14 August 1900
Agnes, the daughter of M. Duproirier,
the proprietor, awoke me this morning by banging on the door and shouting 'M. Melmoth! M. Melmoth!' It was a
telegram merely, but Agnes has a great respect for modern communication. I had expected something Greek and simple
from Bosie, but it was an ugly message from Frank
Harris. KYRLE BELLEW CLAIMS PLAY -
PLEASE EXPLAIN. Frank continually
accuses me of selling my scenario of Mr and Mrs Daventry to others. He is rehearsing his own adaptation of it now
and seems to be in some confusion of mind: art, and the ideas of art, are the
property of no-one, unless it be Calliope.
If people pay me for weaving them my fantasies, I am hardly the one to
prevent them. In my poverty, I have been
forced to sell the imagination which was once my birthright. Now Frank claims it as his
own. I shall send a telegram
back: I AM SICK AND IN PAIN.
EXPLANATIONS WOULD KILL ME.
I shall
sign it 'Sebastian Melmoth' - I am known in the hotel
by that title simply to prevent consternation among post-office
messengers. When I left prison I knew
that Oscar Wilde was a name which would be, in Villon's
phrase, 'du charbon ou du pierre noir'.
I thought of other possibilities - but Innocent XI and Oedipus were
somewhat too dramatic. And so I chose
the name of Melmoth the Wanderer, damned, a thing of
evil. It is strange how it inspires more
confidence in tradespeople than my own.
Although
now I laugh at the book which carries that name, once it terrified me. My mother was the niece of Maturin, the Irishman who composed that fantasy: his bust
dominated the hall of our house in Merrion
Square. When I was a small child, I
always averted my face from it: it seemed an accursed thing, for the marble
visage had no eyes, only the lidless sockets of those whose sight has turned
inwards, and been blasted by what it saw.
Sometimes,
in the evening, my mother would read to us from that book. She sat in a low chair, and my brother,
Willie, and I would lie on the floor beside her; the faint, musty smell of the
carpet and the whisper of the gas when it had been turned low acted on me as a
narcotic. I quite remember the horror I
felt when she declaimed, in that voice which was peculiarly like my own, those
passages which haunt me still: 'Where he treads, the earth is parched! Where he breathes, the air is fire!' Then she would clutch the long, velvet
curtains behind her and pull them across her face. Willie would laugh - he never suffered from
any excess of imagination - but I would creep towards my mother's legs, seeking
comfort yet afraid to touch her when she was so transformed. Willie would beg her then to read the
conclusion, and she would tell us how Melmoth the
Wanderer returns, 'an object of terror and wonder to the world'. I think now that I took a curious pleasure in
being frightened, and I believe my mother enjoyed frightening me. And so, naturally, I have taken the name.
I realise
now, of course, that Melmoth was an outcast not
because he had committed purple, unforgivable sins but because, in the weary
infinity of his wanderings, he looked from a great distance at the customs and
ceremonies of the world. He saw them
rise and fall, and he saw them change utterly.
He understood the makeshift, painted pageant of the world - and it was
because of that knowledge that the world could never forgive him or let him
rest. It is a mistake to demonstrate to
others that their ideals are illusion, their understanding all vanity. For then they will crush you.
It is
maintained by Helvétius that the infant of genius is
quite the same as any other child. I do
not believe so: from the earliest time I felt myself set apart. I was unworldly, more given to contemplation
than to action. As a boy I was fitful
and discontented, full of misery and unexplainable high spirits. My mother used to tell me, in later years,
that I laughed often in my sleep - 'The Boy Who Laughed In His Sleep' would be
a perfect subject for Millais - but I remember
nothing of that. I can recall only those
sad, grey-coloured days when I would lie on my bed and weep.
Those moods
have vanished with silent feet. I have
always loved children, and I believe that it is my own forgotten childhood that
guides me towards them - as if I might recover in their faces and their voices
the innocence which I cannot now recall.
There are some writers who, with every appearance of sincerity, remember
with great clarity their early years: perhaps it was the only period when they
showed any signs of imagination. But I
am not one of these: only certain scenes and images, like the muddy vistas of
Impressionist painting, now return to me.
I had few
friends, and I do not believe that my family encouraged me to make any. I was one of those children who are
fascinated by their own solitude - I found in it an echo of the solitude from
which I knew I had come. And so I would wander, finding patterns in the cobbles beneath my
feet, speaking out loud the strange phrases which would occur to me. Dublin was in the Fifties and Sixties already
a decaying city; like an old prostitute, it had long ago lost its virtue and
was in danger of losing its income. But
I would walk through its streets quite unaware of the poverty and wretchedness
around me, yet deeply moved by my own melancholy state.
The object
of my solitary quest was always St Patrick's Cathedral; it was a source of wonder
to me that this blackened, monstrous thing rose up among the smoking rookeries
which surrounded it and that, once within its massive doors, the shrieks and
the calls from the Liberties were drowned in its silence. It was my first intimation of the terrible
consolations of the religious life. I
would stand in front of Dean Swift's memorial, with its wonderful words, and
dream that one day they might crown my life also.
Since I was
so young, I walked unmolested through the narrow streets of destitution:
precisely because I did not fear them, they could do me no harm. Only once was the charm of ignorance broken
for me. I was walking back to Merrion Square. I
had just reached the Castle when a young girl ran out of a dark court which I
had just passed, and snatched the grey cap from my head. I called after her, and I was immediately
surrounded by a group of urchins who jeered at me. Such scenes have become familiar to me now,
and I experience still the cold moment of horror which afflicted me then. I did not know what to do: I was seized with
fear and wept as they tossed the cap from hand to hand. In order that they should not see my tears I
ran and, as I ran, a leg came out and tripped me. I lay upon the muddy ground, not daring to
rise.
And then I
felt a hand upon my shoulder, and a boy of my own age helped me to my
feet. I can recall his face even now: he
was one of those rare spirits in whom the fund of human kindness had not been
exhausted by the misery in which he was compelled to live. He told me not to mind the boys, if they
acted naughty. And he sat and talked
with me, on the rough doorstep of a squalid dwelling. He knew our house and, often, he told me, he
would walk in the 'gentle quarter' and peer in through the windows. He asked me how much the house cost a week -
one shilling, two shillings? I said that I did not know but that it was
more, much more, than that.
He fell
silent, and I felt ashamed. He picked up
my cap from the muddy street, handed it to me, and solemnly wished me good
morning. I do not know if he was awed by
my family's wealth, or whether he considered me a liar, but he went on his way,
that quiet and gentle boy, through the terrible rookeries of Dublin. He walked away slowly. I wished to run after him, but some feeling
of shame prevented me. I have been
searching for that boy all my life.
If my
mother had known of my expeditions into the Liberties, she would have forbidden
them. Her nationalist sympathies
extended, I believe, only as far as Grafton Street. And I would not have disobeyed her: she was
the dominant note in my life. At dinner,
she would allow me to sit under the table beside her as she talked to her
guests. I recall still the warmth and
comfort of her scented dress as I placed it against my cheek, and it is mixed
in my memory with the rise and fall of her conversation. One evening she leant down to whisper to me,
'Your father has been made a knight.'
When I remained stubbornly silent, she hauled me out from beneath the
table, to the amusement of Sir William Wilde and the others round the
table. I would not look at them. I would not even look at Sir William.
When I
close my eyes, I always see my mother in the same position. I see her peering into the mirror which hung
in the hall, adjusting her cloak on which Celtic images had been embroidered,
wrinkling her nose as if in contempt at herself. She was a large woman who always seemed aware
of her stature. She would, in the
evenings, sometimes wear a purple brocaded gown, with a yellow lace fichu crossed on her breast and fastened with a gold
brooch. I was fascinated by her
jewellery: she had large bracelets of silver and ivory, and wore rings on every
finger. Sometimes she would take my head
in her hands, and I could feel the hard metal upon my cheek.
She was
often in the highest spirits, and would dress me in her hats and earrings,
laughing all the while, but sometimes she was wrapped in so pensive a mood that
she neither saw nor heard me. I would
gaze up at her as she continued her slow walk from room to room - sometimes
calling out 'Mama!' - but she simply passed me
by. She had certain catchphrases which
would escape from her in sighs at the most improbable moments. 'Waste! What a waste
it all is,' she would exclaim for no apparent reason, and then she would hum a
fierce tune to herself.
On many
occasions, she would come into my small bedroom and recite to me from her own
work. She read to me passages from her
translation of Sidonia the Sorceress,
or from her ballads, and the music of patriotism thrilled me. 'Young Irishmen,' she would say and put her
face so close to mine. 'And isn't that
what you are?' Sometimes I could smell
the sweet alcohol upon her breath - since that time, it has always seemed to me
to be the natural companion of poetry.
In the days
of my innocence all literature affected me.
There have been no more pleasurable sensations in my life than those of
my youth when all afternoon I would lie in bed, with a sheet over my head,
reading a book which I had discovered in Sir William's library. There was always the musty, slightly sour,
smell of the crinkled pages and the strange detritus which would float from
their binding onto my wrist; but, principally, it is the softness and the
secrecy of those silent hours which I have ever since associated with
literature.
For it was
at that age that I discovered poetry and in that discovery found myself. There was one book that changed me
utterly. I had picked up by chance a
volume of Tennyson; I was reading it in bed in that quiet hour when I should
have been asleep, the lamp turned so low that the page was in shadow only. My eyes raced across the page, hungry for the
immortal food which alone could satisfy it, when I came across one phrase -
'And the wind took the reed tops as it went'.
I do not understand why it affected me in so extraordinary a manner: it
was as if I had been aroused from some long sleep. I spoke the line aloud and got up from my
bed. I stood in my room, wide-eyed. For, if I had woken from sleep, it was only
to enter a longer dream.
I went
downstairs to the room in which my mother was sitting. I must have looked aghast because she got up
and walked towards me. I think she must
have asked me what had happened, but I could not have replied. It was as if, in that wonderful phrase,
someone had wiped my lips of speech - just as the milk that was wiped from
Hermes' lips was scattered into the heavens and became a constellation. For I knew that I wanted to
be a poet, and it was then that my destiny was cast among the stars.
From that
time longings were aroused in me which I could not
satisfy. I felt a certain restless
dissatisfaction with all whom I met. I
felt, even then, that I had that within me which would make me greater than
they - and amongst the writers and artists of Dublin who visited my mother I
felt a boyish, instinctive rebellion.
To my
mother I turned for comfort. On many
evenings she would come to my bed and lie beside me, and then I felt a strange
joy which, even now, disturbs me.
Sometimes she would fall asleep, and I would move closer to her and put
my arms around her. I would feel her
breathing, and match the rhythm of my breath to her own until I, too, slept. In the
morning, always, she was gone and we resumed then the cheerful intimacy of our
companionship. We were accomplices in a
lift which to both of us became a game.
Together we would walk round Merrion Square,
in stately procession, and my mother would whisper scandalous comments about
those whom we passed and greeted. 'Wicked,'
she would say of some inoffensive old woman, 'perfectly wicked.' 'Look at that hat he is wearing, Oscar,'
pointing to a man on the other side of the street. 'It looks like a concertina. I will go and ask him to play it.'
My brother,
Willie, sensed the bond between my mother and myself and, it seems to me now,
disliked us both for it. Generally he
ignored me, but he was older and stronger than I and in moods of anger he would
kick and goad me into tears. In our
early years he thought himself my superior and so became patronising; but, when
I experienced my first success, his lofty manner turned to envy and sometimes
bitterness. It was quite natural that
when he came to London he should have become a journalist. And here is a secret: I have always suspected
that he harboured the same Greek inclinations as myself
but that he was too weak to yield to them.
That is why he revelled in my tragedy.
It was he
who five years ago turned away visitors from the door of my mother's house in London,
where I sought refuge between my trials: I believe he thought they would
comfort me. When my mother had retired
to her room he would drink in his usual, primitive fashion, and ask the most
revolting questions about my private conduct: really, it resembled a scene from
Ibsen. But he is dead now - if he is not
preserved in spirit, he may at least still be preserved by it.
Willie
disliked me also because of my love for our younger sister, Isola. She died when I was twelve. Often we would play together. I would pretend to her that I was our mother:
I would crane my neck and roll my eyes.
I would tell her stories, the sole charm of which lay for me in the fact
that she believed them entirely. When
she died, I suffered from a grief so intense that it surprised even me. She was the only member of my family for whom
love was not a cause of shame or embarrassment in me. When she died, that love in me died also:
grief shakes us with ague, but it steadies us with frost also. I remember my mother taking me into the
bedroom to see her body. It is said of
utter misery that it cannot be remembered - I cannot recall my feelings when I
saw her. Only that it seemed as if I
were looking at the entire world from a great height. I can still visualise her faintly - her face
haunts me still, as if it were a photograph of my own face as a child.
Sir William
Wilde, my mother's husband, was an utterly disappointed man. He could never rest - time seemed to him a
hateful thing which he felt compelled to master, to wrench into submission like
a tiger which threatened his life. For
no apparent reason, he would leave the house and walk very quickly down the
street: I would run out after him, and see him striding down Westland Row. He would return again five minutes later,
with an expression of intense joy upon his face, and retire at once into his
library. He was a most untidy and dirty
man, giving to snorting while holding one finger to his nostril. While at table he would often pick his nails
with an old quill pen which he carried in his jacket, and leave the dirt upon
the cloth.
When once I
complained of this to my mother, she laughed.
'He means no harm, Oscar,' she said, 'leave him be.'
'But how
can a doctor be so filthy?'
'He has his
own ways, Oscar, and he is a good doctor.'
'But do his
patients never complain?' I did not know
then that it was for his licentiousness they rebuked him, not his
dirtiness. My mother adopted a stern
expression, and I fled upstairs.
Sir William
was only truly at ease when he travelled to our house in Moytura,
where he would spend his days digging among the strange stone and tumuli which
in that Western region resemble the outcrop of some terrible extinguished
civilisation. Sometimes, reluctantly, he
would take me with him on his expeditions: he seemed to me then like an old man
who had once wandered with the fairies and wanted to return to their fierce
kingdom. We discovered a cross once, an
ancient Celtic thing, and he capered around it in delight. We carried it back to the house - I have
carried many crosses since then, alas - but Annie, the housekeeper, would not
allow us to bring it over the threshold.
It was a cursed thing, she said, to move a sacred stone. Sir William always respected the
superstitions of the people, and so we took the cross down with us to the shore
of Lough Corrib.
But such was his enthusiasm that, when we left for Dublin, he wrapped it
in old cloths and brown paper and took it with us on the train. I passed the whole journey praying that we
would not crash. Since that time,
parcels have always exercised an odd fascination for me - one always expects
something of a sensational nature, and one is always disappointed. In that respect, they resemble the modern
novel.
Sir William
once took me with him across the water to the island of Aranmore,
that wilderness of broken rock with its strange hive-like dwellings. While Sir William rushed on ahead our guide
told me that, the year before, one of his children had been taken by the
fairies. He had been in bed with his
child, but he could not sleep - and then something came close to the window and
he heard the high voices of the fairy host.
In the morning the child was dead.
The implacability of his story, and the cheerful demeanour of the
peasant as he told it, impressed me deeply: there is nothing one can do with
one's Fate except laugh at it. Of course
I was incredulous then but now, in the half-life which I am leading, I am
inclined more and more to place my trust in shadowy, supernatural things. The beauty of belief lies in its simplicity -
and I have come to understand that life is a simple, a terribly simple, thing.
Sir William
was at peace in Moytura because in the city he felt
himself to be an object of scorn. He was
never able to retain the position to which he was entitled in Dublin
society. The rich people who lived near
us laughed at him for his peculiar manner and his uncouth dress, just as they
laughed secretly at my mother for her somewhat unique appearance. It enraged me to see them do so, but I said
nothing. When once I spoke to Willie of
it, he remonstrated with me for my absurd pride, as he saw it.
'What is it
to you, Hoscar?
Keep your nose in your books, if I were you. And then you shan't see them laughing at you
also.'
'Who laughs
at me?'
'Everyone
does. And are we going to cry now?'
I fled from
him, and I could hear his own laughter as I did so. But I learned by such encounters to control
and hide those feelings which might otherwise be injurious to me.
It was a
lesson which carried me though my years at Portora,
my school, where I was forced to lead a life for which I was not prepared by
temperament. I was quite wretched, and
in the dormitory at night I would hug myself tight in order to prevent my cries
from breaking out. There was a matron
there who was kind to me, however: I would come to her in my night-shirt and
beg her to take me home. Of course she
could not do so, but she comforted me and I would tell her of my mother.
In my first
year at Portora, the terrible scandal about Sir
William's seduction of a patient was known throughout Ireland. My contemporaries laughed and joked about it,
but I was too young to understand. I was
bewildered by their laughter, but I turned my bewilderment to scorn and laughed
at them. I would lie to my
school-fellows about my family and my own past.
I told them that the Swedish king was my godfather, that we had in
Dublin so many servants that I could not count them. I so fancifully blurred the distinction
between what was true and what was false that my companions were reduced to
silence; even Willie was impressed, and could not bring himself to contradict
me.
It was then
that I learned the first secret of the imagination: an amusing fantasy has more
reality than a commonplace truth. And
another secret was revealed to me also: I made them laugh, and then they could
not hurt me. Although like all children
they found their greatest pleasure in vulgar sarcasm - they called me 'Grey
Cow' because of the pallor of my skin - I would draw the sting from that
sarcasm by becoming more extravagant than they could possibly have
foreseen. I would twist my limbs into
the contorted attitudes of the Early Christian martyrs depicted on the windows
of the chapel - unfortunately, I seem to be in the same position now - and they
were amused. I found the masters there
fascinating as caricature, and I would imitate them in a remorseless
manner. When in the classroom they adopted
expressions which I had parodied earlier, I would be filled with a wild
merriment and be forced to stuff a handkerchief in my mouth to prevent myself
from laughing out loud. The boys would
see and shout, 'You are so wild, Wilde,' and I was
known, to masters and pupils alike, as 'that Wilde man from
Unlike
Willie, who found enlightenment only upon the playing fields, I took a great,
indeed an inordinate, interest in my studies.
It was in my last years at school that I first discovered Plato and the
pre-Socratic philosophers. I trembled
with excitement when I sat down to their translation: for me, the joy of my
studies lay in the making of connections, in so skilful an organisation of
knowledge that, if I wished, I could bring everything within the bright kingdom
which opened itself out to me. Intellectual
excitement is for me the rarest and most pleasurable kind; to trace the curve
of a beautiful thought, to discern the lineaments of an ancient language, and
to perceive the living connections between one philosophy and another: these
were the joys I first discovered at Portora. Of course the other boys knew nothing of
this. I took care to hide my excitement
and my knowledge from them. It is a
mistake to reveal one's true feelings to the world, for then they are
destroyed. I learned the lesson early,
did I not?
While the
others were composing poems in ugly Latin on 'The Ruins of Paestum'
or the 'Cascade of Terri', I was reading the philosophy and the drama of the
Athenian people. I read the Bible for
recreation merely: it takes a steady course of biblical study in childhood to
remove any taint of Christianity from the adult. But there was one phrase, in Proverbs, that
revealed to me even then the terrible nature of divinity: 'I also will laugh at
your Calamity: I will mock when your fear cometh'. These are the only words of Scripture that
seem to me to have an unambiguous meaning.
I have ever since thought of God as some spangled, clownish being. His laughter haunts me down the boulevards of
this bleak city.
And so by
degrees I grew apart from my school-fellows and, in my loneliness, I determined
upon fame. By my sixteenth or
seventeenth year the pursuit of intellectual clarity and excellence was
balanced within me by the overpowering, sweet urge for success. I used to identify myself with every
distinguished character whom I discovered in my
books. I fell in love with magnificent
dreams, and splendours of language. One
never outgrows one's early enthusiasms: one merely denies them. And when, in the days of my happiness, I read
to my own sons passages from Verne and from Stevenson
I often secretly imagined I was the hero of their adventures.
When I was
sixteen I discovered Disraeli. I
devoured Vivian Grey under the bedclothes. I admired his fantastic dress. I loved the melodrama of his life, and the
glory of his self-idolatry. When I read
that wonderful description of the portrait of Max Rodenstein
- a being beautiful both in body and in soul - and how that portrait moved, I
could not trust myself to speak. Of
course Disraeli is not to be compared with Aeschylus - and I did not do
so. The imagination of a boy does not
differentiate between sensations, and in Disraeli I discovered the true
language of desire in which I might lose myself. The life of the society which was there
revealed to me dazzled me, and it was all the brighter since I was at so great
a distance from it. But I could not
think of it without a terrible sense of the inadequacy of my own position. I decided to remedy it, and I did not care by
what method.