from “The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde”

/, Literature, Blesok no. 56/from “The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde”

from “The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde”

Sometimes in Taylor’s lodgings there were parties of an intimate kind. Alfred had a particular interest in women’s clothes and, since I have been from my aesthetic period an expert on the subject, I would assist him in the choice of hats and gowns which he would wear to entertain the company. Some of the young men took a similarly advanced view on the question of modern dress, and with Alfred they would perform masques and dramas which often descended to a Biblical level. On one occasion, Alfred and two boys performed Salomé in my honour – it was that scarlet drama’s first and only performance in England, and I was delighted by the spirit it inspired in them. Charlie Mason, who had quite recovered from his arrest in Cleveland Street, played Salomé with the gestures of the divine Sarah herself and Alfred was a magnificent, if somewhat too feminine, Herodias. It was a delightful evening and, at the close, the boys crowned me with lilies – there are no garlands of myrtle to be found in England -and carried me around the room. I made a little speech, in which I congratulated them for their quite unaffected performances.
I cannot myself act, unless I am delivering my own lines, but I was once persuaded by Alfred to assist at one of his performances. My fondness for the Queen is well known -1 am surprised she has not written to me lately, but I am told that she is busy organising the South African campaign. Indeed, Alfred was continually telling me of my remarkable resemblance to her: in what particular aspect I, of course, cannot say. And so on one evening, at a new year’s celebration – it must have been 1894, one year before my fall -1 was draped in black and a small but delightful crown was placed upon my head. I admit that the role suited me perfectly, and I spoke quietly but humbly about my service to the nation and to dear, departed Albert. Then they all rose and sang God Save The Queen – I was much affected, and promised them the ‘Queen’s touch’ on Maundy Thursday. I do not think I was ever quite the same again.
Do you understand now why I enjoyed the company of these boys? With them my years left me; I did not feel the weight of a reputation which was even then threatening to crush me. I enjoyed reading to them from my plays and the boys’ laughter -or, sometimes, their sombre concern at a particularly humorous turn in the drama – was for me enchanting. Alfred and I would take each character in turn – I remember that I was an emphatic Mrs Erlynne – and there were occasions when I would improvise in dialogue and impress even myself with the result. The boys admired me and, like Jesus, I have always performed my better miracles for those who have believed.
I like to be seen with the boys – some of my friends thought it scandalous that I should do so, but the greater scandal is to be ashamed of one’s companions. I was never that: I loved to walk with them through the crowded thoroughfares of London, or to visit with them the public places of entertainment. I remember once going with Charlie Lloyd to the Crystal Palace. I had visited it previously in order to lecture there – it was a place of grim memories.
It was full of the smell of fresh buns and fresh paint, the shrieks from the monkey house blending quite successfully with the cries of the children as they watched with fascination the head of a pantomime clown, some twelve feet across, on which the eyes and mouth opened with the aid of a mechanism. Even the parents seemed impressed: it struck me as curious that the machinery could be such a source of wonder, but no doubt there will be a future for it in museums and circuses when it has vanished from our industries. There was also a Handel Festival during our visit, which Charlie quite rightly declined to attend, and we turned our attention instead to the toy-stalls in which glass waterfalls trickled in landscapes of Virginian cork and Swiss peasants valsed: all for a penny. The nineteenth century is an extraordinary thing, although only in its trivial aspects.
Charlie Lloyd had no conversation. ‘Jolly good, Oscar’ was, I believe, his only phrase. I would torment him with questions, about Bimettalism or the Irish question, and he would simply smile at me. He had a pale, unlined face – an advantage I ascribe entirely to his diet. He seemed to live entirely off potted meats, Palmers biscuits and Bovril. He was almost an advertisement. I could not tempt him to restaurants, and I did not wish to tempt him to bed. But he interested me: he was a perfect type. I possessed a gold cross which in a moment of enthusiasm I had given to my first great love in Dublin, Florence Balcombe. Of course I retrieved it immediately on her marriage, to an actor. While we were at the Crystal Palace, I gave it to Charlie – it pleased me that it should change hands in so obvious a fashion. I do not know what he did with it: perhaps he ate it.
In those days the theatre was always the main attraction – not the serious theatre where the middle classes learn of the difficulties of their lives, but the music halls. With Sidney Mavor and Fred Atkins I would go to the Tivoli or the Empire, to see the ventriloquists, funambulists and Ethiopian comedians. Sidney’s favourite was always Mr Stratton, known popularly as Dan Leno-that droll creature who adopts the accents and attitudes of the lower classes with a humour that is both perceptive and benign. There was something quite alarming in the manner with which he was able to mimic the voice of a washer-woman or the strange gait of a variety actress: it was as if the glory and the darkness of the London streets had enshrined themselves in this little personage, leaving him visibly bowed and drained.
I sent round my card to him at the end of one performance, and he welcomed me with such graciousness and affability that I was charmed at once. ‘Mr Wilde,’ he said to me in that deep voice which was quite unlike his stage manner, 1 am a comedian and you are a dramatist, but we both have our patter, don’t we?’ I agreed – how could I not? ‘The secret, in my reckoning, is to bring them close to crying and then boost them up again. That’s the ticket.’ I smiled, and said nothing.
One theatrical incident I shall never be able to forget: it was at the Trocadero, before it became a restaurant, although some people profess not to know the difference. Arthur Faber, who was in those days a well-known impersonator, came upon the stage. After a few rather conventional scenes, involving drunks, policemen and the usual melodrama of real life, he picked up a cane with a gold top, placed around his shoulders a large fur coat, arranged his body into a grotesquely bloated shape, and sang some bawdy lyric.
It was with sudden horror that I realised he was impersonating me. It was done with much humour, but it was as if I had been slapped across the face. I saw myself at that instant as others saw me, and I felt a terrible sense of fatality-as though this creature on the stage was too preposterous to survive; the hoots and calls from the pit were the cries of those baying for blood. I did not understand why this should be so, and I left the theatre hurriedly.

AuthorPeter Ackroyd
2018-08-21T17:23:06+00:00 October 17th, 2007|Categories: Prose, Literature, Blesok no. 56|0 Comments