^w. 
 
 
 
 
 
 ... . '^-^ 
 
 
 "oV^ 
 
 
.^'\ 
 
 •"^■i" 
 
 , .^'% 
 
 
 
 4 o^ 
 
RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 OF 
 
 OSCAR WILDE 
 
RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 OF 
 
 OSCAR WILDE 
 
 BY 
 
 ERNEST LA JEUNESSE 
 ANDRE GIDE AND FRANZ BLEI 
 
 TRANSLATION AND INTRODUCTION 
 BY 
 
 PERCIVAL POLLARD 
 
 1906 
 
 JOHN W. LUCE AND COMPANY 
 
 BOSTON AND LONDON 
 
^f 
 
 \\ 
 
 .t1 
 
 LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
 
 Tw« Copies Receivad 
 
 NOV 19 1906 
 
 , Cspyrljrht Entry 
 
 <7fejL.t! /.^ "!^^ 
 
 CLASS n XXCuNo. 
 
 COPY B. 
 
 Copyright, 1906, 
 By Percival Pollard 
 
 The Plimpton Press, Norwood, Mass. U^A. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction 
 
 By Percival Pollard . 7 
 
 Recollections 
 
 By Andre Gide ... 25 
 Recollections 
 
 Ernest La Jeunesse . . 67 
 Recollections 
 
 By Franz Blei .... 89 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 BY 
 
 PERCIVAL POLLARD 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 STROLLING in the rare sunshine that 
 visited BerHn in the spring of 1905, 
 chance took me into a quaint Httle book- 
 shop that faces what was once the work- 
 shop of venerable Joseph Joachim. There, 
 among that Htter of old and new, in all 
 tongues, I found crystallised what much 
 other observation had already hinted. 
 Namely, that upon the continental liter- 
 ature concerning itself primarily with 
 formal art no exotic influence was more 
 noticeable than that of Oscar Wilde. 
 Outside influence upon the German 
 
 9 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 theatre was on every hand. Farces from 
 the French, dismal stuff from Scandi- 
 navia, and comedies by Bernard Shaw 
 and J. M. Barrie, were taking their 
 turn with Hauptmann, Sudermann, Max 
 Halbe, Hartleben and Schnitzler in the 
 repertoires of the leading German 
 theatres. But the piece that was being 
 played oftenest, on both sides of the 
 Rhine, was Oscar Wilde's "Salome.'* 
 When you went beyond the theatre, ey- 
 ing the windows of the booksellers, you 
 saw Wilde's name everywhere, — his 
 "De Profundis" was the most famous 
 book of the season in Berlin ; at any rate, 
 the booksellers seemed to intimate so; 
 they positively plastered their showcases 
 and windows with Wilde literature. 
 
 Much of this Wilde literature was but 
 repetition of what, despite the whilom 
 
 10 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 aversion from this writer's work here and 
 in England, is already fairly familiar to 
 us. One curious little book I came upon, 
 however, of such intimate, melancholy 
 interest, that I determined some day to 
 turn it into English. This I have now 
 done. 
 
 In introducing the work of the three 
 contributors to this little book, two 
 Frenchmen and one German, I would 
 premise that there must be many readers 
 who have been astonished to find in the 
 country of Gartenlaube literature and 
 Rheinhold Begas statues such evident 
 sympathy for a talent like Wilde's, The 
 tremendous modernisation that has come 
 over German art and letters has by no 
 means been generally heralded. Only 
 the barest facts may here be hinted. 
 
 The movement typified in England by 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 the Yellow Book, in America by the Lark, 
 the Chap-Book, and similar attempts 
 away from the academic, had a few years 
 later its German echo. In art a whole 
 school of successful men now testifies to 
 this influence; in illustration there are 
 Jugend and Simplicissimus, conveying to 
 the public the work of the younger 
 Munich men; in letters there are such 
 men as Ernst Von Wolzogen, Frank 
 Wedekind, Richard Dehmel, Otto Julius 
 Bierbaum, and many others. Just as, 
 through Beardsley, Wilde's influence 
 upon our illustrative and decorative arts 
 — in houses as well as in prints — may 
 still be found, so upon a number of Ger- 
 man writers, for print and playhouse, the 
 Irishman's influence was undoubted. In 
 the thought-mode of a number of suc- 
 cessful writers of the lighter sort, some of 
 
 12 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 whom were named just now, one could 
 mark the flowing of an impetus sprung 
 from the author of "Salome." 
 
 A year later, in the spring of this pres- 
 ent year, one found the European vogue 
 of Wilde still spreading. In Berlin, "An 
 Ideal Husband" was on the boards of the 
 Kleine Theatre; Vienna was issuing a 
 Complete Edition; in Florence, Leonardo 
 Azzarita was pointing out the Italian 
 interest in "De Profundis," just as, in 
 Madrid, Gomez Carillo had been giving 
 fascinating glimpses of the author of 
 "Salome." These glimpses I would well 
 have liked to include as a chapter in this 
 book, side by side with the glimpses of 
 Messrs. Gide, La Jeunesse, and Blei. But 
 the limits set for this brochure forbid, 
 and I must content myself with the brief- 
 est of extracts from what Carillo gave his 
 
 13 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 Spanish readers. It is with "Salome" 
 that these extracts deal; inasmuch as 
 that sombre play has but in this summer 
 of 1906 been for the first time offered to 
 the London public — offered, and, if we 
 may believe Mr. Max Beerbohm, refused 
 as too serious ! — these particulars can 
 scarce fail of interest: 
 
 In those days, Carillo wrote, Wilde's 
 thoughts were busied only with the lustful 
 dance of Salome. "You are from Madrid?" 
 And, after a long pause, "If for no other 
 reason, I have always longed to go to Spain 
 that I might see in the Prado Titian's Salome, 
 of which Tintoretto once exclaimed: 'Here at 
 last is a man who paints the very quivering 
 flesh!' . . ." No day went by without his 
 talking to me of Salome. Now it was a pass- 
 ing woman who started him dreaming of the 
 
 14 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Hebraic princess; again he stood for hours 
 before the jewelers' windows building for him- 
 self the ideal combination of gems with which 
 to festoon the body of his idol. One evening 
 he asked me suddenly, in the midst of the 
 street, "Don't you think she is better en- 
 tirely naked? " He was thinking of Salome. 
 *'Yes," he went on, "absolutely naked. But 
 strewn with jewels, all ringing and tinkling 
 in her hair, on her ankles, her wrists, her 
 throat, enclosing her hips and heightening 
 with their myriad glittering reflections the 
 unchastity of that unchaste amber flesh. For 
 of an unknowing Salome, who is a mere tool, 
 I refuse to hear a word; no, no, Salome 
 knows. . . ." Another time his Salome was 
 all chastity. I recall an evening when Wilde 
 came from the Louvre, and began to speak to 
 me of a gentle princess who danced before 
 Herod as if by a call from Heaven, that she 
 
 15 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 might finally be able to demand punishment 
 on the lying enemy of Jehovah. "Her quiv- 
 ering body," he said, "is tall and pale as a 
 lily; nothing sexual is in her beauty. Veils 
 woven by angels conceal her slenderness, her 
 blond hair flows like molten gold over her 
 shoulders. . . ." Once we were at Jean Lor- 
 rain's. Before the picture of a beheaded 
 woman, a very pale head, Wilde exclaimed, 
 "Why, that is Salome!" And at once he 
 imagined a princess who brings her lover the 
 head of John, and then immediately sends 
 her own head also, because she fancies herself 
 despised by the young man. "It is exactly 
 like that," he whispered. "A Nubian gospel 
 discovered by Boissiere tells of a young phi- 
 losopher, to whom a Jewish princess makes a 
 present of an apostle's head. The youth says 
 to her smilingly, "What I had rather have is 
 your own head, sweetheart." On that she 
 
 i6 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 goes away, pale, and that evening a slave 
 brings the young philosopher on a golden 
 plate the poor little head of his sweetheart. 
 The scholar says, "Why all this blood?" and 
 goes on reading Plato. "Don't you think 
 that is Salome?" . . . "Write that!" said 
 someone. Wilde actually began a story with 
 the title "The Double Beheading." He soon 
 tore the sheets up, and thought of a poem. 
 That, too, he relinquished, and chose drama. 
 , . . Only Gustave Moreau's portrait un- 
 veiled for him the soul of the dancing princess 
 of his dreams. Many a time he simply re- 
 peated Huysman's words, "She is nearly 
 \ naked. In the whirl of the dance the veils 
 are unloosed, the shawls are fallen to the 
 ground, and only jewels clothe her body. 
 The tiniest of girdles spans her hips; between 
 her breasts a jewel glitters like a star. . . ." 
 Five years later, in prison, in hours of sleep- 
 
 17 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 lessness, of fever and hunger, he mechanically 
 repeated to himself the words: "Between her 
 breasts a jewel glitters like a star." 
 
 What this Spaniard, Carillo, and the 
 three other European continentals com- 
 posing this little book have given us in 
 glimpses of this man seemed to me of 
 peculiar and personal interest. They 
 must add to the general understanding. 
 
 If that general understanding comes 
 slowly, it comes none the less surely. A 
 month after Wilde's death, in January, 
 1 90 1, I printed an essay attempting 
 definition of his place as artist. Time 
 has more than borne out all those fore- 
 casts of mine. There is no corner of the 
 globe where something of his has not, by 
 now, been read or played. Just as his 
 writings are indisputably a part of the 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 literature of the nineteenth century, so 
 the impress made by the man himself 
 belongs in any history of the manners of 
 that century. One may conceive that in 
 Wilde a perverse sense of loyalty to art 
 kept him from ever displaying the real 
 depth below his obvious insincerities; he 
 had begun by being a public fool; he had 
 succeeded in establishing folly as a repu- 
 tation for himself; and the rumor of his 
 paradoxic brilliance was too secure and 
 too amusing for him to risk shattering it 
 with glimpses of more serious depths. 
 Yet who can read his sonnet, "Helas!" 
 appearing in the 1881 edition of his 
 Poems, without feeling that under the 
 glitter and the pose there was something 
 else, something the gay world of London 
 knew nothing of? Publicly, Wilde posed 
 as a Soul only in the spirit in which that 
 
 19 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 word was then, in the 'Eighties, used in 
 English society, as opposed to the Smart; 
 he pretended nothing about him was 
 genuine; he passed for a symbol of his 
 own clever defence of liars; yet in "Ht- 
 las'/' the soul gave its cry. 
 
 What he hinted in that sonnet he was 
 eventually to prove in his letters from 
 prison to Mr. Ross, printed as a book 
 under the title "De Profundis." Just 
 as Pierre Loti once wrote a Book of Pity 
 and of Death, so might "De Profundis" 
 be called Wilde's Book of Pity and of 
 Life. Just as that book hints the tragedy 
 of his prison life, a tragedy more of soul 
 than of body, so does this present little 
 volume disclose some few facts from the 
 man's life after leaving prison. The few 
 had perforce to read "De Profundis" in 
 the light of their knowledge that its 
 
 20 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 author, after all the resolutions and con- 
 clusions in that document, reverted to 
 his baser self, and died with his life fallen 
 far below the altitude marked in the 
 prison letters. That knowledge of the 
 few is set forth in concrete, intimate 
 manner in the following pages. It is 
 true that on some points these documents 
 are in conflict; as in the matter of the 
 number following Wilde's body to the 
 grave. But the glimpses of the man just 
 before death, as Ernest La Jeunesse and 
 Andre Gide give them in these pages, 
 remain incontestably valuable. He died 
 and was buried. Whether seven fol- 
 lowed the coffm, or thirteen; whether he 
 now lies in this cemetery or that; what 
 matter? His work lives on. 
 ^A word or two about the authors with 
 whose pages I have taken the liberty of 
 
 21 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 very free translation. M. La Jeunesse 
 is one of the wittiest of the younger Pari- 
 sians. Much of his work has been on the 
 impudent and amusing plane of a Max 
 Beerbohm. His volume The Nights, 
 The Ennuis, and The Souls of our Most 
 Notorious Contemporaries, criticised, 
 chiefly by way of parody, all the biggest 
 toads in the puddle of French letters; 
 Zola, Bourget, Maeterlinck, and Anatole 
 France all suffered his scalpel. His book 
 of drawings in caricature of such men as 
 Rostand, Pierre Louy, Jean Lorrain, 
 Barres and Jules Lemaitre, is diverting 
 in the extreme. 
 
 Herr Franz Blei is one of the talented 
 men connected with the German monthly. 
 Die Insel, published in Leipzig three or 
 four years ago, under the direction of 
 Otto Julius Bierbaum. Bierbaum and 
 
 22 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Blei occasionally wrote for the stage to- 
 gether, and Blei has constantly been to 
 the fore in translating for German readers 
 the works of such men as Walter Pater, 
 Ernest Dowson, and Arthur Symons. 
 
 About M. Gide I regret that I can tell 
 you nothing; I prefer to invent nothing. 
 The D — referred to in his pages is, of 
 course. Lord Alfred Douglas, who mar- 
 ried Olive Custance, and whose English 
 version of "Salome" has lately been 
 issued. 
 
 The hotel-keeper, mentioned on page 
 (£, guards to this day the rooms in 
 which Wilde died, as a shrine, not with- 
 out pecuniary profit. Indeed, visitors 
 have had amusing proof of the inex- 
 haustible store of relics he commands. 
 Percival Pollard. 
 
 23 
 
RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 OF 
 
 OSCAR WILDE 
 
 BY 
 
 ANDRE GIDE 
 
RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 THOSE who came to know Wilde 
 only in the latter years of his life 
 can scarcely, in view of that feeble and 
 infirm existence, have had any concep- 
 tion of this wonderful personality. It 
 was in 1891 that first I saw him. Wilde 
 had at that time what Thackeray termed 
 the most important of talents, success. 
 His gestures, his look, were triumphant. 
 So complete was his success that it 
 seemed as if it had preceded him, and 
 Wilde had nothing to do but follow 
 it up. His books were talked about. 
 
 27 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 Plays of his were on at several London 
 theatres. He was rich; he was famous; 
 he was beautiful. Happiness and hon- 
 ors were his. One likened him to an 
 Asiatic Bacchus; or to a Roman Em- 
 peror, or even to Apollo himself — what is 
 certain is that he was radiant. 
 
 When he came to Paris, his name 
 traveled from lip to lip; one told the 
 most absurd anecdotes about him: 
 Wilde was pictured as everlastingly 
 smoking gold-tipped cigarettes and stroll- 
 ing about with a sunflower in his hand. 
 For Wilde had always the gift of playing 
 up to those who nowadays fashion fame, 
 and he made for himself an amusing 
 mask that covered his actual counte- 
 nance. 
 
 I heard him spoken of at Mallarme's 
 as of a brilliant causeur. A friend in- 
 
 ^8 
 
ANDRE GIDE 
 
 vited Wilde to dinner. There were four 
 of us, but Wilde was the only one who 
 talked. 
 
 Wilde was not a causeur; he narrated. 
 During the entire meal he hardly once 
 ceased his narrating. He spoke slowly, 
 gently, in a soft voice. He spoke ad- 
 mirable French, but as if he tapped a 
 little for the words he was using. Hardly 
 any accent at all, or just the faintest that 
 he chose to adopt, giving the words often 
 a quite novel and foreign air. . . . The 
 stories he told us that evening were con- 
 fused and not of his best. Wilde was 
 not sure of us, and was testing us. Of 
 his wisdom or his folly he gave only what 
 he thought his listeners might like; to 
 each he served a dish to suit the taste; 
 those who expected nothing of him re- 
 ceived nothing or the merest froth; and, 
 
 29 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 since all this was just amusement for 
 him, many, who think they know him, 
 know him only as an entertainer. 
 
 As we left the restaurant on that occa- 
 sion my friends went ahead, I followed 
 with Wilde. 
 
 "You listen with your eyes," he said 
 to me rather abruptly, "that is why I 
 tell you this story: 
 
 "When Narcissus died the pool of his 
 pleasure changed from a cup of sweet 
 waters into a cup of salt tears, and the 
 Oreads came weeping through the wood- 
 land that they might sing to the pool 
 and give it comfort. 
 
 "And when they saw that the pool 
 had changed from a cup of sweet waters 
 into a cup of salt tears, they loosened 
 the green tresses of their hair, and cried 
 to the pool, and said: 'We do not won- 
 
 30 
 
ANDRE GIDE 
 
 der that you should mourn in this man- 
 ner for Narcissus, so beautiful was he.' 
 
 "'But was Narcissus beautiful?' said 
 the pool. 
 
 '"Who should know that better than 
 you?' answered the Oreads. 'Us did 
 he ever pass by, but you he sought for, 
 and would lie on your banks and look 
 down at you, and in the mirror of your 
 waters he would mirror his own beauty.' 
 
 "And the pool answered: 'But I loved 
 Narcissus because, as he lay on my 
 banks and looked down at me, in the 
 mirror of his eyes I saw my own beauty 
 mirrored.'" 
 
 As I said: before others Wilde wore 
 a mask, to deceive, to amuse, some- 
 times to anger. He never listened, and 
 bothered little about any thought that 
 was not his own. If he could not shine 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 quite alone, he withdrew into the shadow. 
 One found him there only when one was 
 alone with him. 
 
 But so, alone, he began: 
 
 "What have you done since yester- 
 day?" 
 
 And as my life had then a very ordi- 
 nary routine, what I told about it could 
 hardly interest him at all. I rehearsed 
 this very ordinary matter, and Wilde's 
 frown showed. 
 
 "Really only that?" 
 
 "Really nothing new." 
 
 "Then why tell it? You must see 
 yourself that all that is very uninter- 
 esting. There are just two worlds; the 
 one exists without one ever speaking of 
 it; that is called the real world, for one 
 does not need to speak of it to perceive 
 its existence. The other is the world of 
 
 32 
 
ANDRE GIDE 
 
 art: one must talk of that, for without 
 such talk it would not exist. 
 
 "There was once a man who was be- 
 loved in his village for the tales he told. 
 Every morning he left the village, and 
 when he returned, at evening, the vil- 
 lagers, who had tired themselves in 
 labor all day long, assembled before him 
 and said, — Tell us, now, what you saw 
 to-day! He told them: I saw a faun in 
 the wood piping a dance to little wood- 
 gods. — What else? Tell us! said the 
 people. — As I came to the sea I saw on 
 the waves three sirens combing their 
 green locks with a golden comb. — And 
 the people loved him because he told 
 them stories. 
 
 "One morning he left the village as 
 usual — but as he reached the sea he 
 saw three sirens, three sirens on the 
 
 33 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 waves, combing with golden combs their 
 green tresses. And as he fared on, he saw 
 in the wood a faun, piping before dancing 
 wood nymphs. . . . When he reached 
 his village that evening and one asked 
 him as of old: Tell us! What have you 
 seen? he answered: I have seen nothing." 
 
 Wilde paused a little; let the story 
 work into me; then: 
 
 "I do not like your lips; they are the 
 lips of one who has never lied. I shall 
 teach you to lie, that your lips may grow 
 beautiful and curved as those of an an- 
 tique mask. 
 
 "Do you know what is art and what 
 is nature? And the difference between 
 them? For after all a flower is as beau- 
 tiful as any work of art, so the difference 
 between them is not merely beauty. 
 Do you know the difference? The work 
 
 34 
 
ANDRE GIDE 
 
 of art is always unique. Nature, that 
 creates nothing permanent, forever re- 
 peats itself, so that nothing of what she 
 has created may be lost. There are 
 many narcisse, so each can live but one 
 day. And every time that Nature in- 
 vents a new form, she repeats it. A sea- 
 monster in one sea knows that its image 
 exists in some other sea. When God 
 made a Nero, a Borgia, a Napoleon, he 
 was only replacing their likes; we do not 
 know those others, but what matter? 
 What is important is that one succeeded! 
 For God achieves man, and man achieves 
 the work of art." 
 
 That Wilde was convinced of his 
 aesthetic mission was made clear to me 
 more than once. 
 
 The Gospel disquieted the pagan Wilde. 
 He did not forgive its miracles. Pagan 
 
 35 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 miracles, those were works of art; Chris- 
 tianity robbed him of those. 
 
 "When Jesus returned to Nazareth," 
 he said, "Nazareth was so changed that 
 he did not know the place. The Naz- 
 areth of his day had been full of misery 
 and tears; this town laughed and sang. 
 And as the Lord descended into the town 
 he saw flower-laden slaves hastening up 
 the white steps of a marble house. He 
 went into the house and saw in a jasper 
 hall reclining upon a marble couch one 
 in whose hair were twined red roses and 
 whose lips were red with wine. And 
 the Lord stepped behind him, touched 
 his shoulder and spoke to him: 'Why do 
 you spend your life like this?' The 
 man turned around, knew him, and 
 said: * I was a leper once, and you healed 
 me — how else should I Hve?' 
 
 36 
 
ANDRE GIDE 
 
 "And the Lord left the house and re- 
 turned upon the street. And after a 
 Httle while he saw one whose face and 
 garments were painted, and whose feet 
 were shod with pearls. And after her 
 followed a youth, softly, slowly, like a 
 hunter, and his coat was of two colors 
 and lust was in his eyes. But the face 
 of the woman was as the lovely face of 
 a goddess. And the Lord touched the 
 youth's hand, and said: 'Why look you 
 so upon this woman?' And the youth 
 turned around, knew him, and said: *I 
 was blind, and you restored my sight. 
 Upon what else shall I look?' 
 
 "And the Lord approached the woman: 
 *The way you go is the way of sin; why 
 do you go that way?' And the woman 
 knew him, and said: 'The way I go is a 
 joyful way, and you forgave me my sins.' 
 
 37 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 ''Then the Lord's heart filled with 
 sorrow, and he wished to depart from 
 the town. And as he came to the gates, 
 a youth was sitting by the roadside, 
 weeping. The Lord approached him, 
 touched his hair, and said to him: 'Why 
 do you weep?' 
 
 "And the youth looked up, knew 
 him, and said: 'I was dead, and you 
 waked me from the dead. What else 
 should I do but weep?'" 
 
 "Shall I tell you a secret?" Wilde 
 began, another time — it was at Here- 
 dia's; he had taken me aside in the 
 middle of the crowded salon, and was 
 confiding this to me: "Do you know why 
 Christ did not love his mother?" — He 
 spoke quite softly into my ear, as if in 
 shame. Then he made a slight pause, 
 took me by the arm, and, suddenly 
 
 38 
 
ANDRE GIDE 
 
 breaking into a loud laughter: "Because 
 she was a virgin!" 
 
 One morning Wilde bade me read a 
 review in which a somewhat unskilful 
 critic had congratulated him upon the 
 fact that he "gave form and vesture to 
 his ideas by way of daintily invented 
 stories." 
 
 "They imagine," Wilde began, "that 
 all ideas come naked into the world. 
 They do not understand that I can think 
 in no other way save in stories. The 
 sculptor does not translate his thought 
 into marble; he thinks in marble." 
 
 Wilde believed in a sort of fate in art, 
 and that ideas were stronger than men. 
 *' There are," he said, "two sorts of 
 artists: these offer us answers; those 
 offer questions. One must know to 
 which of these sorts one belongs; for he 
 
 39 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 who asks is never he who answers. There 
 are works of art that stand waiting, that 
 one does not understand for a long time, 
 for the reason that they offer answers to 
 questions that one has not yet put; for 
 often the question comes dreadfully long 
 after the answer." 
 
 And he said, also: 
 
 "The soul comes old into the body, 
 which must age to give her youth. 
 Plato was the youth of Socrates." 
 
 Then I did not see Wilde again for 
 three years. 
 
 A stubborn rumor that grew with his 
 success as playwright ascribed extraor- 
 dinary habits to Wilde, about which 
 some people voiced their irritation smil- 
 ingly, others not at all ; it was added that 
 Wilde made no secret of it, and spoke 
 of it without embarrassment — some said 
 
 40 
 
ANDRE GIDE 
 
 he spoke with bravado, some with cyn- 
 icism, some with affectation. I was very 
 much astonished; nothing in the time I 
 had known Wilde had led me to suspect 
 this. But already his old friends were 
 cautiously leaving him. Not yet did 
 one quite disown him. But one no 
 longer spoke of having known him. 
 
 An unusual accident brought us to- 
 gether again. It was in January, 1895. 
 A fit of the blues had driven me to travel, 
 seeking solitude rather than change. I 
 hurried through Algiers to Blidah; left 
 Blidah for Biskra. Leaving the hotel, 
 my eyes fall, in weary curiosity, upon the 
 black tablet that bears the names of the 
 hotel-guests. And next to my own I 
 see Wilde's name. I was hungry for 
 solitude, and I took the sponge and 
 wiped my name out. 
 
 41 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 Even before I reached the station I 
 was in doubt as to whether I had not 
 acted as a coward, and I had my trunk 
 brought back, and re-wrote my name on 
 the tablet. 
 
 In the three years since last I had 
 seen him — I do not count a very hasty 
 encounter in Florence — Wilde had 
 changed visibly. One felt less softness 
 in his look, and there was something 
 coarse in his laughter, something forced 
 in his gaiety. At the same time he 
 seemed more certain of pleasing, and less 
 anxious to succeed; he was bolder, 
 greater, more sure of himself. And 
 curiously enough he spoke no longer in 
 parables; not one single story did I hear 
 from him the whole time. 
 
 At first I voiced my wonder at fmding 
 him in Algiers. ''I am running away 
 
 42 
 
ANDRE GIDE 
 
 from art/' he replied, '' I want to wor- 
 ship only the sun. . . . Have you never 
 noticed how the sun despises all thought? 
 He always discourages thought; it flies 
 to the shadows. Thought once dwelt 
 in Egypt; the sun conquered Egypt. 
 Long it lived in Greece; the sun con- 
 quered Greece, then Italy, then France. 
 To-day all thought is crowded out, 
 driven into Norway, and Russia, where 
 the sun never comes. The sun is jealous 
 of art." 
 
 To worship the sun, that was to wor- 
 ship life. Wilde's lyric worship grew 
 fierce and dreadful. A destiny deter- 
 mined him; he could not and would not 
 escape it. He seemed to apply all his 
 care, all his courage to the task of exag- 
 gerating his fate, and making it worse 
 for himself. He went about his pleasure 
 
 43 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 as one goes about one's duty. "It is 
 my duty," he said, "to amuse myself 
 frightfully." 
 
 Nietzsche did not surprise me so 
 much, later, because I had heard Wilde 
 say: — "Not happiness! Anything but 
 happiness! But pleasure, yes; pleasure, 
 joy! One must always want what is 
 most tragic." 
 
 As he walked through the streets of 
 Algiers, he was the centre of a most 
 strange crew; he chatted with each of 
 these fellows; they delighted him, and 
 he threw his money at their heads. 
 
 "I hope," he said, "that I have 
 thoroughly demoralised this town." I 
 thought of Flaubert's reply, when he 
 had been asked what glory he held most 
 worthy — "La gloire de demoralisateur/' 
 
 All this filled me with astonishment, 
 
 44 
 
ANDRE GIDE 
 
 wonder, and dread. I was aware of his 
 shattered condition, of the attacks and 
 enmities aimed at him, and what dark 
 disquiet he concealed under his aban- 
 donment of gaiety. One evening he 
 appeared to have made up his mind to 
 say absolutely nothing serious or sincere. 
 His paradoxes irritated me, and I told 
 him his plays, his books, were far from 
 being as good as his talk. Why did he 
 not write as well as he talked? "Yes,'' 
 said Wilde, "the plays are not great; I 
 think nothing of them; . . . but if you 
 only knew how amusing they are! . . . 
 Incidentally, most of them are the re- 
 sults of bets. So is 'Dorian Grey.' I 
 wrote that in a few days, because one of 
 my friends asserted I would never write 
 a novel." He leaned towards me and 
 added: "Do you wish to know the great 
 
 45 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 drama of my life? I have given my 
 genius to my life, to my work only my 
 talent." 
 
 Wilde spoke of returning to London; 
 
 the Marquis of Q was abusing him, 
 
 and accusing him of flight. ''But," I 
 asked, "if you go to London, do you 
 know what you are risking?" 
 
 "That is something one should never 
 know. My friends are funny; they ad- 
 vise caution. Caution ! How can I have 
 that? That would mean my immediate 
 return. I must go as far away as pos- 
 sible. And now I can go no further. 
 Something must happen — something 
 different." 
 
 The next morning Wilde was on his 
 way to London. 
 
 The rest is well known. That "some- 
 thing different" was hard labor in prison. 
 
 46 
 
ANDRE GIBE 
 
 From prison Wilde came to France. 
 
 In B , a remote little village near 
 
 Dieppe, there settled a Sebastian Mel- 
 moth; that was he. Of his French 
 friends I had been the last to see him; I 
 wished to be the first to see him again. 
 I arrived about midday, without having 
 announced myself in advance. Mel- 
 moth, whom friendship with T 
 
 brought often to Dieppe, was not ex- 
 pected back that evening. He did not 
 arrive until midnight. 
 
 It was still nearly winter, cold and 
 bitter. All day long I mooned about 
 the deserted strand, bored and moody. 
 
 How could Wilde have chosen this B 
 
 to live in? This boded no good. 
 
 Night came, and I went into the hotel, 
 the only one in the place, where Mel- 
 
 47 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 moth, too, lodged. It was eleven, and 
 I had begun to despair of my waiting, 
 when I heard wheels. M. Melmoth had 
 returned. 
 
 He was numb with cold. On the way 
 home he had lost his overcoat. A pea- 
 cock's feather that his servant had 
 brought him the day before may have 
 given him a foreboding of ill luck; he 
 expresses himself as fortunate to have 
 got off with only the loss of his overcoat. 
 He shakes with the cold, and the whole 
 hotel is astir to make him a hot grog, 
 He scarcely has a greeting for me. He 
 does not wish to show his emotion before 
 the others. And my own excited ex- 
 pectation quiets down as I fmd in Sebas- 
 tian Melmoth so completely the Oscar 
 Wilde, — not the hard, strained, force- 
 ful Wilde of Algiers, but the soft, pliable 
 
 48 
 
ANDRE GIDE 
 
 Wilde of before the crisis; I feel myself 
 set back not two years, but four or five; 
 the same arresting look, the same win- 
 ning smile, the same voice. 
 
 He lodged in two rooms, the best in 
 the house, and had furnished them taste- 
 fully. Many books on the table, among 
 which he showed me my "Nourritures 
 Terrestres," then but just out. On a 
 high pedestal, in the shadow, a Gothic 
 Madonna. 
 
 We sat at table by lamplight, and 
 Wilde sipped his grog. Now, in the 
 better light, I note how the skin of his 
 face has roughened and coarsened, and 
 his hands still more, those hands with 
 their fingers still covered by the same 
 rings, even the lapis lazuli in its pendant 
 setting, to which he was so much at- 
 tached. His teeth are horribly decayed. 
 
 49 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 We chat. I speak of our last meeting 
 in Algiers, and if he recalls my then fore- 
 telling his catastrophe. '' You must have 
 foreseen the danger into which you were 
 plunging?" 
 
 "Of course! I knew a catastrophe 
 would come — this one or that one. I 
 expected it. It had to end like that. 
 Think! Going on was impossible. An 
 end had to be. Prison has utterly 
 changed me. And I have counted on 
 
 that. D is terrible; he will not 
 
 understand my not taking up m^y old 
 life; he accuses the others of having 
 changed me. . . . But one can never 
 take up the same life. . . . My life is 
 like a work of art ; an artist never begins 
 the same thing twice. My life, before 
 I was in prison, was a success. Now it 
 is quite ended." 
 
 50 
 
ANDRE GIDE 
 
 Wilde lit a cigarette. 
 
 "The public is dreadful; it judges only 
 by what one has done last. If I returned 
 to Paris it would see only the condemned 
 man. I shall not appear again until I 
 have written a play." — And then, 
 abruptly: "Was I not quite right to 
 come here? My friends wanted to order 
 me South, for rest, for at first I was quite 
 unstrung. But I begged them to find 
 me a quiet little village somewhere in 
 Northern France, where I would see no- 
 body, where there is some cold and 
 hardly any sunshine. I have all that, 
 here. 
 
 "Everyone is very nice to me here, 
 especially the clergyman. His little 
 church is a great pleasure to me. Think: 
 it is called the Church of Our Lady of 
 Joy — Isn't that delightful? — And now 
 
 51 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 I am quite sure I shall never be able to 
 
 leave B , for this very morning the 
 
 clergyman has offered me a pew! 
 
 "And the customs officers! How bored 
 such people are! I asked them if they 
 had nothing to read, and now I am getting 
 for them all the novels of the elder Dumas. 
 I must stay here, eh? 
 
 "And the children here worship me. 
 On the Queen's birthday I gave a feast 
 to forty school-children — the whole 
 school was there, with the teacher! For 
 the Queen's Day! Isn't that delightful? 
 . . . You know, I am very fond of the 
 Queen. I always have her picture by 
 me." And he showed me Nicholson's 
 portrait of the Queen pinned to the wall. 
 I arise to examine it ; a small bookcase is 
 underneath it; I look at the books. I 
 wished to induce Wilde to talk more 
 
 52 
 
ANDRE GIDE 
 
 seriously. I sit down again, and ask 
 him, somewhat timidly, if he has read 
 the "Recollections in a Morgue." He 
 does not reply directly. 
 
 "These Russian writers are extraordi- 
 nary; what makes their books so great 
 is the pity they put into them. Formerly 
 I adored 'Madame Bovary'; but Flau- 
 bert would have no pity in his books, and 
 the air in them is close; pity is the open 
 door through which a book can shine 
 eternally. ... Do you know, it was 
 pity that kept me from suicide. For the 
 first six months I was so dreadfully un- 
 happy that I longed to kill myself — 
 but I saw the others. I saw their un- 
 happiness; it was my pity for them that 
 saved me. Oh, the wonder of pity! 
 And once I did not know pity.'' He 
 said this quite softly and without any 
 
 53 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 exaltation. "Do you know how won- 
 derful pity is? I thanked God every 
 night, yes, on my knees I thanked Him, 
 that He had made me acquainted with 
 pity. For I entered prison with a heart 
 of stone, and thought only of my own 
 pleasure; but now my heart is quite 
 broken; pity has entered in; I know now 
 that pity is the greatest and loveliest 
 thing in the world. . . . And that is why 
 1 can have nothing against those who 
 condemned me, for without them I 
 would not have experienced all this. 
 
 D writes me horrible letters; he 
 
 writes that he does not understand me, 
 does not understand my not taking arms 
 against the whole world; since all have 
 been abominable to me. . . . No; he 
 does not understand, cannot understand 
 me. In every letter I tell him that our 
 
 54 
 
ANDRE GIDE 
 
 ways lie apart; his is the way of pleasure 
 — mine is not. His is that of Alcibiades; 
 mine that of St. Francis of Assisi. . . . 
 Do you know St. Francis? Will you do 
 me a very great pleasure? Send me the 
 best life of our Saviour!" 
 I promised; and he went on: 
 ''Yes — towards the last we had a 
 splendid warden, a charming man! But 
 for the first six months I was utterly, 
 completely unhappy. The warden, then, 
 was a horrible creature, a cruel Jew, 
 without any imagination." I had to 
 laugh at the absurdity of this rapidly 
 uttered comment, and Wilde laughed too. 
 " Yes, he did not know what to invent 
 for our torturing. . . . You shall see 
 how void of imagination the man was. 
 You must know that in prison one has 
 but an hour in the sunshine, that is, one 
 
 55 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 marches around the yard in a circle, one 
 after the other, and is forbidden to say a 
 word. One is watched, and there are 
 dreadful punishments if one is caught 
 talking. The novices, who are in prison 
 for the first time, can be distinguished 
 by their inability to speak without mov- 
 ing their lips. For ten weeks I had been 
 there, and had not spoken a word to a 
 soul. One evening, just as we are mak- 
 ing our round, one behind the other, I 
 suddenly hear my name spoken behind 
 me. It was the prisoner behind me, 
 who was saying: 'Oscar Wilde, I pity 
 you, for you are suffering more than 
 me.' I made the greatest efforts not to 
 be observed, and said, without turning 
 around: 'No, my friend; we all suffer 
 alike.' And on that day I did not think 
 of suicide. 
 
 56 
 
ANDRE GIDE 
 
 " In this way we often talked together. 
 I knew his name and what he was in for. 
 
 He was called P , and was a fine 
 
 fellow! But I had not yet the trick of 
 speaking with motionless lips, and one 
 evening *C. 33!' ( — that was I — ) 'C. 33 
 and C. 48 fall out!' We left the rank, 
 and the turnkey said: 'You are to go 
 before the warden!' And as pity was 
 already in my heart I had fear only for 
 him; I was even happy that I must suffer 
 on his account. — Well, the warden was 
 
 simply a monster. He called P first ; 
 
 he wished to hear us separately — since 
 the punishment for the one who has 
 spoken first is twice as heavy as for the 
 other; usually the former gets a fort- 
 night in the dark cell, the latter only a 
 week; so the warden wanted to know 
 which of us two had been the first. And 
 
 57 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 of course P said he was. And when 
 
 the warden interrogated me presently, 
 of course I, too, said it had been I. That 
 enraged the man so that his face went 
 scarlet, for he could not understand such 
 
 a thing. ' But P declares also that 
 
 he began! I don't understand. . . .' 
 
 "What do you say to that, mon cher? 
 He could not understand! He was very 
 much embarrassed. 'But I have al- 
 ready given him fourteen days. . . / 
 and then : ' Very well ! If this is the case, 
 you simply both get fourteen days.' 
 Splendid, that, eh? The man simply 
 had not an atom of imagination.'' Wilde 
 was greatly amused; he laughed, and 
 went on talking gaily: 
 
 "Naturally, after the fourteen days, 
 our desire to talk was all the keener. 
 You know how sweet is the sensation of 
 
 58 
 
ANDRE GIDE 
 
 suflFering for others. Gradually — one 
 did not always parade in just the same 
 sequence — gradually I managed to talk 
 with all of them! I knew the name of 
 every single one, his story, and when he 
 would be leaving prison. And to each I 
 said: The first thing you are to do when 
 you come out is to go to the post-office; 
 there will be a letter there for you with 
 money. . . . There were some splendid 
 fellows among them. Will you believe 
 me if I tell you that already some three 
 of my fellow prisoners have visited me 
 here? Is that not wonderful? 
 
 "The unimaginative warden was suc- 
 ceeded by a very nice one. Now I 
 could ask to read whatever I wished. I 
 thought of the Greeks, and that they 
 would please me. I asked for Sophocles, 
 but he was not to my taste. Then I 
 
 59 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 thought of the writers on religion ; those, 
 too, failed to hold me. And suddenly I 
 thought of Dante. ... oh, Dante! I 
 read Dante every day in the ItaHan, 
 every page of him; but neither the Pur- 
 gatory nor the Paradise was intended 
 for me. But the Inferno! What else 
 was I to do but adore it? Hell — were 
 we not dwelling in it? Hell, that was 
 the prison.'' 
 
 The same night he spoke to me of his 
 dramatic scheme of a Pharaoh, and of a 
 spirited story on Judas. 
 
 The following morning Wilde took me 
 to a charming little house, not far from 
 the hotel, that he had rented, and was 
 beginning to furnish. Here he meant to 
 write his plays: first, the Pharaoh, then 
 an *'Achab and Isabella," the story of 
 which he told marvellously. 
 
 60 
 
ANDRE GIVE 
 
 The carriage that is to drive me off is 
 ready. Wilde gets in with me to ac- 
 company me a Httle distance. He speaks 
 of my book, praises it cautiously. The 
 carriage stops. Wilde gets out and says 
 goodbye; then abruptly: "Look here, 
 mon cher, you must promise me some- 
 thing. The 'Nourritures Terrestres' is 
 good . . . very good. But, mon cher, 
 promise me never to write T again. 
 In art there is no first person." 
 
 Back in Paris again, I told D my 
 
 news. He declared: 
 
 "All that is quite ridiculous. Wilde 
 is incapable of suffering boredom. I 
 know him very well; he writes to me 
 every day. I dare say he may finish his 
 play first, but then he will come back to 
 me. He never did anything great in 
 solitude, he needs distractions. He wrote 
 
 6i 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 his best while with me. — Look at his 
 
 last letter. . . ," D read it out to 
 
 me. In it Wilde implored D to let 
 
 him finish his Pharaoh in peace; that 
 then he would return, return to him. 
 The letter closed with this glorious sen- 
 tence — "And then I shall be King of 
 Life once more!" 
 
 Soon afterward Wilde returned to 
 Paris. The play was, and remained, un- 
 written. When Society wishes to de- 
 stroy a man, she knows what is. needed, 
 and she has methods more subtle than 
 death. . . . Wilde had for two years 
 suffered too much and too passively; his 
 will was broken. For the first few 
 months he was still able to set up illu- 
 sions for himself; but soon he gave up 
 even those. It was an abdication. Noth- 
 ing was left of his crushed life but the 
 
 62 
 
ANDRE GIDE 
 
 sorrowful memory of what he had once 
 been; some wit still was there; occa- 
 sionally he tested it, as if to try whether 
 he still was capable of thought; but it 
 was a crackling, unnatural, tortured wit. 
 I only saw Wilde twice again. 
 One evening on the Boulevards, as I 
 
 was walking with G , I heard myself 
 
 called by name. I turn around, it was 
 Wilde! How changed he was! "If I 
 should reappear before I have written 
 my play, the world will see in me only 
 the convict," he had said. He had re- 
 turned without his play, and when 
 some doors closed against him he sought 
 entry nowhere else; he turned vagabond. 
 Friends often tried to save him; one 
 tried to think what was to be done for 
 him; one took him to Italy. Wilde soon 
 escaped, slipped back. Of those who 
 
 63 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 had remained longest faithful to him, 
 some had several times told me that 
 Wilde had disappeared. Hence I was, I 
 admit, a trifle embarrassed to see him 
 again like that, in that place. Wilde 
 was sitting on the terrace of a cafe. He 
 ordered two cocktails for myself and 
 
 G . I sat down facing him, so that 
 
 my back was to those passing. Wilde 
 noticed that and ascribed it to an absurd 
 shame on my part, and not altogether, I 
 regret to say, with injustice. 
 
 "Oh," he said, ''sit down here, next 
 to me," and pointed to a chair by his 
 side, "I am so utterly alone now!" 
 
 Wilde was still quite well dressed; but 
 his hat no longer was brilliant, his collar 
 was still of the old cut, but not quite so 
 immaculate, and the sleeves of his coat 
 showed faint fringes. 
 
 64 
 
ANDRE GIDE 
 
 "When once I met Verlaine," he be- 
 gan, with a touch of pride, "I did not 
 blush at him. I was rich, joyous, famous, 
 but I felt that it was an honor for me 
 to be seen with Verlaine, even though 
 he was drunk." Perhaps because he 
 
 feared to bore G , he suddenly 
 
 changed his tone, attempted to be witty, 
 to jest; his talk became mere stumbling. 
 As we arose Wilde insisted upon paying. 
 When I was bidding him farewell he took 
 me aside and said, in a low and confused 
 tone, "Listen: you must pay ... I am 
 quite without means. . . ." 
 
 A few days later I saw him again for 
 the last time. Let me mention but one 
 thing of those we talked of: he bewailed 
 his inability to undertake his art once 
 more. I reminded him of his promise, 
 that he had made to himself, not to re- 
 
 65 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 turn to Paris without a completed 
 play. 
 
 He interrupted me, laid his hand on 
 mine, and looked at me quite sadly: 
 
 "One must ask nothing of one who 
 has failed/' 
 
 Oscar Wilde died in a miserable little 
 hotel in the Rue des Beaux-Arts. Seven 
 persons followed to his funeral, and not 
 all of these accompanied him to his last 
 resting-place. Flowers and wreaths lay 
 on the coffm. Only one piece bore an 
 inscription; it was from his landlord; and 
 on it one read these words: ''A mon 
 locataire," 
 
 66 
 
RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 OF 
 
 OSCAR WILDE 
 
 BY 
 
 ERNEST LA JEUNESSE 
 
RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 IF, without looking more closely, one 
 happened to notice this slowly mov- 
 ing and very solemn gentleman as he 
 strolled our boulevards in his expansive 
 corpulence, one jumped at once to the 
 conclusion that to himself and in him- 
 self he appeared as a mourning pro- 
 cessional. 
 
 Never was there a more utter victim 
 of the misunderstanding between the 
 mob and the poet. The public longs 
 to be fooled. It has a right to decep- 
 tion, as it has a right to bread, or to its 
 
 69 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 dreams — and the real dreams of the 
 night-time are so rare and so difficult ! 
 It wants to dream, of an evening, in the 
 theatre, so that in the daytime it may 
 have matter for astonishment and for 
 wonder; it wants to be excited, at break 
 of day, before work comes, by the mur- 
 ders and crimes in the newspapers. 
 
 When once a thaumaturg — and I 
 choose the word purposely, one that 
 Wilde respected highly — undertakes to 
 fool the public, he has the right to 
 choose his material where he fmds it; 
 one does not expect of him moral and 
 social lessons, but inventions, tricks, 
 words, a touch of heaven and a touch 
 of hell, and what not else; he must be 
 Proteus and Prometheus, must be able 
 to transform all things, and himself; he 
 must reveal the secret of this or that life 
 
 70 
 
ERNEST LA JEUNESSE 
 
 for the readers of his paper or the patrons 
 of his theatre; he must be confessor, 
 prophet, and magician; he must dissect 
 the world with the exactness of a doc- 
 trinarian and recreate it anew the mo- 
 ment after, by the Hght of his poetic 
 fancy; he must produce formulas and 
 paradoxes, and even barbaric puns with 
 nothing save their antiquity to save them. 
 For this price — a well paid one — he 
 can fmd distraction after the manner of 
 the gods or the fallen angels, and seek 
 for himself excitements and deceptions, 
 since he has advanced, and eventually 
 crossed the borders of ordinary human 
 emotions and sensations. Wilde had 
 paid the price. Now, with the coin of 
 his artistic triumphs, he longed, among 
 a thousand nobler and more interesting 
 things, to play the young man. 
 
 71 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 He played badly. 
 
 Now it was the public that was duped 
 in duping him. For the only fortune, 
 good or bad, permitted to the poet is of 
 the sort that an octogenarian biographer 
 delights to present after the poet's death. 
 
 Wilde in exile remained always Eng- 
 lish: I mean to say that he had pity with 
 all victims without hatred for the judges. 
 He approved completely of the sentence 
 and execution of that Louise Masset who 
 was hanged for the killing of her child. 
 He followed closely the course of events 
 in the Transvaal, and was all enthusiasm 
 for Kitchener and Roberts, a touching 
 trait in an exile. Irishman by birth, an 
 Italian in his inclinations, Greek in cul- 
 ture and Parisian in his passion for para- 
 dox and blague, he never could forget 
 London — London, in whose fogs he had 
 
 72 
 
ERNEST LA JEUNESSE 
 
 found all his triumphs; London, into 
 which he had brought all exotic civilisa- 
 tions; London, that in his vanity he had 
 transformed into a monstrous garden of 
 flowers and palaces, of subtlest sugges- 
 tion and discreetest charm. His imper- 
 tinences toward the English had been 
 those of a benevolent monarch. When 
 he came late into a salon, without greet- 
 ing to anyone, accosted the hostess and 
 asked, quite audibly: ''Do I know any- 
 body here?" that was nothing but his 
 singular gallantry; he had by no means 
 the intention of slighting this one or that 
 one, but wished merely to avoid the 
 appearance of knowing all the world, 
 inasmuch as the hostess herself probably 
 knew only a small number of her guests. 
 He has been accused of a green carnation 
 and a cigarette; it was for that, perhaps, 
 
 73 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 that for twenty-four months he was de- 
 prived of all tobacco and all flowers. 
 He has been reproached of having spent 
 twice the 1 50,000 francs his plays brought 
 him in; he was declared bankrupt. His 
 name was erased from the hoardings and 
 from the memories of men; his children 
 were taken away from him; all this be- 
 cause the public wished to amaze him 
 with its cruelty. 
 
 Still this was not the end. From the 
 moment that he set foot on our soil we 
 were witnesses to a terrible tragedy: his 
 effort to pick up the thread of his life. 
 This giant, whom lack of sleep, of nour- 
 ishment, of peace and of books, had been 
 unable to destroy and scarcely to weaken, 
 asked of the sea, of Paris and of Naples, 
 that they harbor the dawn of a new era 
 in his art. 
 
 74 
 
ERNEST LA JEUNESSE 
 
 He failed. 
 
 At forty, confident in the future, he 
 failed. He could but reach out with 
 impotent arms into the past, lose him- 
 self in bitter memories. American man- 
 agers clamored for a new play of his; all 
 he could do was to give Leonard Smithers 
 "An Ideal Husband," 1899, to print, a 
 play several years old. 
 
 His heavy lids drooped upon cher- 
 ished dreams: his successes; he walked 
 slowly, in short paces, so as not to dis- 
 turb his memories; he loved the solitude 
 one gave him, since it left him alone 
 with what he had once been. Yet still 
 the evil habit was on him of haunting, 
 with some companion, the obscurest 
 streets, dreaming of similar adventures 
 in London. . . . always London! 
 
 He had to have that oblivion which 
 
 75 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 alcohol denied him. For even in the 
 bars it was London he sought. There 
 was left for him nothing but the Ameri- 
 can bars, which were not to his liking. 
 One evening at Chatham's he had been 
 told his presence was unwelcome. There 
 on the terrace he had tried to distract 
 his incurious eyes, but the passers-by 
 gazed at him too curiously; he gave up 
 even that. 
 
 All his face was furrowed by tears. 
 His eyes seemed caverns hollowed out 
 by pale tears; his heavy lips seemed 
 compact of sobs and oozing blood; and 
 everywhere was that horrible bloating 
 of the skin that signals human fear and 
 heartache corroding the body. An un- 
 wieldy ghost, an enormous caricature, 
 he cowered over a cocktail, always im- 
 provising for the curious, for the known, 
 
 76 
 
ERNEST LA JEUNESSE 
 
 and for the unknown — for anyone — 
 his tired and tainted paradoxes. But 
 mostly it was for himself he improvised; 
 he must assure himself he still could, still 
 would, still knew. 
 
 He knew everything. 
 
 Everything. The commentaries on 
 Dante; the sources of Dante Gabriel 
 Rossetti; the events and the battles of 
 history — of all he could talk as a strip- 
 ling talks, smiling sometimes his smile 
 that was of purgatory, and laughing — 
 laughing at nothing, shaking his paunch, 
 his jowls, and the gold in his poor teeth. 
 
 Slowly, word for word, he would in- 
 vent in his feverish, stumbling agony of 
 art, curious, fleeting parables: the story 
 of the man who, having received a worth- 
 less coin, voyages forth to meet in com- 
 bat the ruler whose doubly counterfeit 
 
 77 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 presentment he has found. . . . But he 
 lacked, for the setting down of these 
 tales, the golden tablet of Seneca. 
 
 He wasted himself in words; perhaps 
 he tried to lose himself in them. He 
 sought scholars that he might find in 
 them an excuse for finding himself 
 again, for living anew, for being born 
 again, and to keep him from overmuch 
 thinking about ungrateful plagiarists. 
 
 Wilde once told a tale of a king and 
 a beggar, and said at close: " I have been 
 king; now I will be a beggar." Yet he 
 remained to the very last day the per- 
 fect, well-groomed Englishman — and did 
 not beg. 
 
 That would indeed have been a new 
 life, this life that fate denied him. 
 
 Words fail to paint properly the chaos 
 of hope, of words and laughter, the mad 
 
 78 
 
ERNEST LA JEUNESSE 
 
 sequence of half-concluded sentences, 
 into which this poet plunged, proving to 
 himself his still inextinguished fancy, his 
 battling against surrender, his smiling 
 at fate; or to suggest the grim dark into 
 which he always must turn, daily fearing 
 death, in the narrow chamber of a sordid 
 inn. 
 
 He had been in the country, in Italy, 
 and he longed for Spain, for the Mediter- 
 ranean; there was nothing for him save 
 Paris — a Paris gradually closing against 
 him, a deaf Paris, bloodless, heartless, a 
 city without eternity and without legend. 
 
 Each day brought him sorrows; he 
 had neither followers nor friends; the 
 direst neurasthenia tortured him. Want 
 clutched at him; the pittance of ten 
 francs a day allowed him by his family 
 was no longer increased by any advances 
 
 79 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 from his publishers; he must needs work, 
 write plays that he had already con- 
 tracted to undertake, — and he was 
 physically unable to arise from his bed 
 before three in the afternoon! 
 
 He did not sour under all this; he 
 simply let himself run dov/n. One day 
 he takes to his bed, and pretends that 
 he has been poisoned by a dish of mus- 
 sels in a restaurant; he gets up again, 
 but wearily, and with thoughts of death. 
 
 He attempts his stories all over again. 
 It is like nothing save the bitter, bhnd- 
 ing brilliance of a superhuman firework. 
 All who saw him at the close of his career, 
 still spraying forth the splendor of his 
 wit and his invention, whittling out the 
 golden, jeweled fragments of his genius, 
 with which he was to fashion and em- 
 broider the plays and poems he still 
 
 80 
 
ERNEST LA JEUNESSE 
 
 meant to do — who saw him proudly 
 lifting his face to the stars the while he 
 coughed his last words, his last laughter, 
 — will never forget the tremendous, 
 tragic spectacle as of one calmly damned 
 yet proudly refusing utterly to bend the 
 neck. 
 
 Nature, at last kind to him who had 
 denied her, gathered all her glories to- 
 gether for him in the Exposition. He 
 died of its passing, as he died of every- 
 thing. He had loved it, had drunk it in 
 large measures, greedily, as one drinks 
 blood on the battlefield. In every palace 
 of it he built again his own palace of 
 fame, riches, and immortality. 
 
 For this dying man it was a long and 
 lovely dream. One day he passed out 
 through the Porte de TAlma to look at 
 Rodin's work. He was almost the only 
 
 8i 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 wayfarer thither. That, too, is tragedy; 
 and the master showed him, quite near 
 by, the Porte de TEnfer. 
 
 But enough of details; on to the end. 
 
 Thirteen persons, in a bedroom out 
 by the city hmits, remove their hats 
 before a coffin marked with a No. 13; a 
 shaky hearse with shabby metal orna- 
 ments; two landaus instead of a funeral 
 coach; a wreath of laurel; faded flowers; 
 a church that is not draped for death, 
 that tolls no death-note, and opens only 
 a narrow side-entrance for the procession; 
 a dumb and empty mass without music; 
 an absolution intoned in English, the 
 liturgic Latin turned to a non-conformist 
 jumble; the glittering salute of a captain 
 of the guard on the Place Saint Germain- 
 des-Pres; three reporters counting the 
 participants with cold-blooded precision 
 
 82 
 
ERNEST LA JEUNESSE 
 
 — that is the farewell that the world 
 takes from one of its children, from one 
 who had wished to illuminate and spread 
 far the splendor of its dream; — that is 
 the knell of a life of phantasms and of 
 dreams of impossible beauty; — that is 
 the forgiveness and the recompense; — 
 that, on a false dawn, is the first rosy 
 light of immortality. 
 
 Wilde, who was a Catholic, received 
 but two sacraments: the first while in a 
 coma, the last in his last sleep. The 
 priest who looked after him was bearded 
 and English; seemed himself a convert. 
 In all justice I would assert here that 
 Wilde was sincerely enough a Catholic 
 not to have need of the last rites; that he 
 devoutly loved all the Romish pomp and 
 ceremony, even to the color-effects of the 
 stained windows and the notes of the 
 
 83 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR V/ILDE 
 
 organ; and that some of all this might 
 rightly have been his due, rather than 
 this stolid farce, this hasty burying, this 
 oppressive absolution, in which the vicar 
 seemed to be washing his hands clean of 
 this taint of unrighteousness. 
 
 It was in our hearts, in us, that the 
 true religion was. 
 
 I cannot judge, cannot praise, Oscar 
 Wilde here. Properly to seize and set 
 forth his curious genius were a greater 
 task. One will not fmd that genius in 
 his writings. Witty and sublime it is, 
 there; but, for him, too piecemeal. His 
 work is the shadow of his thoughts, the 
 shadow of his illuminating speech. 
 
 One must conceive him as one who 
 knew everything and said everything in 
 the best way. A Brummel, who was a 
 Brummel even in his genial moments. 
 
 84 
 
ERNEST LA JEUNESSE 
 
 And one who would have fulfilled that 
 part while tasting of shame and of un- 
 happiness. 
 
 None believed in Art more than Wilde. 
 
 I will close this oration by an illusion 
 to his simplicity. Wilde, who suffered 
 so much, suffered under his reputation 
 of being affected. One evening Wilde, 
 who was not usually fond of publicly 
 deploring his lost treasures, lamented his 
 paternity. After he had told me of his 
 son Vivian's conversion to the Catholic 
 faith, the boy having quite simply de- 
 clared to his guardian '' I am a Catholic," 
 Wilde said with a smile, "And Vivian, 
 twelve years old, lies down on a couch, 
 and when they wish him to get up, says; 
 'Leave me — I am thinking!' with a 
 gesture, mind you, of my own — a ges- 
 ture that people have jeered at and of 
 
 85 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 which they have always declared it was 
 affected!" That was the beginning of a 
 rehabilitation among the mob. 
 
 And now the grandson of this Math- 
 urin, who admired Balzac, from whom 
 this unfortunate borrowed his fatal pseu- 
 donym of Sebastian Melmoth, sleeps; he 
 sleeps, this son of a noble and learned 
 father and mother, at whose christening 
 stood a King of Sweden; sleeps, and 
 sleeps badly, in a churchyard that is far 
 enough away to choke the courage and 
 the prayers of whoso might wish to ven- 
 ture there. Hardly will the echo of bor- 
 rowed fables wake or lull him. Hardly 
 will the occasional utterance of his name 
 in scandal reach him, bringing its burden 
 of insult. 
 
 He will, I hope, pardon me these 
 words, uttered only for history, for sin- 
 
 86 
 
ERNEST LA JEUNESSE 
 
 cerity and for justice, and to be witnesses 
 for one who was his friend in evil days, 
 who is neither aesthetic nor cynic, and 
 who in all humility sends greeting to him 
 in his silence and his peace. 
 
 87 
 
RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 OF 
 
 OSCAR WILDE 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANZ BLEI 
 
RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 LIFE is frightfully devoid of form. 
 Its catastrophes occur in the wrong 
 places and to the wrong people. Gro- 
 tesque horror plays round about its 
 comedies, and its tragedies wind up in 
 farce. It wounds you when you would 
 approach it; it lasts too long or too 
 briefly." 
 
 If one seek an example to these senti- 
 ments, one would fmd none better than 
 the life of him who uttered them. For 
 every word of Oscar Wilde's came true 
 in his own case, up to that one which 
 
 91 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 declared that Art, and Art alone, could 
 safeguard us against the soiling dangers 
 of life. His passion for discovering the 
 ways that fare between Truth and 
 Beauty led him into discredited paths 
 that spelt anathema to the conventional; 
 he believed he could tread those ways 
 safely, since he carried before him the 
 illumining torch of Beauty. But Life 
 always wounds those who approach it 
 from dreams. And Wilde, like his own 
 Dorian, had moments in which he saw 
 evil only as a means towards realising 
 his conception of the beautiful, and so 
 one saw him consorting with evil. He 
 recognised sin as the only thing that in 
 our time has kept color and life, and that 
 we cannot hark back to holiness and can 
 learn far more from the sinner. As 
 Dorian was, so was he a type that our 
 
 92 
 
FRANZ BLEI 
 
 times desires strongly and yet fears, that 
 we picture to ourselves in secret fancies 
 and worshippings and yet crucify when 
 it comes to life. For not yet is there one 
 law over both thought and deed, and we 
 must be grateful to this divorce for our 
 scheme of life, without which our world 
 would be the richer only for one animal 
 without sin. 
 
 Wilde's literary residue would be im- 
 portant enough to secure his name to 
 posterity. But his life encountered a 
 fate that took precedence, with its gro- 
 tesque tragedy, over his work, and over- 
 shadowed it scurrilously with a blackness 
 that, in England, was as a night of pesti- 
 lence. One may almost admire the 
 stupid power for cruelty in such a people 
 that — peer and butcher-boy acting as 
 one man — dealt out to its one-time 
 
 93 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 darling a two years' torture, and, not 
 satisfied with that, wished to stamp out 
 even the memory of him as of one in- 
 famous. One must needs explain this 
 cruelty as a mob outbreak of Sadism, 
 not to be found altogether extraordinary 
 there, where flagellation marks the high- 
 est plane of erotic culture. 
 
 English society is always ruled by a 
 dandy, and not only since the days of 
 Brummel and Selwyn. The greater the 
 dandy, the more absolute his rule. 
 Wilde was the acknowledged master and 
 tyrant; he lashed that society and spared 
 not, and it cringed before him, since he 
 was dandy by the grace of God. Magic 
 words he had, that paradoxically sub- 
 jugated the truths of to-morrow. Yet 
 somewhere a lover hides always in his 
 scabbard of senseless love a dagger of 
 
 94 
 
FRANZ BLEI 
 
 hate that some day is bared and kills the 
 beloved. Wilde was both a dandy and 
 a genius; democracy can suffer neither 
 in the long run. 
 
 "Dandyism is simply a manner of 
 being, and is not to be made in any way 
 tangibly visible.'' One notes from this 
 sentence that Barbey d'Aurevilly does 
 not insist upon the importance of the 
 dandy's more specific arts — of body 
 and vesture — as compared to the beauti- 
 fully shaded art that miay be achieved by 
 mere living. This is wrong. One may 
 live one's life in the most delicate shad- 
 ings, may dress and act as a dandy, and 
 yet remain, like Whistler, merely a 
 painter. It is the visible, material ele- 
 ments that compose the importance of 
 the whole. The dandy is, before all else, 
 a decorative artist, whose material is his 
 
 95 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 own body. That seems but a slight 
 matter. But, if all the world went 
 naked, one would have a higher and 
 better valuation of the one exception 
 that went clothed. The dandy is an 
 artist. He is egoistic as an artist, de- 
 lights, like him, to deal with the world, 
 and feels, like the artist, most in his ele- 
 ment when conspicuously alone. Only 
 one distinction I would draw between 
 them, and that is upon a point of art: 
 that of the dandy is unselfish, since he 
 offers it to all who wish to see. One 
 error should be scouted: clerks and dig- 
 nitaries who happen to dress exagger- 
 atedly are by no means dandies. Not 
 all who versify are poets. The clerks 
 and the dignitaries may compose their 
 toilettes as finely as they will; they are 
 still primarily clerks and dignitaries. 
 
 96 
 
FRANZ BLEI 
 
 Dandyism, too, like every other art, has 
 its dilettanti. But here is the case: the 
 whole being of the dandy must be full of 
 his art; all that he does, says, and thinks, 
 must emanate from his dandyism. And! 
 unlike other artists, he may never be 
 less than his work; on this or that point 
 his personality must always loom as the 
 greater — greater than all the sum of all 
 his powers that only come singly to 
 utterance. A dandy will say that a 
 really well arranged bouquet for the 
 buttonhole is the only thing that joins 
 art and nature, for he has seen it as life's 
 first duty to be as artistic as possible, 
 and knows that the second duty has not 
 yet been discovered. 
 
 No dandy has more conscientiously 
 fulfilled this duty than Wilde; later days 
 proved that in this fulfilment he had 
 
 97 . 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF OSCAR WILDE 
 
 spent his genius. He wrote occasion- 
 ally, when he had no audience; for as a 
 dandy he was of the type that spends its 
 life declaiming. No poet ever set art 
 above nature more nobly than Wilde, for 
 his ambition was not to be a poet, but 
 more than that: a dandy. He dreamed 
 of an abstract beauty that might never 
 run into the danger of losing itself in life, 
 since it never arose out of life, — of a 
 beauty that would prove nothing, that 
 would not even have any intrinsic pur- 
 pose. For even this conscious purpose 
 in beauty seemed to him only, at best, a 
 moral pose in disguise. 
 
 It is not in his writings that one will 
 find this strange man's genius; only a 
 shadow of it is there. One who, like 
 Wilde, does not centre his artistic tem- 
 perament upon a single expression, upon 
 
 98 
 
FRANZ BLEI 
 
 the art and craft of a single book or a 
 single poem, but utters it rather in his 
 whole living and being, will achieve in 
 his books and poems only the fragmentary 
 that even to himself must seem slight, 
 and that must always be subject for his 
 own irony. "All bad writing is the 
 result of sincere feeling" — Wilde as- 
 serted that when he was at the height of 
 his fame, when he ranked the poet and 
 poetry far beneath dandyism, and gladly 
 deserted poetry in favor of success as 
 dandy. Only when he was neglected 
 and despised and ill and miserable, sin- 
 cere feeling bred in him his one great 
 poem: The Ballad of Reading Gaol. He 
 could assert his paradox only as a dandy; 
 as poet he went counter to it. Then he 
 had fashioned art into his life; now life 
 fashioned him to his art. 
 
 99 
 
 LOFCa 
 
THE WORKS of 
 OSCAR WILDE 
 
 The Plays of Oscar Wilde. 
 
 In Three Volumes, containing, " Lady Winder- 
 mere's Fan," "A Woman of No Importance," 
 "An Ideal Husband," " The Importance of Being 
 Earnest," " Salome," " Duchess of Padua," and 
 " Vera; or The Nihilists." Cloth, gilt top, 3 vols., 
 boxed, $3.75 net. Vols. I and II, $2.50 net., Vol. 
 Ill, sold separately, $1.50 net. 
 
 Salome. 
 
 Oscar Wilde's remarkable tragedy. A special 
 edition with the original illustrations by Aubrey 
 Beardsley, printed on Japan vellum. Text 
 printed on heavy deckel-edge paper; bound in 
 black cloth with Beardsley design in gold, gilt 
 top. $1.00 net. 
 
 Epigrams and Aphorisms, by Oscar Wilde. A 
 complete collection, embracing the entire range 
 
of Wilde's prose work, and preserving in concise 
 form the essence of the author's best efforts. 
 Bound in half leather, and printed on heavy 
 deckel-edge paper. $1.50. 
 
 The Renaissance of English Art, by Oscar 
 Wilde. An essay on Art and ^estheticism de- 
 livered as a lecture during his American tour. 
 Cloth, $0.50 net. 
 
 The Ballad of Reading Gaol, by Oscar Wilde. 
 A poem, in which the author rises to a height of 
 poetic expression that has not been surpassed 
 in English during the past fifty years. Cloth, 
 $0.50 net. 
 
 The Canterville Ghost, by Oscar Wilde. An 
 amusing chronicle of the tribulations of the 
 Ghost of Canterville Chase, when his ancestral 
 halls became the home of the American minister 
 to the Court of St. James. Rich in humor and 
 satire. Cloth, gilt top, $1.00. 
 
 JOHN W. LUCE AND COMPANY 
 Boston and London 
 
-'^ * iSil^^ " "^ A^' Treatment Date: May 2009 
 
 \. °^^^^* c?^n PreservationTechnologies , ,^ 
 
 -^ o|V^^\K_^* <^ ^^ A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION ^ 
 
 >. *^Q >i"* a'^ ^ 111 Thomson Park Drive ^ 
 
 ^^^ • * A^ Cranberiv Township, PA 16066 ' 
 
 Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. ' 
 
 Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
 
 ^A 
 
 ?b^ 
 
 ^v. 
 ^ 
 
 N e , 
 
 Cranberry Township, 
 (724)779-2111 
 
^ OCT 68 
 
 *^l^ N. MANCHESTER, 
 INDIANA 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS