Oscar Wilde and the Nest of Vipers (2 page)

Freedom is the only law which genius knows.

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)

Oscar Wilde and the Nest of Vipers

Drawn from the previously unpublished memoirs of
Robert Sherard (1861–1943),
Oscar Wilde’s friend and his first and most
prolific biographer

Principal characters in the narrative

London, 1890

Oscar Wilde, poet and playwright
Constance Wilde, his wife
Robert Sherard, journalist
Arthur Conan Doyle, author and physician
Bram Stoker, theatre manager

HRH the Prince of Wales
HRH Prince Albert Victor, his son
General Sir Dighton Probyn VC, Comptroller
and Treasurer of the Prince of Wales’s Household
Harry Tyrwhitt Wilson, equerry
Frank Watkins, page

The Duke and Duchess of Albemarle
Mr Parker, butler at 40 Grosvenor Square
Nellie Atkins, the Duchess of Albemarle’s maid

Lord Yarborough, psychiatrist
Rex LaSalle, artist
Father John Callaghan, priest
Sister Agnes, nurse
Antonin Dvorak, composer
Louisa Lavallois, dancer

Professor Onofroff, mind-reader
Mrs Lillie Langtry, actress
Jane Avril, dancer

Inspector Hugh Boone, Metropolitan Police

Preface
Paris, 1900

‘
I
remember nothing.’

‘You must remember the nest of vipers.’

‘I remember nothing. That is my rule.’

‘Don’t be absurd, Oscar.’

My friend smiled and ran his forefinger slowly around the rim of his glass of absinthe. He gazed at me, his eyes full of tears. ‘What else should I be, Robert? I am absurd. Look at me.’

I looked at him as he sat slumped on the banquette like a debauched tart in a painting by Toulouse-Lautrec. His face was grey, blotchy, with patches of green and ochre beneath his eyes and starbursts of crimson where veins had broken in his cheeks. His auburn hair, once so lustrous, was lank. His uneven teeth were stained with mercury and nicotine. His body had run to fat. His appearance had gone to seed. Two years in prison, with hard labour, and three years in exile, without employment, had brought him to this.

‘I remember nothing,’ he repeated, ‘as a matter of policy. The artist must destroy memory, Robert, and interest himself only in the moment – the hour that is passing, the very second as it occurs. The man who thinks of his past has no future.’ He raised his now-empty
glass towards the barman. ‘Personally, I give myself absolutely to the present.’

We were in Paris, the city of light, sitting in semi-darkness at the back of the old Café Hugo on boulevard Montmartre. It was Friday, 16 March 1900 – five months to the day since his forty-fifth birthday; eight months and a half before his untimely death. We were having lunch: bread, cheese, salami. I had finished mine; Oscar had not touched his. He preferred absinthe. ‘It makes the heart grow fonder,’ he said, smiling and pressing his hand over mine.

Oscar Wilde and I were not lovers, but we were the best of friends. We met in Paris in the spring of 1883, when I was young and idolatrous and he was on the brink of becoming the literary sensation of the age. I was flattered by his friendship (I was twenty-one at the time), charmed by his generosity (Oscar was a profligate spender), and overwhelmed by the brilliance of his intellect and his way with words. From the day of our first encounter I kept a journal of our times together. In due course, I published
Oscar Wilde: The Story of an Unhappy Friendship
(1902) and
The Life of Oscar Wilde
(1906). In 1900 I hoped to publish the tale of Oscar Wilde and the Nest of Vipers.

‘It is an extraordinary story, Oscar,’ I said. ‘Lurid, bizarre.’

‘I don’t recall, Robert.’

‘You must,’ I persisted. ‘It’s only ten years ago. If I write it up now and get it published, we can share the proceeds. You are in want of funds, Oscar.’

‘That I do recall.’ My friend laughed and gazed into his refilled glass of absinthe.

‘Think how much Arthur Conan Doyle is making with Sherlock Holmes,’ I continued, pressing home my advantage. ‘He gets a pound a word, I’m told.’

Oscar swirled the green-gold liquid in his glass. ‘I’ve not seen Arthur in a year and he rarely writes. I think he regards my condition as pathological. He pities me: he does not condemn. He is a decent fellow. You know that he has a sick wife to whom he is devoted and a young friend who is the love of his life – and they are not the same person. That is a difficulty for a gentleman like Arthur.’

‘Arthur is part of the story, of course. That will add to its allure.’

Oscar put down his glass and looked towards me steadily, a sudden gleam in his watery eyes. ‘You cannot publish the story, Robert. Not in your lifetime. Not in my lifetime. Not in the lifetime of the Prince of Wales. Nor for a hundred years thereafter. You know that.’

‘You see,’ I said, smiling. ‘You do remember.’

‘I remember nothing,’ he insisted. ‘But I do know that you can’t disguise the Prince of Wales as the Prince of Carpathia or Bohemia or some such nonsense. That’s what Conan Doyle does and Conan Doyle is writing fiction – while this is fact, is it not?’

‘Yes, that’s what makes it so remarkable. It is a murder mystery and yet it’s fact, beyond dispute. I have gathered all the papers – the cuttings, the correspondence. Arthur will allow us to quote from his journals. I have LaSalle’s diary and Bram’s letters – and even one of the policeman’s notebooks. I have included the telegrams from Marlborough House. It’s all here.’

From the floor beneath my chair I produced a foolscap file, two inches deep.

Oscar was laughing at me now and, at the same time, lighting one of his favourite Turkish cigarettes. ‘You cannot publish, Robert.’

‘Who is to stop me?’

‘In England? The courts.’

‘And here? In France? In America? Doyle was paid ten thousand dollars for his last book.’

Oscar blew a thin plume of blue smoke into the air and grinned. ‘Indeed. I had heard it wasn’t very good.’

‘I have all the papers,’ I bleated, ‘in chronological order.’

‘I am sure that you do, my dear friend. Chronology has always been one of your longer suits. Keep the papers safe.’

‘I have done that,’ I said, tapping my file of foolscap with my forefinger. ‘But I need your help, Oscar. I need to provide a linking narrative.’

‘Oh no, Robert. Spare us the linking narrative! Present your evidence, lay out your material in chronological order, and leave it at that. Let the facts speak for themselves.’

‘In that case,’ I said, sliding the file across the table towards my friend, ‘the book is done. Here they are – the facts. Make of them what you will.’

Oscar stubbed out his cigarette on a small circle of salami and sat forward to look me in the eye. ‘You are proposing that I should read this material, Robert?’

‘I am, Oscar – if you would be so kind.’

‘It is a true story, you say?’

‘It is – and you are part of it.’

‘And you wish me to read it? Today? This very afternoon? When Dante calls and Baudelaire lies waiting?’

‘Yes, Oscar, today – this very afternoon. Dante and Baudelaire will still be here tomorrow.’

‘In that case, Robert,’ he said, his fingers slowly untying the red ribbon around the file, ‘I’ll succumb to the temptation. Fetch me one more glass of absinthe,
mon ami
, and I will begin. As I remember nothing, the story will at least have the charm of the unexpected.’

Grosvenor Square London, 1890

1

T
O HAVE THE HONOUR OF MEETING

T
HEIR
R
OYAL
H
IGHNESSES

T
HE
P
RINCE OF
W
ALES AND
P
RINCE
A
LBERT
V
ICTOR

T
HE
D
UCHESS OF
A
LBEMARLE
A
T
H
OME
T
HURSDAY
, 13
TH
M
ARCH

RSVP

T
EN O’CLOCK

40 G
ROSVENOR
S
QUARE
, L
ONDON
W.

D
ECORATIONS

2
From the
Daily Chronicle
, first edition, Friday, 14 March 1890