The Threatening Cloud Draws Nearer

There is a secret apprehension in man counselling sobriety and moderation, a fear born of expediency distinct from conscience, which is ethical; though it seems to be closely connected with conscience acting, as it does, by warnings and prohibitions. The story of Polycrates and his ring is a symbol of the instinctive feeling that extraordinary good fortune is perilous and can not endure.

A year or so after the first meeting between Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas I heard that they were being pestered on account of some amorous letters which had been stolen from them. There was talk of blackmail and hints of an interesting exposure.

Towards the end of the year it was announced that Lord Alfred Douglas had gone to Egypt; but this “flight into Egypt,” as it was wittily called, was gilded by the fact that a little later he was appointed an honorary attaché to Lord Cromer. I regarded his absence as a piece of good fortune, for when he was in London, Oscar had no time to himself, and was seen in public with associates he would have done better to avoid. Time and again he had praised Lord Alfred Douglas to me as a charming person, a poet, and had grown lyrical about his violet eyes and honey-coloured hair. I knew nothing of Lord Alfred Douglas, and had no inkling of his poetic talent. I did not like several of Oscar’s particular friends, and I had a special dislike for the father of Lord Alfred Douglas. I knew Queensberry rather well. I was a member of the old Pelican Club, and I used to go there frequently for a talk with Tom, Dick or Harry, about athletics, or for a game of chess with George Edwards. Queensberry was there almost every night, and someone introduced me to him. I was eager to know him because he had surprised me. At some play,10 I think it was “The Promise of May,” by Tennyson, produced at the Globe, in which atheists were condemned, he had got up in his box and denounced the play, proclaiming himself an atheist. I wanted to know the Englishman who could be so contemptuous of convention. Had he acted out of aristocratic insolence, or was he by any possibility high-minded? To one who knew the man the mere question must seem ridiculous.

Queensberry was perhaps five feet nine or ten in height, with a plain, heavy, rather sullen face, and quick, hot eyes. He was a mass of self-conceit, all bristling with suspicion, and in regard to money, prudent to meanness. He cared nothing for books, but liked outdoor sports and under a rather abrupt, but not discourteous, manner hid an irritable, violent temper. He was combative and courageous as very nervous people sometimes are, when they happen to be strong-willed — the sort of man who, just because he was afraid of a bull and had pictured the dreadful wound it could give, would therefore seize it by the horns.

The insane temper of the man got him into rows at the Pelican more than once. I remember one evening he insulted a man whom I liked immensely. Haseltine was a stockbroker, I think, a big, fair, handsome fellow who took Queensberry’s insults for some time with cheerful contempt. Again and again he turned Queensberry’s wrath aside with a fair word, but Queensberry went on working himself into a passion, and at last made a rush at him. Haseltine watched him coming and hit out in the nick of time; he caught Queensberry full in the face and literally knocked him heels over head. Queensberry got up in a sad mess: he had a swollen nose and black eye and his shirt was all stained with blood spread about by hasty wiping. Any other man would have continued the fight or else have left the club on the spot; Queensberry took a seat at a table, and there sat for hours silent. I could only explain it to myself by saying that his impulse to fly at once from the scene of his disgrace was very acute, and therefore he resisted it, made up his mind not to budge, and so he sat there the butt of the derisive glances and whispered talk of everyone who came into the club in the next two or three hours. He was just the sort of person a wise man would avoid and a clever one would use — a dangerous, sharp, ill-handled tool.

Disliking his father, I did not care to meet Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar’s newest friend.

I saw Oscar less frequently after the success of his first play; he no longer needed my editorial services, and was, besides, busily engaged; but I have one good trait to record of him. Some time before I had lent him ￡50; so long as he was hard up I said nothing about it; but after the success of his second play, I wrote to him saying that the ￡50 would be useful to me if he could spare it. He sent me a cheque at once with a charming letter.

He was now continually about again with Lord Alfred Douglas who, it appeared, had had a disagreement with Lord Cromer and returned to London. Almost immediately scandalous stories came into circulation concerning them: “Have you heard the latest about Lord Alfred and Oscar? I’m told they’re being watched by the police,” and so forth and so on interminably. One day a story came to me with such wealth of weird detail that it was manifestly at least founded on fact. Oscar was said to have written extraordinary letters to Lord Alfred Douglas: a youth called Alfred Wood had stolen the letters from Lord Alfred Douglas’ rooms in Oxford and had tried to blackmail Oscar with them. The facts were so peculiar and so precise that I asked Oscar about it. He met the accusation at once and very fairly, I thought, and told me the whole story. It puts the triumphant power and address of the man in a strong light, and so I will tell it as he told it to me.

“When I was rehearsing ‘A Woman of No Importance’ at the Haymarket,” he began, “Beerbohm Tree showed me a letter I had written a year or so before to Alfred Douglas. He seemed to think it dangerous, but I laughed at him and read the letter with him, and of course he came to understand it properly. A little later a man called Wood told me he had found some letters which I had written to Lord Alfred Douglas in a suit of clothes which Lord Alfred had given to him. He gave me back some of the letters and I gave him a little money. But the letter, a copy of which had been sent to Beerbohm Tree, was not amongst them.

“Some time afterwards a man named Allen called upon me one night in Tite Street, and said he had got a letter of mine which I ought to have.

“The man’s manner told me that he was the real enemy. ‘I suppose you mean that beautiful letter of mine to Lord Alfred Douglas,’ I said. ‘If you had not been so foolish as to send a copy of it to Mr. Beerbohm Tree, I should have been glad to have paid you a large sum for it, as I think it is one of the best I ever wrote.’ Allen looked at me with sulky, cunning eyes and said:

“‘A curious construction could be put upon that letter.’

“‘No doubt, no doubt,’ I replied lightly; ‘art is not intelligible to the criminal classes.’ He looked me in the face defiantly and said:

“‘A man has offered me ￡60 for it.’

“‘You should take the offer,’ I said gravely; ‘￡60 is a great price. I myself have never received such a large sum for any prose work of that length. But I am glad to find that there is someone in England who will pay such a large sum for a letter of mine. I don’t know why you come to me,’ I added, rising, ‘you should sell the letter at once.’

“Of course, Frank, as I spoke my body seemed empty with fear. The letter could be misunderstood, and I have so many envious enemies; but I felt that there was nothing else for it but bluff. As I went to the door Allen rose too, and said that the man who had offered him the money was out of town. I turned to him and said:

“‘He will no doubt return, and I don’t care for the letter at all.’

“At this Allen changed his manner, said he was very poor, he hadn’t a penny in the world, and had spent a lot trying to find me and tell me about the letter. I told him I did not mind relieving his distress, and gave him half a sovereign, assuring him at the same time that the letter would shortly be published as a sonnet in a delightful magazine. I went to the door with him, and he walked away. I closed the door; but didn’t shut it at once, for suddenly I heard a policeman’s step coming softly towards my house — pad, pad! A dreadful moment, then he passed by. I went into the room again all shaken, wondering whether I had done right, whether Allen would hawk the letter about — a thousand vague apprehensions.

“Suddenly a knock at the street door. My heart was in my mouth, still I went and opened it: a man named Cliburn was there.

“‘I have come to you with a letter of Allen’s.’

“‘I cannot be bothered any more,’ I cried, ‘about that letter; I don’t care twopence about it. Let him do what he likes with it.’

“To my astonishment Cliburn said:

“‘Allen has asked me to give it back to you,’ and he produced it.

“‘Why does he give it back to me?’ I asked carelessly.

“‘He says you were kind to him and that it is no use trying to “rent” you; you only laugh at us.’

“I looked at the letter; it was very dirty, and I said:

“‘I think it is unpardonable that better care should not have been taken of a manuscript of mine.’

“He said he was sorry; but it had been in many hands. I took the letter up casually:

“‘Well, I will accept the letter back. You can thank Mr. Allen for me.’

“I gave Cliburn half a sovereign for his trouble, and said to him:

“‘I am afraid you are leading a desperately wicked life.’

“‘There’s good and bad in every one of us,’ he replied. I said something about his being a philosopher, and he went away. That’s the whole story, Frank.”

“But the letter?” I questioned.

“The letter is nothing,” Oscar replied; “a prose poem. I will give you a copy of it.”

Here is the letter:

“MY OWN BOY — Your sonnet is quite lovely, and it is a marvel that those red rose-leaf lips of yours should be made no less for the madness of music and song than for the madness of kissing. Your slim-gilt soul walks between passion and poetry. No Hyacinthus followed Love so madly as you in Greek days. Why are you alone in London, and when do you go to Salisbury? Do go there and cool your hands in the grey twilight of Gothic things. Come here whenever you like. It is a lovely place and only lacks you. Do go to Salisbury first. Always with undying love,

Yours,

OSCAR.”
* * * * *

This letter startled me; “slim-gilt” and the “madness of kissing” were calculated to give one pause; but after all, I thought, it may be merely an artist’s letter, half pose, half passionate admiration. Another thought struck me.

“But how did such a letter,” I cried, “ever get into the hands of a blackmailer?”

“I don’t know,” he replied, shrugging his shoulders. “Lord Alfred Douglas is very careless and inconceivably bold. You should know him, Frank; he’s a delightful poet.”

“But how did he come to know a creature like Wood?” I persisted.

“How can I tell, Frank,” he answered a little shortly; and I let the matter drop, though it left in me a certain doubt, an uncomfortable suspicion.

The scandal grew from hour to hour, and the tide of hatred rose in surges.

One day I was lunching at the Savoy, and while talking to the head waiter, Cesari, who afterwards managed the Elysée Palace Hotel in Paris, I thought I saw Oscar and Douglas go out together. Be............