I who was once a votary of fame now worship anonymity. My reputation no longer precedes me; it dogs me like a shadow. Take my advice, my boy, and never become notorious: it is so horribly expensive.’
With an imperious gesture he summoned a fiacre which he ordered to take us to Bignon’s. When we were in the carriage he said: ‘After we have dined, I shall tell you all the dreadful secrets of my hideous life. That is what you want me to do, isn’t it?’
I tried to offer up some protest, but he waved it aside.
‘No, no. I could tell at once that you were a perfectly normal healthy young man and therefore eager to learn every sordid detail. It is quite natural. We love to contemplate the vices to which we have never been tempted. I, for instance, am always anxious to learn everything I can about the selling of insurance. It seems to me a most romantic and dangerous profession.’
At Bignon’s we were given a private room and Oscar ordered a sumptuous meal with all the best wines, making substantial inroads into that one thousand francs. During dinner, he asked me about myself and my life and seemed genuinely interested in the most minute and mundane details of my existence. I noticed that, though he plied me with food, he ate sparingly, and there were times when he appeared to be in pain, yet he said nothing of it. He consumed a great deal of alcohol by which he seemed quite unaffected, as the elegant flow of his conversation was unstemmed.
It was when the meal was almost over that Oscar began to talk about himself. He was obviously reluctant to discuss certain incidents in his career—in his present state both his triumphs and tragedies must have been equally painful to recall—so he confined himself to observations about life, art and his approach to them both. With many of these I was familiar, and I waited for an opportunity to probe beneath this urbane, epigrammatic surface. I knew I must do so subtly, because he would immediately shield himself against any crude attempt to crack the carapace. However, a moment came when I saw my chance.
‘I am one of those people,’ Oscar was saying, ‘like Théophile Gautier, “ pour qui le monde visible existe ”. For whom the visible world exists. As for the invisible world . . . ah, that is a more troublesome issue! I acknowledge its existence, I admire its advantages, but I have no experience of its attractions. One reads Dante, of course, but his charm for me lies in the certainty that he is reporting inaccurately. His Divine Comedy is like the best journalism, full of the most fascinating gossip that one may choose to believe or disbelieve according to taste.’
‘But there must have been times,’ I said, ‘when you would have been tempted to pierce the veil and find out for yourself.’
There was a pause during which Oscar stared at me, then he drained his glass of burgundy and said quite casually:
‘Suicide, you mean? I was never really tempted to kill myself. Even when a part of me died in Reading Gaol, I never thought seriously of that as a way out. What I felt was that I must drain the chalice of my passion to the dregs.’
‘You have written that “each man kills the thing he loves”.’
‘My dear Ellwood, what on earth makes you think that I love myself? Self admiration and self love are quite different things. To love oneself is the beginning of folly, to admire oneself is the beginning of an exquisite career, and perhaps the end of it too. Besides, to commit suicide is not to kill oneself. On the contrary, it is to destroy everything but oneself. Don’t you see? We can escape all things but ourselves. That is man’s glory and his tragedy; at least it is mine, and that amounts to the same thing.’
‘But there must have been times, nevertheless . . . ?’
Another long pause followed, and I thought he was not going to rise to my challenge, but eventually he said: ‘You are quite right, and there was one occasion when I thought of ending
With an imperious gesture he summoned a fiacre which he ordered to take us to Bignon’s. When we were in the carriage he said: ‘After we have dined, I shall tell you all the dreadful secrets of my hideous life. That is what you want me to do, isn’t it?’
I tried to offer up some protest, but he waved it aside.
‘No, no. I could tell at once that you were a perfectly normal healthy young man and therefore eager to learn every sordid detail. It is quite natural. We love to contemplate the vices to which we have never been tempted. I, for instance, am always anxious to learn everything I can about the selling of insurance. It seems to me a most romantic and dangerous profession.’
At Bignon’s we were given a private room and Oscar ordered a sumptuous meal with all the best wines, making substantial inroads into that one thousand francs. During dinner, he asked me about myself and my life and seemed genuinely interested in the most minute and mundane details of my existence. I noticed that, though he plied me with food, he ate sparingly, and there were times when he appeared to be in pain, yet he said nothing of it. He consumed a great deal of alcohol by which he seemed quite unaffected, as the elegant flow of his conversation was unstemmed.
It was when the meal was almost over that Oscar began to talk about himself. He was obviously reluctant to discuss certain incidents in his career—in his present state both his triumphs and tragedies must have been equally painful to recall—so he confined himself to observations about life, art and his approach to them both. With many of these I was familiar, and I waited for an opportunity to probe beneath this urbane, epigrammatic surface. I knew I must do so subtly, because he would immediately shield himself against any crude attempt to crack the carapace. However, a moment came when I saw my chance.
‘I am one of those people,’ Oscar was saying, ‘like Théophile Gautier, “ pour qui le monde visible existe ”. For whom the visible world exists. As for the invisible world . . . ah, that is a more troublesome issue! I acknowledge its existence, I admire its advantages, but I have no experience of its attractions. One reads Dante, of course, but his charm for me lies in the certainty that he is reporting inaccurately. His Divine Comedy is like the best journalism, full of the most fascinating gossip that one may choose to believe or disbelieve according to taste.’
‘But there must have been times,’ I said, ‘when you would have been tempted to pierce the veil and find out for yourself.’
There was a pause during which Oscar stared at me, then he drained his glass of burgundy and said quite casually:
‘Suicide, you mean? I was never really tempted to kill myself. Even when a part of me died in Reading Gaol, I never thought seriously of that as a way out. What I felt was that I must drain the chalice of my passion to the dregs.’
‘You have written that “each man kills the thing he loves”.’
‘My dear Ellwood, what on earth makes you think that I love myself? Self admiration and self love are quite different things. To love oneself is the beginning of folly, to admire oneself is the beginning of an exquisite career, and perhaps the end of it too. Besides, to commit suicide is not to kill oneself. On the contrary, it is to destroy everything but oneself. Don’t you see? We can escape all things but ourselves. That is man’s glory and his tragedy; at least it is mine, and that amounts to the same thing.’
‘But there must have been times, nevertheless . . . ?’
Another long pause followed, and I thought he was not going to rise to my challenge, but eventually he said: ‘You are quite right, and there was one occasion when I thought of ending
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