Crushed: The Pity of Oscar Wilde: Together with The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Andre Gide & Oscar Wilde

Author:Andre Gide & Oscar Wilde [Gide, Andre]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Watersgreen House
Published: 2017-03-15T04:00:00+00:00

Oscar Wilde died in a shabby little hotel in the Rue des Beaux Arts. Seven persons followed the hearse, and even they did not all accompany the funeral procession to the end. On the coffin were some flowers and some artificial wreaths, only one of which, I am told, bore any inscription. It was from the proprietor of the hotel, and on it were these words: 'A Mon Locataire.'

[1]The representatives of his family were willing to guarantee Wilde a very good position if he would consent to certain stipulations, one of which was that he should never see —— again. He was either unable or unwilling to accept the conditions.

[2]In October, 1897, he stayed with friends at the Villa Gindice, Posillipo, and was in Naples till the end of the year, or the beginning of 1898, when he went to Paris. In the following year he went to the South of France (Nice) for the spring, but was back in June or July. He went also to Switzerland in 1899 and stayed some time at Gland.

[3]M. Gide says that Wilde's words were 'je suis absolument sans ressources,' which, I think, need not mean more than a temporary embarrassment. I have been at some pains to find out what the actual circumstances were, and I am able to state the following facts on the authority of Lord Alfred Douglas. When Mr. Wilde came out of prison, the sum of £800 was subscribed for him by his friends. Lord Alfred Douglas gave or sent Mr. Wilde, in the last twelve months of his life, cheques for over £600, as he can show by his bank-book, in addition to ready money gifts, and several others gave him at various times amounts totaling up to several hundreds of pounds. 'It is true,' Lord Alfred Douglas writes, 'he was always hard up and short of money, but that was because he was incurably extravagant and reckless. I think these facts ought to be known in justice to myself and many others of his friends, all poor men.' In another letter Lord Alfred Douglas says that Mr. Wilde, when he was well off, before his disaster, was the most generous of men. After 1897 received also large sums of money as advance fees for plays which he never finished. 'I hope,' Lord Alfred Douglas continues, 'you will not think that I blame him, or have any grievance against him on any account. What I gave him I considered I owed him, as he had often lent and given me money before he came to grief. I was delighted that he should have it, and I wish I had had time to give him more.' It was not, however, till after the death of his father, that Lord Alfred Douglas was in a position to help Mr. Wilde to the extent that he did, and Mr. Wilde died within a few months of the death of Lord Queensberry.

Lord Alfred Douglas adds that he thinks 'it is about time that some of the poisonous nonsense which has been written about Mr.

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