Wilde’s supposed hatred of him, but proclaimed his own unwavering love and pleaded for a meeting. Wilde was unsettled by the communication. There
had not yet been time to have the long prison letter copied and sent to Douglas, so much ground remained uncovered. Wilde offered a measured response, assuring Douglas that he did not ‘hate’ him, but enumerating some criticisms of his past behaviour, and insisting that any meeting must be deferred indefinitely. This was not at all what Douglas wanted to hear. Sure of his own devotion, and riled by what he considered the ‘somewhat priggish, if not canting tone’ of Wilde’s letter, he replied ‘vigorously’, pointing out that Wilde’s attitude towards him was ‘unfair and ungrateful’ and appeared only ‘to reflect the psychological results of imprisonment in a way which he would probably soon grow out of when he got back the full use of his brains and intellect’. After receiving this fusillade, Wilde spent a sleepless night. As he explained to Ross, ‘Bosie’s revolting letter was in the room, and foolishly I had read it again and left it by my bedside.’
Further, similarly ‘infamous,’ missives followed, together with a ‘love-lyric’, which Wilde considered ‘absurd’. Wilde’s attempted remonstrations were returned unread.41 It was clear that Douglas was not to be easily set aside. Wilde began to feel ‘a real terror’ of him. In practical terms, as he acknowledged to Adey, ‘Bosie’ could ‘almost ruin’ him.42 Wilde’s income from Constance depended upon him avoiding any public contact with the ‘notoriously disreputable’ Douglas. Adey’s solicitor had, moreover, passed on news that Lord Queensberry ‘has made arrangements for being informed if his son joins Mr. Wilde and has expressed his intention of shooting one or both’ should he do so. As Mr Holman remarked, ‘a threat of this kind from most people could be more or less disregarded, but there is no doubt that Lord Queensberry, as he has shown before, will carry out any threat that he makes to the best of his ability’.43
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