Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde Part 9

DIEPPE,

June 1st, 1897.

My Dear Robbie,--I propose to live at Berneval. I will _not_ live in Paris, nor in Algiers, nor in Southern Italy. Surely a house for a year, if I choose to continue there, at 32 pounds is absurdly cheap. I could not live cheaper at a hotel. You are penny foolish, and pound foolish--a dreadful state for my financier to be in. I told M. Bonnet that my bankers were MM. Ross et Cie, banquiers celebres de Londres--and now you suddenly show me that you have no place among the great financial people, and are afraid of any investment over 31 pounds, 10s. It is merely the extra ten s.h.i.+llings that baffles you. As regards people living on me, and the extra bedrooms: dear boy, there is no one who would stay with me but you, and you will pay your own bill at the hotel for meals; and as for your room, the charge will be nominally 2 francs 50 centimes a night, but there will be lots of extras such as _bougie, bain_ and hot water, and all cigarettes smoked in the bedrooms are charged extra. And if any one does not take the extras, of course he is charged more:--

Bain, 25 C.

Pas de bain, 50 C.

Cigarette dans la chambre a coucher, 10 C. pour chaque cigarette.

Pas de cigarette dans la chambre a coucher, 20 C. pour chaque cigarette.

This is the system at all good hotels. If Reggie comes, of course he will pay a little more: I cannot forget that he gave me a dressing-case.

Sphinxes pay a hundred per cent more than any one else--they always did in Ancient Egypt.

But seriously, Robbie, if people stayed with me, of course they would pay their _pension_ at the hotel. They would have to: except architects. A modern architect, like modern architecture, doesn't pay. But then I know only one architect and you are hiding him somewhere from me. I believe that he is as extinct as the dado, of which now only fossil remains are found, chiefly in the vicinity of Brompton, where they are sometimes discovered by workmen excavating. They are usually embedded in the old Lincrusta Walton strata, and are rare consequently.

I visited M. le Cure {4} to-day. He has a charming house and a _jardin potager_. He showed me over the church. To-morrow I sit in the choir by his special invitation. He showed me all his vestments. To-morrow he really will be charming in red. He knows I am a heretic, and believes Pusey is still alive. He says that G.o.d will convert England on account of England's kindness to _les pretres exiles_ at the time of the Revolution. It is to be the reward of that sea-lashed island.

Stained gla.s.s windows are wanted in the church; he has only six; fourteen more are needed. He gets them at 300 francs--12 pounds--a window in Paris. I was nearly offering half a dozen, but remembered you, and so only gave him something _pour les pauvres_. You had a narrow escape, Robbie. You should be thankful.

I hope the 40 pounds is on its way, and that the 60 pounds will follow. I am going to hire a boat. It will save walking and so be an economy in the end. Dear Robbie, I must start well. If the life of St. Francis of a.s.sissi awaits me I shall not be angry. Worse things might happen.

Yours,

OSCAR.

--_Letter to Robert Ross_.

A VISIT TO THE POPE

c/o COOK & SON, PIAZZA DI SPAGNA, ROME,

April 16th, 1900.

My dear Robbie,--I simply cannot write. It is too horrid, not of me, but to me. It is a mode of paralysis--a _cacoethes tacendi_--the one form that malady takes in me.

Well, all pa.s.sed over very successfully. Palermo, where we stayed eight days, was lovely. The most beautifully situated town in the world--it dreams away its life in the _concha d'oro_, the exquisite valley that lies between two seas. The lemon groves and the orange gardens were so entirely perfect that I became quite a Pre-Raphaelite, and loathed the ordinary impressionists whose muddly souls and blurred intelligences would have rendered, but by mud and blur, those "golden lamps hung in a green night" that filled me with such joy. The elaborate and exquisite detail of the true Pre-Raphaelite is the compensation they offer us for the absence of motion; literature and motion being the only arts that are not immobile.

Then nowhere, not even at Ravenna, have I seen such mosaics as in the Capella Palatine, which from pavement to domed ceiling is all gold: one really feels as if one was sitting in the heart of a great honey-comb looking at angels singing: and _looking_ at angels, or indeed at people, singing, is much nicer than listening to them, for this reason: the great artists always give to their angels lutes without strings, pipes without vent-holes, and reeds through which no wind can wander or make whistlings.

Monreale you have heard of--with its cloisters and cathedral: we often drove there.

I also made great friends with a young seminarist, who lived in the cathedral of Palermo--he and eleven others, in little rooms beneath the roof, like birds.

Every day he showed me all over the cathedral, I knelt before the huge porphyry sarcophagus in which Frederick the Second lies: it is a sublime bare monstrous thing--blood-coloured, and held up by lions who have caught some of the rage of the great Emperor's restless soul. At first my young friend, Giuseppe Loverdi, gave me information; but on the third day I gave information to him, and re-wrote history as usual, and told him all about the supreme King and his Court of Poets, and the terrible book that he never wrote. His reason for entering the church was singularly mediaeval. I asked him why he thought of becoming a _clerico_, and how. He answered: "My father is a cook and most poor; and we are many at home, so it seemed to me a good thing that there should be in so small a house as ours, one mouth less to feed; for though I am slim, I eat much, too much, alas! I fear."

I told him to be comforted, because G.o.d used poverty often as a means of bringing people to Him, and used riches never, or rarely; so Giuseppe was comforted, and I gave him a little book of devotion, very pretty, and with far more pictures than prayers in it--so of great service to Giuseppe whose eyes are beautiful. I also gave him many _lire_, and prophesied for him a Cardinal's hat, if he remained very good and never forgot me.

At Naples we stopped three days: most of my friends are, as you know, in prison, but I met some of nice memory.

We came to Rome on Holy Thursday. H--- left on Sat.u.r.day for Gland--and yesterday, to the terror of Grissell {5} and all the Papal Court, I appeared in the front rank of the pilgrims in the Vatican, and got the blessing of the Holy Father--a blessing they would have denied me.

He was wonderful as he was carried past me on his throne--not of flesh and blood, but a white soul robed in white and an artist as well as a saint--the only instance in history, if the newspapers are to be believed. I have seen nothing like the extraordinary grace of his gestures as he rose, from moment to moment, to bless--possibly the pilgrims, but certainly me.

Tree should see him. It is his only chance.

I was deeply impressed, and my walking-stick showed signs of budding, would have budded, indeed, only at the door of the Chapel it was taken from me by the Knave of Spades. This strange prohibition is, of course, in honour of Tannhauser.

How did I get the ticket? By a miracle, of course. I thought it was hopeless and made no effort of any kind. On Sat.u.r.day afternoon at five o'clock H--- and I went to have tea at the Hotel de l'Europe. Suddenly, as I was eating b.u.t.tered toast, a man--or what seemed to be one--dressed like a hotel porter entered and asked me would I like to see the Pope on Easter Day. I bowed my head humbly and said "Non sum dignus," or words to that effect. He at once produced a ticket!

When I tell you that his countenance was of supernatural ugliness, and that the price of the ticket was thirty pieces of silver, I need say no more.

An equally curious thing is that whenever I pa.s.s the hotel, which I do constantly, I see the same man. Scientists call that phenomenon an obsession of the visual nerve. You and I know better.

On the afternoon of Easter Day I heard Vespers at the Lateran: music quite lovely. At the close, a Bishop in red, and with red gloves--such as Pater talks of in _Gaston de Latour_--came out on the balcony and showed us the Relics. He was swarthy, and wore a yellow mitre. A sinister mediaeval man, but superbly Gothic, just like the bishops carved on stalls or on portals: and when one thinks that once people mocked at stained-gla.s.s att.i.tudes! they are the only att.i.tudes for the clothes. The sight of the Bishop, whom I watched with fascination, filled me with the great sense of the realism of Gothic art. Neither in Greek art nor in Gothic art is there any pose. Posing was invented by bad portrait-painters; and the first person who posed was a stock-broker, and he has gone on posing ever since.

I send you a photograph I took on Palm Sunday at Palermo. Do send me some of yours, and love me always, and try to read this letter.

Kindest regards to your dear mother.

Always,

OSCAR.

--_Letter to Robert Ross_.

FOOTNOTES

{1} "The Influence of Pater and Matthew Arnold in the Prose-Writings of Oscar Wilde," by Ernst Bendz. London: H. Grevel & Co., 1914.

{2} "The Eighteen Nineties: A Review of Art and Idea at the Close of the Nineteenth Century," by Holbrook Jackson. London: Grant Richards Ltd., 1913.

{3} Mortimer Menpes.

{4} M. Constant Trop-Hardy, died at Berneval, March 2, 1898.

{5} Hartwell de la Garde Grissell, a Papal Chamberlain.