5 September 1900

 

I must not lose the thread of this narrative: I must master the past by giving it the meaning which only now it possesses for me.  I had left Paris, had I not, and come back to London?  I was penniless, but I was the prodigal son who is allowed to return home as long as he remains prodigal; and so, in order to retain the position which I had assumed, I was compelled to set to work.  I pawned my Gold Medal from Trinity and lectured upon America in the North of England: I do not know which caused me the greater pain.

      I first met my wife, Constance, in Dublin, in the autumn of that year.  Poor Constance, the last time I saw her was in prison.  We discussed Cyril and Vyvyan but we did not talk about each other for there was, really, nothing left to say.  I had said, and lied, too much to her in the past.  She looked at me with pity in that dreadful place but it was I who pitied her - I had descended into Hell through my own vanity and weakness but she, unknowing, had been taken there.

      I visited her grave in Genoa last year.  It lies in a small cemetery outside the town, surrounded by wonderful wild flowers, and I was so moved by the sight that I asked the cabman to wait.  I was seized with a fit of weeping but a sense, also, of the uselessness of weeping.  Life is simple: the simple things happen always.  I killed her just as surely as if I had fed her poison from a spoon.  And now my name is not even on the stone which marks her grave.

      My friends often asked me why I married her, and I used to reply that it was merely to find out what she thought of me; but, in truth, I knew that well enough.  She loved me, that is all, and it is difficult to resist a love which is as innocent as it is unselfish.  I saw myself as a romantic figure - not like Werther, who finds power in love, but like Pelleas, who finds salvation.  I married Constance because I was afraid - afraid of what I might have become alone, of the desires which, if I had yielded to them, I would not have been able to control.  I wished to build my life, not destroy it as I had seen others destroyed in Paris, and marriage to Constance was one means of doing so.  If she was an angel, as I informed my friends, she was one who with flaming sword kept me from a paradise of forbidden pleasures.

      My mother approved of the match.  Constance was beautiful - women are always susceptible to the beauty of others.  She was pale and very slim - my mother said she had the figure of a boy, but I pretended not to understand her.  And she came from a fine Irish family.  Really, I might have been performing a service to the nation.  But I have always listened to my mother's advice - she possessed a shrewd common sense, at least in matters which did not concern herself, which, combined with her decidedly theatrical manner, was quite merciless.  They became close friends: they would shop together and on the evenings when I was not at home, evenings which became too frequent, they would sit and talk about the children, or about Madame Blavatsky.  My mother supported Constance until the end, until the burden of grief became too great even for her to hold.

      Constance revered the idea of marriage: she had a vision of the heart guarded, if not by Penates, at least by a bamboo tea-table and a floriated carpet.  She tried to influence me in that direction but I have always loathed modern domesticity, the life of the villas where they play waltz music and shop for their feelings in the circulating libraries.  And so, in the little house we bought in Tite Street, we moved quite away from conventional interiors: it seems hard to recall but in those days, in the early Eighties, you could not have mahogany tables without magazines, or magazines without mahogany tables.  With the help of Godwin we created in Chelsea a set of beautiful interiors: they took six months to fashion, one sordid and bitter afternoon to be destroyed by my creditors.

      Tite Street is hideous, of course.  All streets in London are.  My friends told me that by living there I had become suburban, but I told them I was like the railway company - London and suburban.  I can still see each room in that house: my study, with its statue of Hermes Praxiteles and the desk on which Carlyle wrote that wonderful, imaginary autobiography, Sartor Resartus, the dining room with Whistler's extraordinary ceiling, the drawing room where Constance and I would sit, in the early days of our marriage, in silent companionship.  We had a piano there, and sometimes Constance would play for me the popular songs; it amused her to hear me sing them, for even then I could invest the most banal sentiment with a wealth of feeling.

      Some of my acquaintances abandoned me after my marriage: Frank Miles was absurd enough to think I had betrayed him.  Others did not understand Constance: because she was quiet, they thought her dull.  She was indeed silent in their company, but she was never dull about them afterwards.  Some of the most trenchant comments about my friends came, not from the judges in the Old Bailey, but from her.  She was not witty, but she was amusing.  She was not an advanced woman - her lessons came from Wilde, not from Ibsen.  I guided her in everything: she had a poetical nature, but she was still searching for the poetry with which to fill it.  I placed beautifully bound books in her hands; we would visit the Grosvenor Gallery, not to look but to be looked at, for I have always considered myself to be an example of modern art; we would travel to Regent Street and I would choose the material for the dresses which I designed for her.  It saddens me now, however, to think of the extraordinary compliance of her nature - I stiffened it, and then I broke it.

      But in the early years of our marriage Constance was at peace: she used to sing to herself, and often seemed so perfectly happy that I was afraid to come near her.  But she had a nervous habit of stroking her hair with her left hand, and would sometimes retreat into silences which were so sudden that they were inexplicable to me.  I suspected her then of leading another life which she hid from me - but of course it was only the life which she had always led, filled with trivial routines and small pleasures.  She would come back from tea with one of her childhood friends, her face quite bright with pleasure.

      'Whom have you seen, my dear?' I would ask her.

      'Oh, no-one, Oscar, no-one you know.'

      But she could not refrain from describing to me then where she had been and what had been said.  I listened always, but it is possible she suspected me of mocking her secretly, for often she would falter and fall silent.  Now I am reminded of how I watched her with fascination whenever she was engaged in small household tasks - and how, if she saw me observing her, she would grow self-conscious and hesitant in her movements.  It is as if I am describing a stranger, is it not?  Perhaps I did not know Constance at all.

      Nevertheless I am convinced that in our first years we were happy.  It was only after the birth of our children that we grew more reserved towards each other.  When she bore our first son, the sight of her with child repelled me somewhat: it is charming in religious art, but not elsewhere.  I averted my eyes, and I busied myself about trivial matters.  And, when Cyril was born, Constance herself became less childlike.  I wished her to remain as she had been when I first met her, but I could no more restrain the progress of her maturity than I could hasten my own.  For she required of me then a love which I could not give her: but she had learned from me how to dissimulate her feelings, and grew more distant.  And so by gradual degree that innocent and joyful love which I had conceived for her I gave instead to my children.

      It is strange how from the wreck of the past I can rescue only the smallest things: there was a tiny milk-cart, I remember, which I gave to Cyril and, when he broke one of its little horses, I spent the entire afternoon piecing it together with glue.  He would ride upon my back, and I would tell him that our destination was the stars.  For some reason, Vyvyan always wept when I lifted him up, and I would comfort him with pastilles.

      To know that they are living somewhere, and that I shall never see them again: I cannot speak of it.  I could weep for them longer than Niobe, who wept for ever, and mourn more bitterly than Demeter ever did: their children were snatched from them by the gods.  I pushed mine away by my own deeds.

      I find it hard now even to look upon other children in the street: I have this peculiar fear that they are in danger from the cabs and the omnibuses.  When I see a father pick up his child and carry him upon his shoulders, it is all I can do to restrain myself from pleading with him not to do so.  I do not know why this should be: I do not comprehend, sometimes, the forms which suffering takes.

      I think I have written somewhere that marriage is a sort of forcing house.  Constance never really understood me: that was no doubt why I married her; but boredom and frustration can lead to desperation, and desperation brings strange sins to fruit.  I spent less and less of my time in Tite Street, and deception became necessary - but I cannot speak of my sins yet.  I will employ what Pater calls the 'marvellous tact of omission'.

      The marriage, then, was not satisfactory for either party.  Sometimes, towards the end, it seemed to me that Constance and I were like characters out of Modern Love.  I do not suppose that anyone had experienced marital discord until Meredith invented it, but nevertheless it was a ridiculous posture - to be reduced to a poem.  Even my mother was strangely affected; she would write letters to me explaining how sorrowful and lonely Constance was becoming and then, in my guilt, I would try to rekindle that love which, in Ovid's words, 'lights up the house'.  And there were days when we were happy again but petty quarrels, and the shadow which my own life was beginning to cast, destroyed that happiness.  It was as trite as a Drury Lane melodrama and yet wearying also, terribly wearying.

      I have remembered one of the songs Constance and I played together in Tite Street:

 

                                                  And never sit down with a tear or a frown

                                                  But paddle your own canoe.

 

It is wonderfully suggestive, is it not?