2

Artistic Work

‘I hope to get back the concentration of will-power that conditions and governs art, and to produce something good again.’

oscar wilde

Wilde was able to find some solace in work. He was full of schemes, as he sought to maintain the creative momentum built up during his last months at Reading. After the success of his letter to the Daily Chronicle he had considered writing a three-part article for the paper on his ‘Prison Life’, from a ‘psychological and introspective’ angle. He would be able to draw on his long letter to Douglas, to provide a section on ‘the lovely subject’ of ‘Christ as the Precursor of the Romantic Movement in Life’. Certainly Wilde felt the need to address his prison experiences in literary form. But – perhaps recalling the hopes of both Viscount Haldane and Warder Martin on this score – he began to wonder whether his approach might, after all, be artistic, rather than merely polemical. Leaving the article unstarted, he took off in a new direction. On 1 June he informed Ross, ‘as you, the poem of my days, are away, [I] am forced to write poetry. I have begun something that I think will be very good.’1

It was a ‘ballad’, recounting, in a heightened but barely fictionalized form, the story of the execution of Trooper Wooldridge for the murder of his wife. Wilde’s approach was, initially, personal. His narrator – a thinly-veiled self-portrait – allies himself with the condemned man as he walks in the exercise yard each day looking wistfully ‘upon that little tent of blue which prisoners call the sky’. The man ‘had killed the thing he loved / And so he had to die.’ But, as the narrator noted, it was the punishment rather than the crime that was exceptional. He himself – along with all the other prisoners – shared the trooper’s guilt: for ‘each man kills the thing he loves’, some with a sword, some by a kiss:

Some do the deed with many tears,

And some without a sigh:

For each man kills the thing he loves,

Yet each man does not die.

From a literary point of view Wilde relished the ballad form. He commended it to Douglas. It had the ability to be dramatic, Romantic and popular all at the same time. It had been employed by Lady Wilde for one of her most successful works, and had a rich tradition in English literature: Wilde cited both Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Thomas Hood’s Dream of Eugene Aram as models. It had echoes, too, of rhythms and cadences found in A. E. Housman’s recently published A Shropshire Lad, which Wilde was reading just then with great enjoyment. Section IX of Housman’s poem even dealt with the execution of a man in Shrewsbury gaol.*2

Progress was good, aided by the fact that, towards the end June, Wilde moved from the increasingly crowded and noisy Hôtel de la Plage into the nearby Chalet Bourgeat. He did, however, worry about using such obviously personal subject matter. The poem, he told Laurence Housman (A. E.’s younger brother), is ‘terribly realistic for me, and drawn from actual experience, a sort of denial of my own philosophy of art in many ways. I hope it is good, but every night I hear cocks crowing in Berneval, so I am afraid I may have denied myself, and would weep bitterly, if I had not wept away all my tears’.3 Realism, however, might have its virtues. Wilde thought the topicality of the poem would ensure a ready market. He had – so he claimed – been offered £1,000 by an American newspaper for an account about his prison experiences. And while he was not tempted to accept such a sensation-hunting journalistic proposal, he supposed that an artistic treatment of the same subject might command an only slightly lesser interest. He envisaged publication of his poem in the Daily Chronicle and one of the New York papers for anything between £100 and £300.4

In tandem with his work on the ‘ballad’ Wilde kept in view the possibilities of play-writing. He was toying with several schemes. Although disappointed to learn that Lugné-Poe would not be able to pay anything upfront for a new play, Wilde remained keen to follow up the success of Salomé with another Parisian premiere, even if it had to be with a different producer. He had two ideas for further biblical-Symbolist pieces, to be written (apparently) in French: the first was his story of Pharaoh and Moses, the second a fantastic variation on the tale of Ahab and Jezabel, in which he imagined Bernhardt might take the female lead. Either piece could serve to launch him back into literary world of Paris.5 As an aid to his research, Wilde asked Ross to find him a copy of Adolf Erman’s magisterial Life in Ancient Egypt so that he might know ‘how Pharaoh said to his chief butler, “Pass the cucumbers”’.6 Wilde’s commitment to France and French culture was strengthened by flattering reports that, if it were decided to include foreign authors in the new Académie Goncourt (set up in the wake of Edmond de Goncourt’s death the previous year), the names likely to be put forward were Count Tolstoy, Henrik Ibsen and ‘Mr Oscar Wilde’.7

Although England was offering no such distinctions, it was not forgotten. Wilde was very conscious that he remained in financial and moral debt to George Alexander and Charles Wyndham, and he was anxious to atone by writing plays for both men as soon as possible.8 Any work for the London stage would have to appear – in the first instance at least – anonymously. Wilde doubted that the English public was ready to welcome him back quite yet.9 But anonymity need not preclude success. And a popular English-language drama would give Wilde a chance to refill his own coffers. He needed to start making money, and quickly. His existing resources would, he calculated, only last out the summer. And unless Percy Douglas came through with the long-promised £500 ‘debt of honour’, he must rely on his own endeavours.10

As a first step, he planned to complete The Florentine Tragedy. Although Wilde, rather fancifully, suggested that the one-act blank-verse historical drama might command an advance of £500, he seems to have recognized that something with a more obvious commercial appeal would probably also be needed.11 His thoughts appear to have turned to the scenario of the unfaithful husband and less faithful wife that he had first mapped out for George Alexander in the summer of 1894 (as a possible alternative to The Importance of Being Earnest). And although he hesitated to make a start on the script – provisionally entitled ‘Love is Law’ – he did begin gathering aphorisms that might enliven the dialogue. Besides his own quip about everyone nowadays being ‘jealous of everyone else, except, of course, husband and wife’, he also wanted to borrow Reggie Turner’s riposte to the remark that someone had been ‘born with a silver spoon in his mouth’: ‘Yes! But there was somebody else’s crest on it.’12

Charles Wyndham, though, had ideas of his own. On 23 July the actor-manager crossed over to Berneval for the day, with a proposal that Wilde should adapt Scribe’s drama, Le Verre d’eau, a comic intrigue set at the court of Queen Anne. The plan had its attractions for Wilde, not only because it would spare him the trouble of inventing a plot, but also because he hoped that Ross would help him with the task. He urged Robbie to come over, and bring with him a Queen Anne chair ‘just for the style’. ‘If you work hard,’ he joked, ‘I shall have a great success.’13

Wyndham, even on his fleeting visit, must have been encouraged by Wilde’s readiness to embark on such flights of fancy. The comic sense had clearly not deserted him. Indeed it informed most of his letters and many of his actions over the summer. Wilde, always an admirer of Queen Victoria, embraced her approaching Diamond Jubilee with enthusiasm. He stuck up, in pride of place, a reproduction of William Nicholson’s ‘wonderful’ woodcut of her (‘Every poet should gaze at the portrait of his Queen, all day long,’ he declared). And he proudly told visitors that the three women he most admired were Queen Victoria, Sarah Bernhardt and Lillie Langtry, adding for effect, ‘I would have married any one of them with pleasure.’14† On the day of the Jubilee itself (22 June) he had amazed the inhabitants of Berneval by hosting a splendid tea party in the garden of his villa, for a dozen of the local schoolboys along with their form master. The company was regaled with strawberries and cream, apricots, chocolates, sirop de grenadine and a huge iced cake with ‘Jubilé de la Reine Victoria’ in pink sugar, rosetted with green, and a great wreath of red roses round it all. Each of the children was presented with a musical instrument (selected by lot). ‘They sang the Marseillaise and other songs,’ Wilde reported to Douglas, ‘and danced a ronde, and also played “God save the Queen”: they said it was “God save the Queen,” and I did not like to differ from them. They also all had flags which I gave them. They were most gay and sweet. I gave the health of La Reine d’Angleterre, and they cried, “Vive la Reine d’Angleterre”!!!! Then I gave “La France, mère de tous les artistes,” and finally I gave Le Président de la République. I thought I had better do so. They cried out with one accord “Vivent le Président de la République et Monsieur Melmoth”!!!’15

Although Wilde’s wit could animate a letter, he found it hard to sustain any more concerted literary endeavour. He could only work for an hour at a time.16 But if this made play-writing difficult, it suited well enough the composition of The Ballad of Reading Gaol (as Ross had dubbed his poem.) Throughout the summer Wilde went on adding stanzas to the work in an almost piecemeal fashion. He also took on other short tasks. For a new book of Rothenstein’s clever portrait drawings he composed a barbed but brilliant paragraph on W. E. Henley, ending with the observation, ‘He has fought the good fight, and has had to face every difficulty except popularity.’17 Alas the paragraph was too barbed – or too brilliant – and Rothenstein’s cautious young publisher thought better of using it.18

As the summer season advanced, and Dieppe filled with visitors, there were more distractions. Wilde was at the centre of a riotous gathering of young French writers at the Café Tribunaux in Dieppe, which drew the attention of the town’s sous-préfêt.19 He was introduced, by Dowson, to the irrepressible Leonard Smithers – a publisher, book dealer and sometime pornographer, who, during the years of Wilde’s imprisonment, had emerged as significant figure on the fringes of London’s literary scene.20 While John Lane had joined the general rush to disavow anything remotely connected with decadence, artistic experiment, and ‘the Oscar Wilde tendency’, Smithers had moved in the opposite direction. He offered a haven to the more daring writers and artists of the younger generation. It was his boast that he would ‘publish anything the others were afraid of’. When The Yellow Book ‘turned grey overnight’ with the sacking of Aubrey Beardsley in the wake of Wilde’s arrest, Smithers hastened to set up the Savoy as a rival publication, with Beardsley installed as art editor. He also began publishing volumes of self-consciously decadent verse – by Ernest Dowson, Arthur Symons and Theodore Wratislaw – as well as an edition of Pope’s Rape of the Lock with elaborate illustrations by Beardsley.

Smithers was delighted to meet Wilde. Back in 1888 he had written a ‘charming’ letter of appreciation to the author of The Happy Prince, and received a gracious reply.21 Wilde, for his part, was richly amused by the thirty-five-year-old Yorkshire-born bon viveur, with whom he was soon passing many a bibulous hour in the cafés of Dieppe. ‘I do not know if you know Smithers,’ he asked Turner:

He is usually in a large straw hat, has a blue tie delicately fastened with a diamond brooch of the impurest water – or perhaps wine, as he never touches water: it goes to his head at once. His face, clean-shaven as befits a priest who serves at the altar whose God is Literature, is wasted and pale – not with poetry, but with poets, who, he says, have wrecked his life by insisting on publishing with him. He loves first editions, especially of women: little girls are his passion. He is the most learned erotomaniac in Europe. He is also a delightful companion, and a dear fellow, very kind to me.22

Ernest Dowson was not the only Smithers author in Dieppe that summer. Wilde came to know and (eventually) to like the young American short-story writer Vincent O’Sullivan.23 Beardsley, too, arrived in the town, seeking a healthful climate for his consumptive lungs. Wilde shared an enjoyable lunch with him and Smithers, finding him ‘in good spirits’ and looking surprisingly well.24 Sitting side by side on the casino terrace they discoursed on the ‘incredible history’ of Dieppe – which Beardsley described as running ‘from Brennus to Oscar Wilde’.25 On another occasion Wilde made ‘Aubrey buy a hat more silver than silver’, telling Turner that ‘he is quite wonderful in it’.26 Such meetings, however, were complicated – for Beardsley – by the fact that he was now under the patronage of Wilde’s bête noir, André Raffalovich. By associating with Wilde, Beardsley risked upsetting his patron, and losing his stipend.

Although Wilde constantly looked for the return of either Ross or Turner, neither of them was able to come during the long days of July and early August. Arrangements were made, and then deferred. He received, instead, a visit from their young friend John Fothergill. The twenty-one-year-old dilettante (who, having embarked on a course at the London College of Architecture, was dubbed ‘the architect of the moon’) arrived, bringing with him Erman’s Life in Ancient Egypt. A ‘sextette of suns’ was passed in talk – and drinking. Fothergill was slightly alarmed by Wilde’s insistence that it was the accepted thing, when leaving a French country inn, to kiss the servant.27 Behind the almost ceaseless flow of sparkling chat, Fothergill thought that he detected a sadness and loneliness in his host. But he was also touched by Wilde’s humanity. On one evening they went to a ‘three-penny show’ in the village schoolroom; as the ‘poor little reciter shouted and screamed and squealed and sweated at his work’ Fothergill noted Wilde, ‘rapt and absorbed’ in the performance, his face alive with ‘pity, pathos, care, patience and understanding’ and ‘on his big cheek a tear ran’.28

Smithers was a frequent visitor during the days of Fothergill’s stay. And the impecunious Dowson was actually installed at the Chalet Bourgeat, having been ‘rescued’ by Wilde ‘from a position of great embarrassment at the inn at Arques’.29 The presence of both men encouraged Wilde’s absinthe drinking; Fothergill described Smithers as having turned ‘green’ through his devotion to the spirit. At a dinner chez Thaulow Wilde defended the absent Dowson from the charge – made by one of the other guests – that he drank too much. ‘If he didn’t drink,’ Wilde replied, ‘he would be somebody else. Il faut accepter la personalité comme elle est. Il ne faut jamais regretter qu’un poète est soûl, il faut regretter que les soûls ne soient pas toujours poètes.’‡ Wilde went on to claim (in jest) that he was at work on an essay entitled ‘A Defence of Drunkenness’, claiming that ‘the soul is never liberated except by drunkenness in one form or another’. At Dieppe, beside the sea, one might become intoxicated with nature: the soul could ‘listen to the words and harmonies and behold the colours of the Great Silence’. But elsewhere it might be necessary to resort to absinthe: ‘A waiter with a tray will always find [the Great Silence] for you. Knock; and the door will always open, the door of le paradis artificiel.’

Amid the drinking and the summer fun, there were not infrequent snubs. On at least one occasion Wilde was discreetly asked to leave a Dieppe restaurant following objections to his presence from fellow diners.30 On another afternoon he was rescued by Mrs Stannard, who, seeing him being snubbed by a group of English visitors, heroically crossed the road, took his arm, and declared loudly, ‘Oscar, take me to tea.’31 Even at Berneval there was a shift in mood, as the true identity of ‘Monsieur Melmoth’ became more widely known to the villagers. And if there was no open hostility, there was a new note of guarded suspicion.32 In Dieppe he became conscious of being avoided by old friends such as Jacques-Emile Blanche and Walter Sickert.33 And when Beardsley failed to turn up for a proposed dinner, he was hurt. ‘It was lâche of Aubrey,’ he later remarked. ‘If it had been one of my own class I might perhaps have understood… But a boy like that, whom I made! No, it was too lâche of Aubrey.’34 The jibe at Beardsley’s ‘class’ was as inappropriate as the claim that Wilde had ‘made’ the artist. Both assertions, though, revealed the real hurt caused by such rebuffs. Every social encounter had become tinged with uncertainty: Wilde could not be sure how – or if – his presence would be received. And while it was uncomfortable to be ‘cut’, any hint of condescending sympathy was equally irksome. Ross registered that it ‘galled’ Wilde ‘to have to appear grateful to those whom he did not, or would not have regarded [either intellectually or socially] before his downfall’.35

He had been hoping that Constance and the children could be persuaded to come to Dieppe. His position in the town would certainly have been improved by their presence. At the end of July, however, he was ‘terribly distressed’ to receive a letter from Carlos Blacker informing him that Constance’s health worries had returned. Her creeping spinal paralysis had left her all but unable to walk. It was heartbreaking news.§ ‘Nemesis,’ Wilde declared, ‘seems endless.’ He proposed going to his wife in Switzerland.36 Blacker, however, put him off, suggesting he should wait until Constance was settled back at Nervi, outside Genoa.37 It was another frustrating delay. And as August advanced, Wilde’s resolve ebbed and his anxieties grew.

He had come out of prison determined to escape the sexual ‘madness’ of his past. And according to Dowson, after one of their evenings together, they repaired to a Dieppe brothel in order that Wilde might acquire ‘a more wholesome taste’ in sexual matters. After the visit Wilde was said to have remarked, ‘The first these ten years, and it will be the last. It was like cold mutton!’, before adding, ‘But tell it in England, for it will entirely restore my character.’38 The escapade, however (if it really did take place) appears to have been something of a diversion. Wilde had come to the conclusion that it was not ‘Uranian love’ itself that he needed to renounce so much as the wilful excesses of promiscuous sex with London rent boys. The love of men, rather than of women, was, he declared, simply ‘a matter of temperament’. And in this regard his temperament was unchanged.39

Although he had felt obliged to assure Turner that his prison ‘pal’ Arthur Cruttenden was not ‘a beautiful boy’ but a quite unfanciable fellow of twenty-nine with prematurely greying hair and a ‘slight, but still real moustache’, the protest revealed the direction of his thoughts.40 And when – in the middle of August – Robbie Ross finally came over to stay at Berneval, he and Wilde slept together. Sherard, who was also staying, reported that, to his ‘absolute knowledge’, Ross ‘dragged Oscar back into the delights of homosexuality’ at this time.41 The incident marked another alteration in the possibilities and expectations of Wilde’s post-prison life. Certainly the commitment to Franciscan abstinence was faltering.

Wilde’s hopes of being able to produce artistic work again were receiving some encouragement. The ballad continued to develop. It took on a polemical tone, to match the personal one, as Wilde sought to point up not only the cruelties of prison life, but also the guilt of society in imposing them.

[For] every prison that men build

Is built with bricks of shame,

And bound with bars lest Christ should see

How men their brothers maim.

And as the poem grew, so did Wilde’s hopes for it. He began to think that it might be substantial enough to publish in book form. Smithers was the obvious choice of publisher. After their first meeting Wilde had written to him expressing the hope that ‘some day I shall have something that you will like well enough to publish’.42 The day had arrived sooner than expected. They discussed the matter over dinner at the Café des Tribunaux. Smithers quixotically suggested that Wilde should have the ‘entire profits of the book’. Wilde, however, demurred, proposing that a more businesslike arrangement would be to share the profits 50/50.43 As an initial practical step he sent the publisher his first draft to be typed up. ‘It is not finished,’ he explained, ‘but I want to see it type-written. I am sick of my manuscript.’ Smithers showed the poem to Beardsley who ‘seemed to be much struck by it’. Although Beardsley ‘promised at once to do a frontispiece’ for the book, Smithers had seen too many of the artist’s recent plans and promises change, or evaporate, to believe that it would ever be done.44 Nevertheless preparations for the publication advanced.

But, aside from the ballad, Wilde’s literary plans showed few signs of progress. His various plays remained stubbornly unstarted. ‘The shock of alien freedom’, as he put it, was still upon him.45 He hoped that in due course, he would ‘get back the concentration of will-power that conditions and governs art’.46 He had acquired a red tie in the belief that it might give him inspiration – but to no effect.47 He came to accept that he would not be able adapt Le Verre d’eau for Wyndham. Even with the assistance of Ross, and the example of Congreve, it was beyond him. As he lamented to Carlos Blacker, ‘I simply have no heart to write a clever comedy.’48 He continued to hope that he might be able to do something with The Florentine Tragedy or his other theatrical projects. But even so he hesitated to begin.

A change in the weather depressed him. But what he really missed was the stimulation of daily companionship, and the support of domestic structure. Dowson and Smithers had returned to England, and Wilde by now realized that he could not rely on Ross or Turner for more than the brief and occasional stay. Dieppe’s summer crowds were beginning to depart. A planned visit by Ricketts and Shannon failed to materialize.49 Fothergill wrote a priggish letter to say that he found it was not ‘politic’ for him to continue his friendship.50 Constance and the children seemed as distant as ever. Long vistas of rain-swept autumnal loneliness began to open up, beyond the fading days of summer.

In this mood of gathering ennui Wilde turned to Bosie, who remained near at hand at Nogent-sur-Marne, enduring his own sad and continuing exile. Plans for a clandestine meeting had stuttered on during the summer, but with limited commitment on either side. At the end of July Douglas had written suggesting that Wilde come and stay with him in Paris. Wilde, however, felt he ‘could not face Paris yet’. To his own proposal that they should meet, instead, at Rouen, Douglas had replied that he did not have the ‘forty francs’ necessary to make the journey. After that matters had languished. Until now. With the prospect of autumn and winter before them, they resolved to act.51

Their meeting took place at Rouen (almost certainly on 28 August) and was, in Douglas’s words, ‘a great success’. They spent a day, and a night, together. Wilde cried when they met at the station. It had been two years and four months, since their last sight of each through the prison grating at Newgate. The wastes of pain and acrimony were obliterated in the glow of remembered love, of shared experience and mutual need. There were no recriminations.¶ If they were two outcast men, strapped for cash, shunned by society and a burden upon their friends, they had each other. Bosie, as Wilde recorded, ‘was on his best behaviour, and very sweet’.52 They walked about all day, ‘arm in arm, or hand in hand, and were perfectly happy’.53 It seemed that the past could be recaptured and revived, that from the ashes of their old love something might yet arise. Bosie presented Wilde with a silver cigarette case inscribed with Donne’s lines:

The Phoenix riddle hath more wit

By us, we two being one are it.

So to one neutral thing both sexes fit,

We die and rise the same and prove

Mysterious by this love.54

During their charmed day together they began to form a plan of escaping to Naples for the winter. There – amid ‘the sunlight and joie de vivre’ of the south – they could be together and work. Douglas was hopeful that he might raise money from his family to support the venture.55 He wanted, as he said, to give Wilde a ‘home’ – a refuge from his cares, a place where he should ‘never want for anything’, and would be able to write again.56 It was a vision that Wilde dared to believe possible. ‘If I cannot write in Italy,’ he asked rhetorically, ‘where can I write?’57 To Bosie he declared, shortly after they parted: ‘My own Darling Boy… I feel that my only hope of again doing beautiful work in art is being with you. It was not so in old days, but now it is different, and you can really recreate in me that energy and sense of joyous power on which art depends.’58

The meeting at Rouen was supposed to have been secret, although Wilde had been greatly disappointed that, since Douglas was well known at the hotel where they stayed, there was no opportunity for him to use his romantic pseudonym.59 Ross, however, came to know of the encounter from Turner who, being in Rouen, had bumped into ‘Sebastian and the “Infant Samuel”’ by chance.60 Neither he nor Turner was delighted at the rapprochement, recognizing the practical troubles that might follow in its wake. Wilde, however, assumed an air of defiance, telling Ross, ‘Yes: I saw Bosie, and of course I love him as I always did, with a sense of tragedy and ruin.’61 He avoided, though, mentioning their planned flight to Naples.

Back at Berneval, Wilde devoted himself to raising the money necessary for the trip. ‘It costs £10 to go to Naples,’ he lamented. ‘This is awful.’62 After three months of heedless expenditure and serial generosity he was ‘penniless’ and beset with bills. Conder and Dowson had departed owing him money. He reported to Smithers that he had ‘just lent a French poet forty francs to take him back to Paris’, adding, ‘He is very grateful, and says he will send me a sonnet in three days!’.63 Wilde’s hope that the publisher could advance him £20 ‘at once’ for the ballad was not realized, but he found relief in other quarters: the second instalment of his allowance from Constance arrived (several days late) at the beginning of September; he also received a cheque for £15 from Rothenstein who had managed to sell the Monticelli painting that he had bought at the Tite Street sale; and Dalhousie Young generously proposed commissioning a libretto for an opera of Daphnis and Chloe (‘£100 down, and £50 on production’).64 Despite this, Wilde still ‘borrowed’ 100 francs from one of his Berneval neighbours to help get himself to Paris, and once there touched Vincent O’Sullivan for the price of his ticket to Naples.65 As a prelude to his departure Wilde visited a Parisian fortune teller. ‘I am puzzled,’ she told him. ‘By your line of life you died two years ago. I cannot explain the fact except by supposing that since then you have been living on your line of imagination.’66

Wilde also wrote disingenuously to Carlos Blacker describing the decision to head south as necessary for his work and his sanity, only adding that he was ‘greatly disappointed’ that Constance had still not asked him ‘to come and see the children’.67 He of course omitted to mention that he would be travelling with Douglas. And in fact there was some last-minute doubt about Bosie’s plans. After the eager scheme-making at Rouen he had gone off on holiday with his mother and sister to the spa town of Aix-les-Bains, and seemed in no hurry to leave. He was even considering going on from there to Venice. Wilde knew better than to chide: ‘Do just as you will,’ he wrote, ‘but the sooner you come to Naples the happier I shall be.’68 The assumed nonchalance had its effect. Douglas met him as the train passed through Aix, and they journeyed on together to Naples. There, Wilde hoped, with Bosie’s help, he might ‘remake’ his ‘ruined life’.69

* In the poetry of Wilde’s childhood it reached back not only to his mother’s ballad The Brothers, but also to Denis Florence MacCarthy’s New Year Song with its ringing lines:

There’s not a man of all our land

Our country now can spare,

The strong man with his sinewy hand,

The weak man with his prayer!

No whining tone of mere regret,

Young Irish bards, for you;

But let you songs teach Ireland yet

What Irish man should do.

† As a variation on this line, he told the French poet Jean Joseph-Renaud that ‘the Nineteenth Century has had three great men: Napoleon the First, Victor Hugo, and Queen Victoria’.

‡ ‘One must accept a personality as it is. One must never regret that a poet is drunk, one must regret that drunkards are not always poets.’

§ The nature of Constance’s illness was debated at the time by her doctors, and since by scholars. In 2015 her grandson Merlin Holland, drawing on family letters, plausibly suggested that she was suffering from multiple sclerosis.

¶ Wilde was under the impression that Douglas had by now received a copy of the long letter that he had written from prison. And he was glad that he seemed able to move beyond it. Douglas’s equanimity, however, was due to the fact that he had not read the long indictment. He had, it seems, destroyed the copy he received after merely glancing at the first few disobliging paragraphs.