For some time nothing seemed to do me any good, but soon an unexpected change came in my fortunes, which had the most salutary influence on my health. I shall tell all about it in another chapter.
It was just when I lost the Fortnightly, in the middle of 1895, that the tragedy of Oscar Wilde came to a head.
I have already told the story in my Life of Wilde as carefully as I could and in full possession of the facts and notes taken at the tune. Bernard Shaw has said that at a lunch with Oscar, at which he was present at the Cafe Royal, I told Oscar the results of his trials beforehand with such astonishing accuracy that Shaw marveled at it later. I really think my years of journalism and the Dilke trial and my personal acquaintance with judges and politicians had taught me to know England and the dominant English opinion very intimately.
Oscar, though bred and brought up in it, had no understanding of it at all. He always felt sure he would get off with a minimum sentence. I knew he would get the maximum penalty, and insult and contumely to boot, from the judge and the press. The whole of the English judicial system is loathsome to me in its barbarous harshness; but what I never understood until this trial was that the ordinary English gentleman would behave just as vilely as the judge. For some time before his trial, even Englishmen of a good class who had known him cut Wilde in public, and even before he was condemned, George Alexander erased his name from the advertisements of his play, while still profiting by keeping the play on the stage. The hatred shown to Oscar Wilde taught me for the first time what Shakespeare meant when he spoke of this 'all-hating world.' Ladies and gentlemen are ashamed of showing reverence and affection in public, but none of them are ashamed of showing disdain, contempt, and hatred- the little human animal is always proud of exhibiting his worst side out of vanity.
I had no power on the Fortnightly Review when Oscar was condemned, and his trial took place just before I got the Saturday Review, so I had no organ at my command. I tried to write something suggesting a moderate sentence, but I couldn't get the article taken anywhere. Here was a brilliant man, one of the best talkers in the world, who had given hundreds of people hours of delightful amusement, and yet everyone seemed glad to show contempt for him; and the judge who went out of his way to insult him was applauded on all hands.
I found out from Ruggles-Brise, the head of the Prison Commission, that if I could get half a dozen literary men of position to pray the Home Secretary to make Oscar's imprisonment a little easier for him by allowing him to read and to have a light in his cell at night, the petition would be granted. I made the petition as colorless as possible and asked Meredith to sign it, but he would not. I could never understand why. Shaw, too, begged to be excused; but Meredith's refusal really shocked me because I had come to believe him one of the Immortals. But in truth everyone was down on Oscar in the most astonishing way.
A couple of incidents that occurred after he came out of prison, after he had purged his guilt by terrible sufferings, will illustrate just what I mean.
I was dining with Oscar Wilde as my guest at the Cafe Durand one night in Paris, when a certain English lord whom I knew came over to me with a smiling face; as soon as he saw my companion he stopped and exclaimed,
'Good God!' and turned abruptly to the door and went out. I happened to be going up in the lift at the Ritz Hotel a day or two later when he came into the lift at the second floor; at once he greeted me saying: 'I am so sorry for the other day, Harris, but when I saw whom you were with, I couldn't possibly speak to you: fancy going about with that man in public.'
'I know,' I said, 'there are not many Immortals; I don't wonder you don't want to know them; but why not forget me, too; it would be better, don't you think?' and I turned away and began talking to the lift-man.
Worse still happened to us in Nice. I had taken Oscar to the old Cafe de La Regence and we were dining there when an Englishman came in with a lady.
He stopped near the table and stared at Oscar, then took a seat at the next table behind us, saying in a loud voice to his companion:
'Do you know who that is, that infamous Oscar Wilde; fancy his showing himself in public.'
Oscar's face blanched; I had already seen that a heavy glass pitcher of water was within the reach of my hand. If the man had said one word more, I would have smashed his face with the pitcher. I turned to him and said: 'Your rudeness can be heard; any more of it and you'll be sorry. Now you had better go to another room.' Fortunately, at that moment the manager came in, and I appealed to him; he knew me well and told the man he would not be served and asked him to leave the place. The pair had to go. Oscar was trembling from head to foot.
'Good God, Frank,' he cried, 'how dreadful; why do they hate me so; what harm have I ever done them?'
'Think of a London fog,' I replied; 'it prevents them seeing clearly; don't bother about them: didn't Shakespeare call it this 'all-hating world'?'
Many years later I was to find out what the 'all-hating world' could do to show its dislike of me!
CHAPTER XIII
In my second volume I published a long account of the gluttony at the Lord Mayors' banquets in London, and especially of the bestial conduct of the most celebrated mayor that the city of London ever had-Sir Robert Fowler.
In the last chapter of this volume I shall tell how the English objected to this and tried to get my books stopped in France through the police.
I have no wish to denigrate the English. When I returned to London in '80-'81, they were kinder to me than the Americans were when I went to New York with an established reputation in 1914. Many individual Englishmen, in the thirty-odd years I spent in London, became dear friends of mine: and one in especial-Ernest Beckett, Lord Grimthorpe-I shall have much to tell about later. He was the best friend, except Professor Smith of Lawrence, that I have met on this earthly pilgrimage, but some Englishmen and English women, too, are friends of mine to this hour. Still, I am resolved, as one of God's spies, to tell the exact truth about them as I see it.
I don't know how I became a member of the National Sporting Club, but I was always greatly interested in athletics. I may here say a word about perfect physical condition to convince the athlete that I know what I am talking about. From thirty to forty in London I had a professional to box with me for half an hour every morning. When I was perfectly fit, my hand used to strike before I consciously saw the opening: as soon as I saw the opening before I struck I knew I was out of condition. The unconscious action should be quicker than the conscious.
In the late eighties and early nineties, I went to the Sporting Club a couple of times a week. Just as I found that my idea of a good dinner was not shared by those who partook of the Lord Mayors' banquets, so I found that my idea of fair play was not that of the majority of the Sporting Club in London.
I remember well one evening in which two lightweights, boys apparently of twenty or twenty-three, were boxing. In the third or fourth round, one of them caught a heavy blow on the chin and staggered about the ring, grasping at the ropes, and missing them, fell down. The referee began the solemn:
'One-two-three-,' but before the fatal ten had been announced, the boy had staggered to his feet, only immediately to be knocked down again. I happened to be sitting just below the judge. I got up in my excitement and said, 'Oh, please, won't you stop the fight! He has no chance: he may be severely injured by the next blow; please stop it!'
'I have no right to,' replied the judge; and a moment later the cry went up,
'Knock him out, knock him out!' The victor struck the boy a heavy blow and laid him out on the floor for much more than the count of ten. I couldn't help crying out, 'Disgraceful, shameless cruelty.' A certain lord near me jumped up and cried, 'I don't know you, Sir, and don't want to, but keep your opinions to yourself. We want to see a fight to a finish here and not to be interrupted in the middle by your childish opinions.'
I could not help laughing: his indignation was so intense and so sincere. 'Vae victis,' I said; ''woe to the beaten, woe to the unsuccessful' should be the motto of Englishmen.'
'And a damned good motto, too,' exclaimed another man.
