Oscar Wilde and the Nest of Vipers (3 page)

HRH the Prince of Wales honoured the Duke and Duchess of Albemarle with his presence last night at a reception at Their Graces’ London residence, 40 Grosvenor Square, W. HRH Prince Albert Victor, newly returned from India, accompanied his father. General Sir Dighton Probyn VC, treasurer and comptroller of His Royal Highness’s household, and Mr Harry Tyrwhitt Wilson, equerry, were in attendance.

Among the many guests, representing the worlds of art and science, were Lord Leighton, President of the Royal Academy, and Sir George Stokes, President of the Royal Society, as well as such notabilities as Professor Jean-Martin Charcot from the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, Lord Yarborough, the physician and nerve specialist, Mr Oscar Wilde, the poet, and Dr Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the popular detective, ‘Sherlock Holmes’.

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From the notebooks of Robert Sherard

O
scar contrived to secure me an invitation to the Albemarle reception. I was, he told the Duchess, his ‘confidential secretary’. ‘If the Prince of Wales can come with a whole entourage – son, comptroller, equerry, valet, footmen – can a prince of words not be permitted an attendant scribe? Your beauty, Your Grace, may inspire a sonnet. I will need someone on hand to note it down.’

Her Grace obliged.

All evening Oscar was at his most ebullient. As we arrived, and he handed his hat and coat to the butler, he said to the poor man, ‘Oh, Pierre, my usual table, if you please – away from the draughts and as far from the orchestra as possible.’ When we were greeted by our hostess – an exquisitely beautiful young woman with huge eyes and a porcelain complexion – Oscar permitted her to kiss him full on the mouth and presented me to her saying, ‘She is lovelier than a lily, is she not? She is Helen, late of Troy, now of Grosvenor Square.’

When we were presented to the Prince of Wales, Oscar was more circumspect, but only somewhat. I have always understood that with royalty one does
not initiate a conversation: one waits to be spoken to. If that is the rule, Oscar ignored it. After he had bowed low before the prince, he stood at his side, towering over him, chatting away as though he and His Royal Highness were two old chums who had chanced to meet up for a drink before dinner at the club.

Where was the dear Princess of Wales?

In Denmark, visiting her parents.

Was she well? Oscar
so
hoped so. And how was the Queen? ‘How
is
Her Majesty?’ purred Oscar.

‘Seventy and more robust than ever,’ answered the prince drily. ‘The air on the Isle of Wight appears to suit her. She goes from strength to strength.’

‘I am happy to hear it,’ Oscar murmured. ‘We are all indebted to the Eternal Father. Your Royal Highness has the better of us. You are blessed with the eternal mother.’

The prince clapped his hands together and laughed out loud. ‘I like that, Oscar. I like that very much. I’ll borrow that, if I may.’

Oscar bowed obligingly as the prince’s barking laugh turned into a wheezing cough. His equerry stepped forward and relieved the prince of his cigar. His Royal Highness fumbled for a handkerchief.

‘And are you well, sir?’ asked Oscar, solicitously.

‘Mustn’t complain,’ spluttered the prince.

He is not yet fifty, but he looks much older. He has deep lines on his forehead and heavy bags beneath his eyes. He is fat and his hands shake.

‘If I may say so, sir, you are looking remarkably well,’ Oscar declared. Impertinently, he added: ‘I believe that
an inordinate passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young.’

‘If you say so, Oscar,’ replied the prince, pocketing his handkerchief and retrieving his cigar from the equerry. ‘You say a lot of clever things.’

I said nothing. When Oscar had presented me to the heir apparent, I was offered a cursory nod of the princely head, but that was all. His Royal Highness neither addressed me nor looked again in my direction. His focus was entirely on Oscar. Oscar commands attention. And Oscar and the prince are well acquainted. According to Oscar, you cannot say they are friends. ‘Royalties offer you friendliness, not friendship.’ However, they have known one another for a number of years, since the late 1870s when Oscar, then in his early twenties, floated down from Oxford to be taken up by London society.

They met first, I believe, in Lowndes Square, at a tea party of Lady Sebright’s, where the novelty of the afternoon was a demonstration of ‘thought-reading’ performed by the celebrated Professor Onofroff. They were last together in December just past at another of Professor Onofroff’s interesting demonstrations. According to Oscar, the prince is a student of thought reading. His Royal Highness is better known, of course, as a student of feminine beauty and, in the early days, the bond that really bound them was their mutual admiration for the matchless Mrs Lillie Langtry.

Oscar appeared to be reading the royal mind. ‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety,’ he said, apparently out of the blue. ‘I hear Mrs Langtry is to play Cleopatra next.’

‘How did you know I was just thinking about Mrs Langtry?’ demanded the prince.

‘Because whenever we meet, Your Royal Highness, we speak of the Jersey Lily. Besides, if I am not mistaken, Your Highness went to the St James’s Theatre to see her give her Rosalind last night.’

The Prince of Wales drew on his cigar and looked at Oscar suspiciously. ‘Remarkable. A moment ago Conan Doyle was telling me you’d turned detective – and here you are proving it. I did indeed see Mrs Langtry give her Rosalind last night and very fine she was too. But how did you deduce that?’

‘I didn’t. I read it in the court circular this morning,’ replied Oscar, smiling.

‘Ah, yes, of course,’ mumbled the prince, momentarily thrown. He glanced about the room and nodded in the direction of Arthur Conan Doyle who was standing not far away, engaged in earnest conversation with General Sir Dighton Probyn. ‘Conan Doyle’s a good man. Solid. Improbable as it sounds, he tells me that you have the makings of a proper Sherlock Holmes. He has sent me his new story. It’s even better than the first. Sherlock Holmes is a masterly creation.’

The prince was now shifting from one foot to the other. It was evident that our audience was drawing to a close.

‘You’ve a new book coming, haven’t you, Oscar? You’ll send it to me, won’t you? I want a first edition, mind.’

‘As Your Royal Highness pleases,’ said Oscar, with a modest bow, adding, as we backed away from the heir
apparent, ‘It is, of course, the second editions of my books that are the true rarities.’

The prince laughed amiably, raised a valedictory hand to Oscar and then, briskly, turned towards his equerry who was ushering Lord Yarborough and Sir George Stokes into the royal presence.

‘I need a glass of champagne, Robert,’ said Oscar, as soon as we had removed ourselves from the princely orbit. ‘Would you be an angel and fetch me one?’ He stood in contemplation for a moment, his eyes scanning the crowd. ‘Arthur’s in his element,’ he murmured, smiling.

Dr Conan Doyle was now on the far side of the drawing room, standing on tiptoes, eagerly, at the outer edge of a circle of guests gathered about a small, stout, square-faced foreigner. The gentleman in question was clearly a foreigner: he was incorrectly attired – in a black frock-coat rather than evening dress – and wore his silver hair long at the back and heavily oiled. He was holding court, his right hand tucked firmly inside his coat-front in the manner of the late Napoleon Bonaparte, his left held out before him dramatically as if to arrest an oncoming train.

‘C’est le professeur Jean-Martin Charcot
,’ explained Oscar, ‘the great French physician, the “Napoleon of neuroses”.’ He laughed. ‘He clearly has Arthur mesmerised.’

‘Do you know him?’

‘I saw him on stage at the Lyceum once, demonstrating his mesmeric powers. He holds your attention, but he doesn’t make you laugh. Unlike Prince Eddy.’

Oscar’s amused gaze had now fallen on the dapper
figure of Prince Albert Victor, the Prince of Wales’s eldest son. The young prince was standing a few feet away from Professor Charcot’s admirers, in the doorway to the ballroom. He was surrounded by wide-eyed, giggling women and obsequious, guffawing men.

‘Now His Royal Highness should be on the stage. Look, Robert. As he tells his story, he is actually twirling his moustaches like a pantomime villain!’

‘He looks remarkably swarthy,’ I said, ‘not at all as I expected.’

‘Do you not read the papers? He is newly returned from India. He has been doing his duty, polishing the jewel in the Queen Empress’s crown.’

‘I hope you are going to present me to His Royal Highness?’ I said.

‘No, Robert. You are far too young.’

‘I am older than the prince.’

‘In years, possibly, not in experience. The boy is all corruption. It’s well known – and plain to see. Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s face. It cannot be concealed.’

Oscar turned away from Prince Eddy and his fawning entourage and surveyed the drawing room once more. ‘When you have found our champagne,’ he said, eventually, ‘you will find me over there, Robert, by the fireplace, with that young man. He has no one to laugh at his jokes and he has rather caught my fancy. He has no sinister moustache and the most perfect profile, don’t you think?’

Standing before the fireplace, alone, was a slender youth – tall, elegant, with a pale face and hooded eyes.
In his buttonhole he wore an amaryllis, Oscar’s favourite flower. His head was held high, with a cultivated arrogance. With one hand he was brushing back his jet-black hair. With the other he held a Turkish cigarette to his highly coloured lips.

‘Do you know him?’ I asked.

‘A little,’ answered Oscar. ‘I should like to know him better.’

‘You have met him?’

‘Once, just a few days ago. By chance. I came home and found him outside my house, standing in the street, looking up at the windows. It was gone midnight. He said he just happened to be passing, taking an evening stroll, but I think he sought me out. He is an “admirer”. He knows all about me. He told me that his ambition is the same as mine – to be famous or, if not famous, at least notorious.’

‘What is his name?’ I enquired.

‘Rex LaSalle,’ said Oscar. ‘He comes from the Channel Islands – like you and Lillie Langtry. He shares my birthday, the sixteenth of October. But he’s your sort of age, I think. Twenty-seven, twenty-eight.’

‘He looks younger.’

‘Indeed.’

‘What does he do?’

‘By day, very little, it seems. He sleeps during the hours of light, apparently. He claims to be an actor – and an artist, a painter of sorts, but I’ve not seen any of his work. I have my doubts.’

‘And by night?’

‘By night? Oh, by night, he claims to be a vampire.’

I looked towards the beautiful young man with
the perfect profile, drawing slowly on his Turkish cigarette.

Oscar continued: ‘I agree, Robert. He had already caught my attention. There was no need for that.’

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From the diary of Rex LaSalle