Pilgrim (37 page)

All of these names and pictures I have recorded in the notebook by my bed. If they persist, there is only one conclusion I can draw: namely, that I am being returned to that dreaded condition of which I have prayed so fervently to be relieved. Not on my knees. I never pray on my knees. It is undignified and childish. If God is truly there, I suspect He prefers to meet us face to face and eye to eye. That has always been my way with Him, and I think it has always been His way with me. But if the situation warrants, I shall go to my knees at once.

I turned towards the Chelsea Embankment, seeing the distant lights of Battersea shining beyond the river, and walked along Tite Street.

Number 16 was dark. One presumes that since Wilde was forced to give it up in order to pay his debts, and all its contents sold for a penny—no one has cared to live there. High above the street its graceful balconies are painted white, and in the moonlight and the lamplight, they take on a somewhat sad and lonely desolation. No one now will stand there any more, gazing down, or out towards the river. Gone. And Constance dead as he is dead. God knows what became of their sons. There’s not a printed word.

He would stand, as I recall, immensely tall in the open doorway. “There you are—and I’ve been waiting.” Not a rebuke, but a greeting—bespeaking the pleasure with which he anticipated your company. He never failed to make you feel you’d taken on the role of most-honoured-guest, in spite of whosoever else might dine with you that night. I have sat with artists of the highest rank at Wilde’s table—painters, actors, writers. He gave of himself without stint—the best of wines, exquisite food—
and all the pearls I cast with not a swine in sight.
I quote himself.

The last time I saw Oscar Wilde was, in its way, prophetic. This was last summer. I had gone to France, along with half the world, to view the wonders of the Paris Exposition.

Few were given the privilege—and I’m not sure why the honour was accorded to me—of a private visit to Rodin’s studio. While the works of sculptors from
around the world were exhibited collectively in the
Grand Palais
, the works of Auguste Rodin were put on show in a separate pavilion. It remains a simple truth about this extraordinary man that no other artist since Michelangelo has brought the human form to life with such compassion and vivacity.

But it was not to the Rodin pavilion I was bidden. It was to his private atelier on the rue de l’Université in order to see the unfinished
Gates of Hell
. And there, when I arrived, was Wilde, together with two friends. One of these was his new young companion, a French marine of exquisite beauty and proportions whom Rodin would later use as one of his nude models. I believe his name was Gilbert, though whether this was his first or last name I do not recall. The other was an effusive woman who had apparently attached herself to Wilde only recently.

Her name was Seonaid Eggett, and she was as Irish as Wilde himself. When the Rodin evening’s activities were being arranged, she gave me her card,
so that you will know how to spell it. It is not, in Ireland, an unusual name, though I’ve discovered many of you English have a problem with it. It is pronounced Shay-nid.
Only weeks before, so Oscar had said, Mrs Eggett had
accosted
him on the street, lifted his lapels and planted a kiss on his lips.
And I hope the whole world saw me!
she had said.
I worship you.

Though more than somewhat taken aback by the effulgence of her greeting, Wilde had become enchanted with her company.
She is,
he told me,
a bold adventuress in the wilderness of art.

“Dear boy,” Wilde said, once the introductions were accomplished.
Boy
, in spite of the fact that I was only one year younger than he. “I hadn’t thought to see you ever again.”

“I came because of you,” I lied. “It seemed appropriate. Where else could one expect to meet the master of the word but beside the master of stony silence. No one here to rebuke you, Oscar. No one to beat you at your own game.”

“Whoever could?” he said, and smiled. I noted he had lost some teeth.

We shook hands.

There were tears in his eyes—and in his hand, a dreadful lack of presence. All his strength was gone, and he could barely respond.

It is a dreadful thing to see a giant in the moment of his fall. Here was Wilde—just weeks away from death, standing at
The Gates of Hell
as though he had come to take his place in the spectacle of Rodin’s imagery.
Shall I pause just here
—
or there?
he seemed to say.
Shall I raise one arm or both? Shall I stand this way or that? Tell me what you would have me do. Perhaps you will notice there is nothing in my present stance that hints at yesterday’s regret. That is all gone from me, now. All gone.

“Dear boy,” he said, as our fingers parted, “do come and look at Hell with me. There is nothing here I cannot explain.”

We moved away from the others and stood alone before a gigantic plaster model of
The Gates
. It was over twenty feet high and over half as wide. Rodin had explained his original commission was to design the
“portals” (his word) for a projected museum of the decorative arts. The museum was never built. Of course, it was to have been in Paris. When I saw his abandoned contribution last summer, the sculptor had already spent twenty years devising and creating its various components—some of which had achieved renown on their own.

Rodin had remarked:
these portals are my Noah’s Ark. I can people them with whomever I choose, since no one but Dante has ever been to Hell and come back in order to contradict me.
He had said this laughing, though I noted that his affection for this vast and wondrous creation still brought something of a tremble to his voice.

Brooding on the lintel was the figure we have come to know as
The Thinker. The Kiss
was also intended for
The Gates of Hell
, but was removed when Rodin was dissatisfied with his inability to place it in the context of the themes he was exploring. Equally famous in its own right is the grouping of
Ugolino and his Sons
, which depicts the horrifying tragedy of the blind and maddened nobleman who, when imprisoned, devoured his children.

But the piece that most intrigued Oscar was the falling figure of Icarus, whose sin was to fly too close to the sun. Staring up at him, he said: “I have myself become a master of the fall, and might have taken my lessons from him.”

I spent little time with Rodin, his attentions having been claimed by the gushing Mrs Eggett. Still, I thanked him for his invitation and the chance to pay my respects to his work.

As I was preparing to leave, I could see that Wilde’s young marine had brought a wooden chair and there was Oscar seated in it, hat in hand, before
The Gates of Hell,
smoking a gold-tipped Turkish cigarette—a handsome uniformed lad by his side and both of them damned in the eyes of “decent” society.

Wilde mentioned he was expecting his young Canadian friend Robert Ross, who would be taking him and his companions to dine at
Le Jardin des Lilas
, one of the few cafés where the exiled writer was still accepted. Afterwards, they planned an excursion into Parisian night life. Would I care to join them?

Indeed.

Ross, who was small, had once been described by Wilde as having
the face of Puck and the heart of an angel
. When I first met him, I was surprised to find that he was also trim and had something of the athlete in his appearance. It was said that at the age of seventeen in 1886, when Wilde was thirty-two, Ross had “seduced” the older man and introduced him to the physical mysteries of homosexuality. Latterly, Ross had proved to be a good deal more than a merely seductive young man of the world and was one of the very few friends who stood by Wilde’s side to the very end, offering him both practical and emotional support.

It had been suggested that it would be appropriate—
in order to complete Mrs Eggett’s worldly education
—that the “night life” following dinner would entail a visit to the famous brothel
La Vieille Reine
—the Old Queen.

“There,” Wilde had told them, “everything is done
with style and panache, but also with grace. There will not be a moment’s embarrassment. The ladies of
La Vieille Reine
are beyond reproach—chosen not only for their beauty, but their manner. There is nothing crude nor unsightly. I have been many times, just to watch the way it is all achieved. Everything is enthralling and enticing.”

Robert Ross had agreed. “It has the feel of a bluestocking salon,” he had said.

And as I would discover, indeed it had—with one rather significant difference. The stockings would be black.

The hostess was known as
Madame la Madame
. She otherwise had no name known to anyone but her parents, who were dead.

Madame la Madame greeted Wilde with kisses on the hand and affectionate pats on the arm. She greeted Ross with a more formal
bisou
on either cheek. Mrs Eggett was offered a nod and I the same. Gilbert, on the other hand, was taken by both elbows and drawn to Madame’s bosom as though he were a long-lost child—a prodigal son returning.
Oh!
she kept saying,
how perfectly enchanting! How utterly beautiful! What a find! Monsieur Wilde
—
how can you have kept him hidden for so long? Why, any minute, he will be fourteen and we should have lost all the joy of introducing him to the arts of pleasure. Have you brought him here to make a present of him? Is he a gift?

Even Wilde was somewhat thrown off balance by this effusiveness. Gilbert shrank away from Madame’s
embrace and took refuge behind Mrs Eggett. But Madame la Madame had other ambitions.

“I will pay you for him,” she said to Wilde.

“No, Madame. No,” Wilde told her—smiling. “He is neither mine to sell nor yours to buy. He is his own man and I have brought him here only to show him a side of life he has not yet imagined. We are not here as customers, Madame, nor as custom. We are here as spectators at your delightful court.”

“What a pity,” Madame said. “Nonetheless, you are all welcome. I shall send Roselle to see to your needs.”

With that, she led them to a table in the corner of the room and hurried off.

The salon was large, crowded and elegantly furnished. The most striking element of the decor was a large wisteria vine—cunningly fashioned in painted plaster. It twisted and curved all across the ceiling and partway down the walls. Hanging from its green-leafed arms were its “blossoms,” an endless series of tiny chandeliers made of Venetian glass—each one a cluster of glowing mauve flowers that cast their soft light through the haze of cigar and cigarette smoke that hovered above the assemblage. There were also Chinese lanterns, as in a garden.

“Charming!” Mrs Eggett exclaimed. “Utterly charming!”

Mrs Eggett had not been in Paris since her childhood, when on three or four occasions she had been brought there by her parents. She then, of course, had no experience of men like Wilde and the circle of fame
in which he walked. And yet, that very day she had stood with Wilde, just as I had done, in the presence of Auguste Rodin.

“It was simply too thrilling,” she said. “Do you know what he said to me? He said
in classical sculpture, artists sought the
logic
of the human body, whereas in my work I seek its
psychology. Isn’t that too wonderful? Isn’t it just too perfect for words? The
logic
and the
psychology
of the human body! I shall always remember it and just the way he said it. Too, too perfect. And absolutely right, of course. Absolutely right. I do like an artist who can explain himself. So much more satisfying than those at a loss for words.”

I was beginning to wish that Mrs Eggett might find herself at a loss for words.

Roselle duly arrived—tall and expertly lacquered. She wore a bodice of pink satin and Turkish trousers of an almost chocolate colour. Her dyed bronze hair was piled on her head and decorated with silver stars and red sequins. Giving a discreet salaam, she asked if anything was required.

Wilde ordered champagne.

I noted that other women were dressed in the same fashion as Roselle—but in different combinations of colours—blues and greens—purples and oranges—yellows and greens—reds and blues. They were all of a similar height, between five and a half and six feet. They wore, besides the Turkish trousers, curl-toed shoes and long fringed sashes. Clearly, they were there exclusively to see to the mundane comforts of the clientele—to bring drinks, cigars, ashtrays, pillows
and to distribute fans, each one decorated with a female nude.

Once Roselle had departed, Ross turned to me and said,
sotto voce
, “you realize, of course, that our waitress is a man.”

“Good heavens, no!”

“They all are,” said Ross with an easy smile, “so as to discourage the customers from engaging them in place of the girls whose job it is to provide the necessary pleasures of such an establishment.”

I looked about and realized with some amusement that each of the pantalooned “waitresses” had extremely large hands and feet and an excess of theatrical make-up. Still, it made an interesting spectacle and would make an equally interesting entry in my journal.

At one point, holding up his glass of champagne and gazing through it at the wisteria chandeliers, Wilde remarked that
a Channel crossing is something more than a mere sea-change, you realize. Once landed in France, you are in the very heart of wine-heaven. The English, on the other hand
, he said,
have an unfailing ability to change wine into water.

Everyone laughed and Wilde gave a toast
to this glorious vacation from the process of dying.

I found myself reflecting: here we are, gathered together in a Parisian brothel on a warm summer’s night, while all about us, the ending of one age and the beginning of another have no more significance than the changing of the guard at Buckingham
Palace. Guard? Guardian of what? Eternity? Why do I doubt it?