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The Portrait Of Mr W H
by
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
( First published in 1889, in Blackwood's
magazine, and later expanded.)
I had been dining with Erskine in his pretty little house in Birdcage Walk,
and we were sitting in the library over our coffee and cigarettes, when
the question of literary forgeries happened to turn up in conversation.
I cannot at present remember how it was that we struck upon this somewhat
curious topic, as it was at that time, but I know that we had a long discussion
about Macpherson, Ireland, and Chatterton, and that with regard to the last
I insisted that his so-called forgeries were merely the result of an artistic
desire for perfect representation; that we had no right to quarrel with
an artist for the conditions under which he chooses to present his work;
and that all Art being to a certain degree a mode of acting, an attempt
to realise one's own personality on some imaginative plane out of reach
of the trammelling accidents and limitations of real life, to censure an
artist for a forgery was to confuse an ethical with an æsthetical
problem.
Erskine, who was a good deal older than I was, and had been listening to
me with the amused deference of a man of forty, suddenly put his hand upon
my shoulder and said to me "What would you say about a young man who
had a strange theory about a certain work of art, believed in his theory,
and committed a forgery in order to prove it?"
"Ah! that is quite a different matter," I answered.
Erskine remained silent for a few moments, looking at the thin grey threads
of smoke that were rising from his cigarette. "Yes," he said,
after a pause, "quite different."
There was something in the tone of his voice, a slight touch of bitterness
perhaps, that excited my curiosity. "Did you ever know anybody who
did that?" I cried.
"Yes," he answered, throwing his cigarette into the fire, - "a
great friend of mine, Cyril Graham. He was very fascinating, and very foolish,
and very heartless. However, he left me the only legacy I ever received
in my life."
"What was that?" I exclaimed. Erskine rose from his seat, and
going over to a tall inlaid cabinet that stood between the two windows,
unlocked it, and came back to where I was sitting, holding in his hand a
small panel picture set in an old and somewhat tarnished Elizabethan frame.
It was a full-length portrait of a young man in late sixteenth-century costume,
standing by a table, with his right hand resting on an open book. He seemed
about seventeen years of age, and was of quite extraordinary personal beauty,
though evidently somewhat effeminate. Indeed, had it not been for the dress
and the closely cropped hair, one would have said that the face, with its
dreamy wistful eyes, and its delicate scarlet lips, was the face of a girl.
In manner, and especially in the treatment of the hands, the picture reminded
one of Francois Clouet's later work. The black velvet doublet with its fantastically
gilded points, and the peacock-blue background against which it showed up
so pleasantly, and from which it gained such luminous value of colour, were
quite in Clouet's style; and the two masks of Tragedy and Comedy that hung
somewhat formally from the marble pedestal had that hard severity of touch
- so different from the facile grace of the Italians - which even at the
Court of France the great Flemish master never completely lost, and which
in itself has always been a characteristic of the northern temper.
"It is a charming thing," I cried; "but who is this wonderful
young man, whose beauty Art has so happily preserved for us?"
"This is the portrait of Mr W H," said Erskine, with a sad smile.
It might have been a chance effect of light, but it seemed to me that his
eyes were quite bright with tears.
"Mr W H!" I exclaimed; "who was Mr W H?"
"Don't you remember?" he answered; "look at the book on which
his hand is resting."
"I see there is some writing there, but I cannot make it out,"
I replied.
"Take this magnifying-glass and try," said Erskine, with the same
sad smile still playing about his mouth.
I took the glass, and moving the lamp a little nearer, I began to spell
out the crabbed sixteenth-century handwriting. "To the onlie begetter
of these insuing sonnets." . . . "Good heavens!" I cried,
"is this Shakespeare's Mr W H?"
"Cyril Graham used to say so," muttered Erskine.
"But it is not a bit like Lord Pembroke," I answered. "I
know the Penshurst portraits very well. I was staying near there a few weeks
ago."
"Do you really believe then that the Sonnets are addressed to Lord
Pembroke?" he asked.
"I am sure of it," I answered. "Pembroke, Shakespeare, and
Mrs Mary Fitton are the three personages of the Sonnets; there is no doubt
at all about it."
"Well, I agree with you," said Erskine, "but I did not always
think so. I used to believe well, I suppose I used to believe in Cyril Graham
and his theory."
"And what was that?" I asked, looking at the wonderful portrait,
which had already begun to have a strange fascination for me.
"It is a long story," said Erskine, taking the picture away from
me rather abruptly I thought at the time - "a very long story; but
if you care to hear it, I will tell it to you."
"I love theories about the Sonnets," I cried; "but I don't
think I am likely to be converted to any new idea. The matter has ceased
to be a mystery to any one. Indeed, I wonder that it ever was a mystery."
"As I don't believe in the theory, I am not likely to convert you to
it," said Erskine, laughing; "but it may interest you."
"Tell it to me, of course," I answered. "If it is half as
delightful as the picture, I shall be more than satisfied."
"Well," said Erskine, lighting a cigarette, "I must begin
by telling you about Cyril Graham himself. He and I were at the same house
at Eton. I was a year or two older than he was, but we were immense friends,
and did all our work and all our play together. There was, of course, a
good deal more play than work, but I cannot say that I am sorry for that.
It is always an advantage not to have received a sound commercial education,
and what I learned in the playing fields at Eton has been quite as useful
to me as anything I was taught at Cambridge. I should tell you that Cyril's
father and mother were both dead. They had been drowned in a horrible yachting
accident off the Isle of Wight. His father had been in the diplomatic service,
and had married a daughter, the only daughter, in fact, of old Lord Crediton,
who became Cyril's guardian after the death of his parents. I don't think
that Lord Crediton cared very much for Cyril. He had never really forgiven
his daughter for marrying a man who had not a title. He was an extraordinary
old aristocrat, who swore like a coster-monger, and had the manners of a
farmer. I remember seeing him once on Speech-day. He growled at me, gave
me a sovereign, and told me not to grow up 'a damned Radical' like my father.
Cyril had very little affection for him, and was only too glad to spend
most of his holidays with us in Scotland. They never really got on together
at all. Cyril thought him a bear, and he thought Cyril effeminate. He was
effeminate, I suppose, in some things, though he was a very good rider and
a capital fencer. In fact he got the foils before he left Eton. But he was
very languid in his manner, and not a little vain of his good looks, and
had a strong objection to football. The two things that really gave him
pleasure were poetry and acting. At Eton he was always dressing up and reciting
Shakespeare, and when we went up to Trinity he became a member of the ADC
his first term. I remember I was always very jealous of his acting. I was
absurdly devoted to him; I suppose because we were so different in some
things. I was a rather awkward, weakly lad, with huge feet, and horribly
freckled. Freckles run in Scotch families just as gout does in English families.
Cyril used to say that of the two he preferred the gout; but he always set
an absurdly high value on personal appearance, and once read a paper before
our debating society to prove that it was better to be good-looking than
to be good. He certainly was wonderfully handsome. People who did not like
him, Philistines and college tutors, and young men reading for the Church,
used to say that he was merely pretty; but there was a great deal more in
his face than mere prettiness. I think he was the most splendid creature
I ever saw, and nothing could exceed the grace of his movements, the charm
of his manner. He fascinated everybody who was worth fascinating, and a
great many people who were not. He was often wilful and petulant, and I
used to think him dreadfully insincere. It was due, I think, chiefly to
his inordinate desire to please. Poor Cyril! I told him once that he was
contented with very cheap triumphs, but he only laughed. He was horribly
spoiled. All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of
their attraction.
"However, I must tell you about Cyril's acting. You know that no actresses
are allowed to play at the ADC. At least they were not in my time. I don't
know how it is now. Well, of course Cyril was always cast for the girls'
parts, and when As You Like It was produced he played Rosalind. It was a
marvellous performance. In fact, Cyril Graham was the only perfect Rosalind
I have ever seen. It would be impossible to describe to you the beauty,
the delicacy, the refinement of the whole thing. It made an immense sensation,
and the horrid little theatre, as it was then, was crowded every night.
Even when I read the play now I can't help thinking of Cyril. It might have
been written for him. The next term he took his degree, and came to London
to read for the diplomatic. But he never did any work. He spent his days
in reading Shakespeare's Sonnets, and his evenings at the theatre. He was,
of course, wild to go on the stage. It was all that I and Lord Crediton
could do to prevent him. Perhaps if he had gone on the stage he would be
alive now. It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice
is absolutely fatal. I hope you will never fall into that error. If you
do, you will be sorry for it.
"Well, to come to the real point of the story, one day I got a letter
from Cyril asking me to come round to his rooms that evening. He had charming
chambers in Piccadilly overlooking the Green Park, and as I used to go to
see him every day, I was rather surprised at his taking the trouble to write.
Of course I went, and when I arrived I found him in a state of great excitement.
He told me that he had at last discovered the true secret of Shakespeare's
Sonnets; that all the scholars and critics had been entirely on the wrong
tack; and that he was the first who, working purely by internal evidence,
had found out who Mr W H really was. He was perfectly wild with delight,
and for a long time would not tell me his theory. Finally, he produced a
bundle of notes, took his copy of the Sonnets off the mantelpiece, and sat
down and gave me a long lecture on the whole subject.
"He began by pointing out that the young man to whom Shakespeare addressed
these strangely passionate poems must have been somebody who was a really
vital factor in the development of his dramatic art, and that this could
not be said either of Lord Pembroke or Lord Southampton. Indeed, whoever
he was, he could not have been anybody of high birth, as was shown very
clearly by the 25th Sonnet, in which Shakespeare contrasts himself with
those who are 'great princes' favourites'; says quite frankly -
Let those who are in favour with their stars
Of public honour and proud titles boast,
Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars,
Unlook'd for Joy in that I honour most;
and ends the sonnet by congratulating himself on the mean state of him he
so adored:
Then happy I, that loved and am beloved
Where I may not remove nor be removed.
This sonnet Cyril declared would be quite uninteligible if we fancied that
it was addressed to either the Earl of Pembroke or the Earl of Southampton,
both of whom were men of the highest position in England and fully entitled
to be called 'great princes'; and he in corroboration of his view read me
Sonnets CXXIV and CXXV, in which Shakespeare tells us that his love is not
'the child of state', that it 'suffers not in smiling pomp', but is 'builded
far from accident'. I listened with a good deal of interest, for I don't
think the point had ever been made before; but what followed was still more
curious, and seemed to me at the time to entirely dispose of Pembroke's
claim. We know from Meres that the Sonnets had been written before 1598,
and Sonnet CIV informs us that Shakespeare's friendship for Mr W H had been
already in existence for three years. Now Lord Pembroke, who was born in
1580, did not come to London till he was eighteen years of age, that is
to say till 1598, and Shakespeare's acquaintance with Mr W H must have begun
in 1594, or at the latest in 1595. Shakespeare, accordingly, could not have
known Lord Pembroke till after the Sonnets had been written.
"Cyril pointed out also that Pembroke's father did not die till 1601;
whereas it was evident from the line,
You had a father, let your son say so,
that the father of Mr W H was dead in 1598. Besides, it was absurd to imagine
that any publisher of the time, and the preface is from the publisher's
hand, would have ventured to address William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke,
as Mr W H; the case of Lord Buckhurst being spoken of as Mr Sackville being
not really a parallel instance, as Lord Buckhurst was not a peer, but merely
the younger son of a peer, with a courtesy title, and the passage in England's
Parnassus where he is so spoken of, is not a formal and stately dedication,
but simply a casual allusion. So far for Lord Pembroke, whose supposed claims
Cyril easily demolished while I sat by in wonder. With Lord Southampton
Cyril had even less difficulty. Southampton became at a very early age the
lover of Elizabeth Vernon, so he needed no entreaties to marry; he was not
beautiful; he did not resemble his mother, as Mr W H did -
Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime;
and, above all, his Christian name was Henry, whereas the punning sonnets
(CXXXV and CXLIII) show that the Christian name of Shakespeare's friend
was the same as his own - Will.
"As for the other suggestions of unfortunate commentators, that Mr
W H is a misprint for Mr W S, meaning Mr William Shakespeare; that 'Mr W
H all' should be read 'Mr W Hall'; that Mr W H is Mr William Hathaway; and
that a full stop should be placed after 'wisheth', making Mr W H the writer
and not the subject of the dedication - Cyril got rid of them in a very
short time; and it is not worth while to mention his reasons, though I remember
he sent me off into a fit of laughter by reading to me, I am glad to say
not in the original, some extracts from a German commentator called Barnstorff,
who insisted that Mr W H was no less a person than 'Mr William Himself'.
Nor would he allow for a moment that the Sonnets are mere satires on the
work of Drayton and John Davies of Hereford. To him, as indeed to me, they
were poems of serious and tragic import, wrung out of the bitterness of
Shakespeare's heart, and made sweet by the honey of his lips. Still less
would he admit that they were merely a philosophical allegory, and that
in them Shakespeare is addressing his Ideal Self, or Ideal Manhood, or the
Spirit of Beauty, or the Reason, or the Divine Logos, or the Catholic Church.
He felt, as indeed I think we all must feel, that the Sonnets are addressed
to an individual, - to a particular young man whose personality for some
reason seems to have filled the soul of Shakespeare with terrible joy and
no less terrible despair.
"Having in this manner cleared the way as it were, Cyril asked me to
dismiss from my mind any preconceived ideas I might have formed on the subject,
and to give a fair and unbiased hearing to his own theory. The problem he
pointed out was this: Who was that young man of Shakespeare's day who, without
being of noble birth or even of noble nature, was addressed by him in terms
of such passionate adoration that we can but wonder at the strange worship,
and are almost afraid to turn the key that unlocks the mystery of the poet's
heart? Who was he whose physical beauty was such that it became the very
corner-stone of Shakespeare's art; the very source of Shakespeare's inspiration;
the very incarnation of Shakespeare's dreams? To look upon him as simply
the object of certain love-poems is to miss the whole meaning of the poems:
for the art of which Shakespeare talks in the Sonnets is not the art of
the Sonnets themselves, which indeed were to him but slight and secret things
- it is the art of the dramatist to which he is always alluding; and he
to whom Shakespeare said -
Thou art all my art, and dost advance
As high as learning my rude ignorance,
he to whom he promised immortality,
Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men,
was surely none other than the boy-actor for whom he created Viola and Imogen,
Juliet and Rosalind, Portia and Desdemona, and Cleopatra herself. This was
Cyril Graham's theory, evolved as you see purely from the Sonnets themselves,
and depending for its acceptance not so much on demonstrable proof or formal
evidence, but on a kind of spiritual and artistic sense, by which alone
he claimed could the true meaning of the poems be discerned. I remember
his reading to me that fine sonnet -
How can my Muse want subject to invent,
While thou dost breathe, that pour'st into my verse
Thine own sweet argument, too excellent
For every vulgar paper to rehearse?
O, give thyself the thanks, if aught in me
Worthy perusal stand against thy sight;
For who's so dumb that cannot write to thee,
When thou thyself dost give invention light?
Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth
Than those old nine which rhymers invocate;
And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth
Eternal numbers to outlive long date
and pointing out how completely it corroborated his theory; and indeed he
went through all the Sonnets carefully, and showed, or fancied that he showed,
that, according to his new explanation of their meaning, things that had
seemed obscure, or evil, or exaggerated, became clear and rational, and
of high artistic import, illustrating Shakespeare's conception of the true
relations between the art of the actor and the art of the dramatist.
"It is of course evident that there must have been in Shakespeare's
company some wonderful boy-actor of great beauty, to whom he intrusted the
presentation of his noble heroines; for Shakespeare was a practical theatrical
manager as well as an imaginative poet, and Cyril Graham had actually discovered
the boy-actor's name. He was Will, or, as he preferred to call him, Willie
Hughes. The Christian name he found of course in the punning sonnets, CXXXV
and CXLIII; the surname was, according to him, hidden in the eighth line
of the 20th Sonnet, where Mr W H is described as -
A man in hew, all Hews in his controwling.
"In the original edition of the Sonnets 'Hews' is printed with a capital
letter and in italics, and this, he claimed, showed clearly that a play
on words was intended, his view receiving a good deal of corroboration from
those sonnets in which curious puns are made on the words 'use' and 'usury'.
Of course I was converted at once, and Willie Hughes became to me as real
a person as Shakespeare. The only objection I made to the theory was that
the name of Willie Hughes does not occur in the list of the actors of Shakespeare's
company as it is printed in the first folio. Cyril, however, pointed out
that the absence of Willie Hughes's name from this list really corroborated
the theory, as it was evident from Sonnet LXXXVI that Willie Hughes had
abandoned Shakespeare's company to play at a rival theatre, probably in
some of Chapman's plays. It is in reference to this that in the great sonnet
on Chapman Shakespeare said to Willie Hughes -
But when your countenance filed up his line,
Then lacked I matter; that enfeebled mine
the expression 'when your countenance filled up his line' referring obviously
to the beauty of the young actor giving life and reality and added charm
to Chapman's verse, the same idea being also put forward in the 79th Sonnet
-
Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid,
My verse alone had all thy gentle grace,
But now my gracious numbers are decayed,
And my sick Muse does give another place;
and in the immediately preceding sonnet, where Shakespeare says,
Every alien pen has got my use
And under thee their poesy disperse,
the play upon words (use = Hughes) being of course obvious, and the phrase
'under thee their poesy disperse', meaning 'by your assistance as an actor
bring their plays before the people'.
"It was a wonderful evening, and we sat up almost till dawn reading
and re-reading the Sonnets. After some time, however, I began to see that
before the theory could be placed before the world in a really perfected
form, it was necessary to get some independent evidence about the existence
of this young actor, Willie Hughes. If this could be once established, there
could be no possible doubt about his identity with Mr W H; but otherwise
the theory would fall to the ground. I put this forward very strongly to
Cyril, who was a good deal annoyed at what he called my Philistine tone
of mind, and indeed was rather bitter upon the subject. However, I made
him promise that in his own interest he would not publish his discovery
till he had put the whole matter beyond the reach of doubt; and for weeks
and weeks we searched the registers of City churches, the Alleyn MSS at
Dulwich, the Record Office, the papers of the Lord Chamberlain - everything,
in fact, that we thought might contain some allusion to Willie Hughes. We
discovered nothing, of course, and every day the existence of Willie Hughes
seemed to me to become more problematical. Cyril was in a dreadful state,
and used to go over the whole question day after day, entreating me to believe;
but I saw the one flaw in the theory, and I refused to be convinced till
the actual existence of Willie Hughes, a boy-actor of Elizabethan days,
had been placed beyond the reach of doubt or cavil.
"One day Cyril left town to stay with his grandfather, I thought at
the time, but I afterwards heard from Lord Crediton that this was not the
case; and about a fortnight afterwards I received a telegram from him, handed
in at Warwick, asking me to be sure to come and dine with him that evening
at eight o'clock. When I arrived, he said to me, 'The only apostle who did
not deserve proof was S Thomas, and S Thomas was the only apostle who got
it.' I asked him what he meant. He answered that he had not merely been
able to establish the existence in the sixteenth century of a boy-actor
of the name of Willie Hughes, but to prove by the most conclusive evidence
that he was the Mr W H of the Sonnets. He would not tell me anything more
at the time; but after dinner he solemnly produced the picture I showed
you, and told me that he had discovered it by the merest chance nailed to
the side of an old chest that he had bought at a farmhouse in Warwickshire.
The chest itself, which was a very fine example of Elizabethan work, he
had, of course, brought with him, and in the centre of the front panel the
initials W H were undoubtedly carved. It was this monogram that had attracted
his attention, and he told me that it was not till he had had the chest
in his possession for several days that he had thought of making any careful
examination of the inside. One morning, however, he saw that one of the
sides of the chest was much thicker than the other, and looking more closely,
he discovered that a framed panel picture was clamped against it. On taking
it out, he found it was the picture that is now lying on the sofa. It was
very dirty, and covered with mould; but he managed to clean it, and, to
his great joy, saw that he had fallen by mere chance on the one thing for
which he had been looking. Here was an authentic portrait of Mr W H, with
his hand resting on the dedicatory page of the Sonnets, and on the frame
itself could be faintly seen the name of the young man written in black
uncial letters on a faded gold ground, 'Master Will. Hews'.
"Well, what was I to say? It never occurred to me for a moment that
Cyril Graham was playing a trick on me, or that he was trying to prove his
theory by means of a forgery."
"But is it a forgery?" I asked.
"Of course it is," said Erskine. "It is a very good forgery;
but it is a forgery none the less. I thought at the time that Cyril was
rather calm about the whole matter; but I remember he more than once told
me that he himself required no proof of the kind, and that he thought the
theory complete without it. I laughed at him, and told him that without
it the theory would fall to the ground, and I warmly congratulated him on
the marvellous discovery. We then arranged that the picture should be etched
or facsimiled, and placed as the frontispiece to Cyril's edition of the
Sonnets; and for three months we did nothing but go over each poem line
by line, till we had settled every difficulty of text or meaning. One unlucky
day I was in a print-shop in Holborn, when I saw upon the counter some extremely
beautiful drawings in silver-point. I was so attracted by them that I bought
them; and the proprietor of the place, a man called Rawlings, told me that
they were done by a young painter of the name of Edward Merton, who was
very clever, but as poor as a church mouse. I went to see Merton some days
afterwards, having got his address from the printseller, and found a pale,
interesting young man, with a rather common-looking wife - his model, as
I subsequently learned. I told him how much I admired his drawings, at which
he seemed very pleased, and I asked him if he would show me some of his
other work. As we were looking over a portfolio, full of really lovely things,
- for Merton had a most delicate and delightful touch, - I suddenly caught
sight of a drawing of the picture of Mr W H. There was no doubt whatever
about it. It was almost a facsimile - the only difference being that the
two masks of Tragedy and Comedy were not suspended from the marble table
as they are in the picture, but were lying on the floor at the young man's
feet. 'Where on earth did you get that?' I said. He grew rather confused,
and said 'Oh, that is nothing. I did not know it was in this portfolio.
It is not a thing of any value.'
"'It is what you did for Mr Cyril Graham,' exclaimed his wife; 'and
if this gentleman wishes to buy it, let him have it.'
"'For Mr Cyril Graham?' I repeated. 'Did you paint the picture of Mr
W H?'
"'I don't understand what you mean,' he answered, growing very red.
Well, the whole thing was quite dreadful. The wife let it all out. I gave
her five pounds when I was going away. I can't bear to think of it now;
but of course I was furious. I went off at once to Cyril's chambers, waited
there for three hours before he came in, with that horrid lie staring me
in the face, and told him I had discovered his forgery. He grew very pale
and said - 'I did it purely for your sake. You would not be convinced in
any other way. It does not affect the truth of the theory.'
"'The truth of the theory!' I exclaimed; 'the less we talk about that
the better. You never even believed in it yourself. If you had, you would
not have committed a forgery to prove it.' High words passed between us;
we had a fearful quarrel. I daresay I was unjust. The next morning he was
dead."
"Dead!" I cried.
"Yes; he shot himself with a revolver. Some of the blood splashed upon
the frame of the picture, just where the name had been painted. By the time
I arrived - his servant lad sent for me at once - the police were already
there. He had left a letter for me, evidently written in the greatest agitation
and distress of mind."
"What was in it?" I asked.
"Oh, that he believed absolutely in Willie Hughes; that the forgery
of the picture had been done simply as a concession to me, and did not in
the slightest degree invalidate the truth of the theory; and that in order
to show me how firm and flawless his faith in the whole thing was, he was
going to offer his life as a sacrifice to the secret of the Sonnets. It
was a foolish, mad letter. I remember he ended by saying that he intrusted
to me the Willie Hughes theory, and that it was for me to present it to
the world, and to unlock the secret of Shakespeare's heart."
"It is a most tragic story," I cried; "but why have you not
carried out his wishes?"
Erskine shrugged his shoulders. "Because it is a perfectly unsound
theory from beginning to end," he answered.
"My dear Erskine," I said, getting up from my seat, "you
are entirely wrong about the whole matter. It is the only perfect key to
Shakespeare's Sonnets that has ever been made. It is complete in every detail.
I believe in Willie Hughes."
"Don't say that," said Erskine gravely; "I believe there
is something fatal about the idea, and intellectually there its nothing
to be said for it. I have gone into the whole matter, and I assure you the
theory is entirely fallacious. It is plausible up to a certain point. Then
it stops. For heaven's sake, my dear boy, don't take up the subject of Willie
Hughes. You will break your heart over it."
"Erskine," I answered, "it is your duty to give this theory
to the world. If you will not do it, I will. By keeping it back you wrong
the memory of Cyril Graham, the youngest and the most splendid of all the
martyrs of literature. I entreat you to do him justice. He died for this
thing, don't let his death be in vain."
Erskine looked at me in amazement. "You are carried away by the sentiment
of the whole story," he said. "You forget that a thing is not
necessarily true because a man dies for it. I was devoted to Cyril Graham.
His death was a horrible blow to me. I did not recover it for years. I don't
think I have ever recovered it. But Willie Hughes? There is nothing in the
idea of Willie Hughes. No such person ever existed. As for bringing the
whole thing before the world - the world thinks that Cyril Graham shot himself
by accident. The only proof of his suicide was contained in the letter to
me, and of this letter the public never heard anything. To the present day
Lord Crediton thinks that the whole thing was accidental."
"Cyril Graham sacrificed his life to a great idea," I answered
"and if you will not tell of his martyrdom, tell at least of his faith."
"His faith," said Erskine, "was fixed in a thing that was
false, in a thing that was unsound, in a thing that no Shakespearian scholar
would accept for a moment. The theory would be laughed at. Don't make a
fool of yourself, and don't follow a trail that leads nowhere. You start
by assuming the existence of the very person whose existence is the thing
to be proved. Besides, everybody knows that the Sonnets were addressed to
Lord Pembroke. The matter is settled once for all."
"The matter is not settled!" I exclaimed. "I will take up
the theory where Cyril Graham left it, and I will prove to the world that
he was right."
"Silly boy!" said Erskine. "Go home: it is after two, and
don't think about Willie Hughes any more. I am sorry I told you anything
about it, and very sorry indeed that I should have converted you to a thing
in which I don't believe."
"You have given me the key to the greatest mystery of modern literature,"
I answered; "and I shall not rest till I have made you recognise, till
I have made everybody recognise, that Cyril Graham was the most subtle Shakespearian
critic of our day."
As I walked home through St James's Park the dawn was just breaking over
London. The white swans were lying asleep on the polished lake, and the
gaunt Palace looked purple against the pale-green sky. I thought of Cyril
Graham, and my eyes filled with tears.
II
It was past twelve o'clock when I awoke, and the sun was streaming in through
the curtains of my room in long slanting beams of dusty gold. I told my
servant that I would be at home to no one; and after I had had a cup of
chocolate and a petit-pain, I took down from the book-shelf my copy of Shakespeare's
Sonnets, and began to go carefully through them. Every poem seemed to me
to corroborate Cyril Graham's theory. I felt as if I had my hand upon Shakespeare's
heart, and was counting each separate throb and pulse of passion. I thought
of the wonderful boy-actor, and saw his face sit every line.
Two sonnets, I remember, struck me particularly: they were the 53rd and
the 67th. In the first of these, Shakespeare, complimenting Willie Hughes
on the versatility of his acting, on his wide range of parts, a range extending
from Rosalind to Juliet, and from Beatrice to Ophelia, says to him -
What is your substance, whereof are you made,
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
Since every one hath, every one, one shade,
And you, but one, can every shadow lend
lines that would be unintelligible if they were not addressed to an actor,
for the word 'shadow' had in Shakespeare's day a technical meaning connected
with the stage. 'The best in this kind are but shadows', says Theseus of
the actors in the Midsummer Night's Dream, and there are many similar allusions
in the literature of the day. These sonnets evidently belonged to the series
in which Shakespeare discusses the nature of the actor's art, and of the
strange and rare temperament that is essential to the perfect stage-player.
'How is it,' says Shakespeare to Willie Hughes, 'that you have so many personalities?'
and then he goes on to point out that his beauty is such that it seems to
realise every form and phase of fancy, to embody each dream of the creative
imagination - an idea that is still further expanded in the sonnet that
immediately follows, where, beginning with the fine thought,
O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
Shakespeare invites us to notice how the truth of acting, the truth of visible
presentation on the stage, adds to the wonder of poetry, giving life to
its loveliness, and actual reality to its ideal form. And yet, in the 67th
Sonnet, Shakespeare calls upon Willie Hughes to abandon the stage with its
artificiality, its false mimic life of painted face and unreal costume,
its immoral influences and suggestions, its remoteness from the true world
of noble action and sincere utterance.
Ah! wherefore with infection should he live,
And with his presence grace impiety,
That sin by him advantage should achieve,
And lace itself with his society?
Why should false painting imitate his cheek
And steal dead seeming of his living hue?
Why should poor beauty indirectly seek
Roses of shadow, since his rose is true?
It may seem strange that so great a dramatist as Shakespeare, who realised
his own perfection as an artist and his humanity as a man on the ideal plane
of stage-writing and stage-playing, should have written in these terms about
the theatre; but we must remember that in Sonnets CX and CXI Shakespeare
shows us that he too was wearied of the world of puppets, and full of shame
at having made himself 'a motley to the view'. The 111th Sonnet is especially
bitter: -
O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand:
Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed
and there are many signs elsewhere of the same feeling, signs familiar to
all real students of Shakespeare.
One point puzzled me immensely as I read the Sonnets, and it was days before
I struck on the true interpretation, which indeed Cyril Graham himself seems
to have missed. I could not understand how it was that Shakespeare set so
high a value on his young friend marrying. He himself had married young,
and the result had been unhappiness, and it was not likely that he would
have asked Willie Hughes to commit the same error. The boy-player of Rosalind
had nothing to gain from marriage, or from the passions of real life. The
early sonnets, with their strange entreaties to have children, seemed to
me a jarring note. The explanation of the mystery came on me quite suddenly,
and I found it in the curious dedication. It will be remembered that the
dedication runs as follows:
TO THE ONLIE BEGETTER OF
THESE INSUING SONNETS
MR. W. H. ALL HAPPINESSE
AND THAT ETERNITIE
PROMISED
BY
OUR EVER-LIVING POET
WISHETH
THE WELL-WISHING
ADVENTURER IN
SETTING
FORTH.
----T. T.
Some scholars have supposed that the word 'begetter' in this dedication
means simply the procurer of the Sonnets for Thomas Thorpe the publisher;
but this view is now generally abandoned, and the highest authorities are
quite agreed that it is to be taken in the sense of inspirer, the metaphor
being drawn from the analogy of physical life. Now I saw that the same metaphor
was used by Shakespeare himself all through the poems, and this set me on
the right track. Finally I made my great discovery. The marriage that Shakespeare
proposes for Willie Hughes is the 'marriage with his Muse', an expression
which is definitely put forward in the 82nd Sonnet, where, in the bitterness
of his heart at the defection of the boy-actor for whom he had written his
greatest parts, and whose beauty had indeed suggested them, he opens his
complaint by saying -
I'll grant thou wert not married to my Muse.
The children he begs him to beget are no children of flesh and blood, but
more immortal children of undying fame. The whole cycle of the early sonnets
is simply Shakespeare's invitation to Willie Hughes to go upon the stage
and become a player. How barren and profitless a thing, he says, is this
beauty of yours if it be not used:
When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field.
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tattered weed, of small worth held:
Then being asked where all thy beauty lies.
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes.
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
You must create something in art: my verse 'is thine, and born of thee;
only listen to me, and I will bring forth eternal numbers to outlive long
date', and you shall people with forms of your own image the imaginary world
of the stage. These children that you beget he continues, will not wither
away, as mortal children do, but you shall live in them and in my plays:
do but
Make thee another self, for love of me.
That beauty still may live in thine or thee!
I collected all the passages that seemed to me to corroborate this view,
and they produced a strong impression on me, and showed me how complete
Cyril Graham's theory really was. I also saw that it was quite easy to separate
those lines in which he speaks of the Sonnets themselves from those in which
he speaks of his great dramatic work. This was a point that had been entirely
overlooked by all critics up to Cyril Graham's day. And yet it was one of
the most important points in the whole series of poems. To the Sonnets Shakespeare
was more or less indifferent. He did not wish to rest his fame on them.
They were to him his 'slight Muse', as he calls them, and intended, as Meres
tells us, for private circulation only among a few, a very few, friends.
Upon the other hand he was extremely conscious of the high artistic value
of his plays and shows a noble self-reliance upon his dramatic genius. When
he says to Willie Hughes:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest;
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee;
the expression 'eternal lines' clearly alludes to one of his plays that
he was sending him at the time, just as the concluding couplet points to
his confidence in the probability of his plays being always acted. In his
address to the Dramatic Muse (Sonnets C and CI), we find the same feeling.
Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long
To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?
Spends thou thy fury on some worthless song,
Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light?
he cries, and he then proceeds to reproach the mistress of Tragedy and Comedy
for her 'neglect of Truth in Beauty dyed', and says -
Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?
Excuse not silence so; for 't lies in thee
To make him much outlive a gilded tomb,
And to be praised of ages yet to be.
Then do thy office, Muse; I teach thee how
To make him seem long hence as he shows now.
It is, however, perhaps in the 55th Sonnet that Shakespeare gives to this
idea its fullest expression. To imagine that the 'powerful rhyme' of the
second line refers to the sonnet itself, is to entirely mistake Shakespeare's
meaning. It seemed to me that it was extremely likely, from the general
character of the sonnet, that a particular play was meant, and that the
play was none other but Romeo and Juliet.
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
That unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful wars shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Not Mars his sword nor wars quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.
It was also extremely suggestive to note how here as elsewhere Shakespeare
promised Willie Hughes immortality in a form that appealed to men's eyes
- that is to say, in a spectacular form, in a play that is to be looked
at.
For two weeks I worked hard at the Sonnets, hardly ever going out, and refusing
all invitations. Every day I seemed to be discovering something new, and
Willie Hughes became to me a kind of spiritual presence, an ever-dominant
personality. I could almost fancy that I saw him standing in the shadow
of my room, so well had Shakespeare drawn him, with his golden hair, his
tender flower-like grace, his dreamy deep-sunken eyes, his delicate mobile
limbs, and his white lily hands. His very name fascinated me. Willie Hughes!
Willie Hughes! How musically it sounded! Yes; who else but he could have
been the master-mistress of Shakespeare's passion (20.2), the lord of his
love to whom he was bound in vassalage (26.1), the delicate minion of pleasure
(126.9), the rose of the whole world (104.14), the herald of the spring
(1.10) decked in the proud livery of youth (2.3), the lovely boy whom it
was sweet music to hear (8.1), and whose beauty was the very raiment of
Shakespeare's heart (22.6) as it was the keystone of his dramatic power?
How bitter now seemed the whole tragedy of his desertion and his shame!
- shame that he made sweet and lovely (95.1) by the mere magic of his personality,
but that was none the less shame. Yet as Shakespeare forgave him, should
not we forgive him also? I did not care to pry into the mystery of his sin.
His abandonment of Shakespeare's theatre was a different matter, and I investigated
it at great length. Finally I came to the conclusion that Cyril Graham had
been wrong in regarding the rival dramatist of the 80th Sonnet as Chapman.
It was obviously Marlowe who was alluded to. At the time the Sonnets were
written, such an expression as 'the proud full sail of his great verse'
could not have been used of Chapman's work, however applicable it might
have been to the style of his later Jacobean plays. No: Marlowe was clearly
the rival dramatist of whom Shakespeare spoke in such laudatory terms; and
that
--Affable familiar ghost
Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,
was the Mephistopheles of his Doctor Faustus. No doubt, Marlowe was fascinated
by the beauty and grace of the boy-actor, and lured him away from the Blackfriars
Theatre, that he might play the Gaveston of his Edward II. That Shakespeare
had the legal right to retain Willie Hughes in his own company is evident
from Sonnet LXXXVII, where he says: -
Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know'st thy estimate:
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?
And for that riches where is my deserving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thyself thou gavest, thy own work then not knowing,
Or me, to whom thou gavest it, else mistaking;
So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,
Comes home again, on better judgment making.
Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,
In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.
But him whom he could not hold by love, he would not hold by force. Willie
Hughes became a member of Lord Pembroke's company, and, perhaps in the open
yard of the Red Bull Tavern, played the part of King Edward's delicate minion.
On Marlowe's death, he seems to have returned to Shakespeare, who, whatever
his fellow-partners may have thought of the matter, was not slow to forgive
the wilfulness and treachery of the young actor.
How well, too, had Shakespeare drawn the temperament of the stage-player!
Willie Hughes was one of those
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone.
He could act love, but could not feel it, could mimic passion without realising
it:
In many's looks the false heart's history
Is writ it moods and frowns and wrinkles strange,
but with Willie Hughes it was not so. 'Heaven', says Shakespeare, in a sonnet
of mad idolatry -
Heaven in thy creation did decree
That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell;
Whate'er thy thoughts or thy heart's workings be,
Thy looks should nothing thence but sweetness tell.
In his 'inconstant mind' and his 'false heart', it was easy to recognise
the insincerity and treachery that somehow seem inseparable from the artistic
nature, as in his love of praise, that desire for immediate recognition
that characterises all actors. And yet, more fortunate in this than other
actors, Willie Hughes was to know something of immortality. Inseparably
connected with Shakespeare's plays, he was to live in them:
Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:
The earth can yield me but a common grave,
When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie.
Your monument shall he my gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read,
And tongues to be your being shall rehearse
When all the breathers of this world are dead.
There were endless allusions, also, to Willie Hughes's power over his audience,
- the 'gazers', as Shakespeare calls them; hut perhaps the most perfect
description of his wonderful mastery over dramatic art was in The Lover's
Complaint, where Shakespeare says of him: -
In him a plentitude of subtle matter,
Applied to cautels, all strange forms receives,
Of burning blushes, or of weeping water,
Or swooning paleness; and he takes and leaves,
In either's aptness, as it best deceives,
To blush at speeches rank, to weep at woes,
Or to turn white and swoon at tragic shows.
So on the tip of his subduing tongue,
All kind of arguments and questions deep,
All replication prompt and reason strong,
For his advantage still did wake and sleep,
To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep.
He had the dialect and the different skill,
Catching all passions in his craft of will.
Once I thought that I had really found Willie Hughes in Elizabethan literature.
In a wonderfully graphic account of the last days of the great Earl of Essex,
his chaplain, Thomas Knell, tells us that the night before the Earl died,
'he called William Hewes, which was his musician, to play upon the virginals
and to sing. "Play," said he, "my song, Will Hewes, and I
will sing it to myself." So he did it most joyfully, not as the howling
swan, which, still looking down, waileth her end, but as a sweet lark, lifting
up his hands and casting up his eyes to his God, with this mounted the crystal
skies, and reached with his unwearied tongue the top of highest heavens.'
Surely the boy who played on the virginals to the dying father of Sidney's
Stella was none other but the Will Hews to whom Shakespeare dedicated the
Sonnets, and whom he tells us was himself sweet 'music to hear'. Yet Lord
Essex died in 1576, when Shakespeare himself was but twelve years of age.
It was impossible that his musician could have been the Mr W H of the Sonnets.
Perhaps Shakespeare's young friend was the son of the player upon the virginals?
It was at least something to have discovered that Will Hews was an Elizabethan
name. Indeed the name Hews seemed to have been closely connected with music
and the stage. The first English actress was the lovely Margaret Hews, whom
Prince Rupert so madly loved. What more probable than that between her and
Lord Essex's musician had come the boy-actor of Shakespeare's plays? But
the proofs, the links - where were they? Alas! I could not find them. It
seemed to me that I was always on the brink of absolute verification, but
that I could never really attain to it.
From Willie Hughes's life I soon passed to thoughts of his death. I used
to wonder what had been his end.
Perhaps he had been one of those English actors who in 1604 went across
sea to Germany and played before the great Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick,
himself a dramatist of no mean order, and at the Court of that strange Elector
of Brandenburg, who was so enamoured of beauty that he was said to have
bought for his weight in amber the young son of a travelling Greek merchant,
and to have given pageants in honour of his slave all through that dreadful
famine year of 1606-7, when the people died of hunger in the very streets
of the town, and for the space of seven months there was no rain. We know
at any rate that Romeo and Juliet was brought out at Dresden in 1613, along
with Hamlet and King Lear, and it was surely to none other than Willie Hughes
that in 1615 the death-mask of Shakespeare was brought by the hand of one
of the suite of the English ambassador, pale token of the passing away of
the great poet who had so dearly loved him. Indeed there would have been
something peculiarly fitting in the idea that the boy-actor, whose beauty
had been so vital an element in the realism and romance of Shakespeare's
art, should have been the first to have brought to Germany the seed of the
new culture, and was in his way the precursor of that Aufklarung or Illumination
of the eighteenth century, that splendid movement which, though begun by
Lessing and Herder, and brought to its full and perfect issue by Goethe,
was in no small part helped on by another actor Friedrich Schroeder - who
awoke the popular consciousness, and by means of the feigned passions and
mimetic methods of the stage showed the intimate, the vital, connection
between life and literature. If this was so - and there was certainly no
evidence against it - it was not improbable that Willie Hughes was one of
those English comedians (mimæ quidam ex Britannia, as the old chronicle
calls them), who were slain at Nuremberg in a sudden uprising of the people,
and were secretly buried in a little vineyard outside the city by some young
men 'who had found pleasure in their performances, and of whom some had
sought to be instructed in the mysteries of the new art.' Certainly no more
fitting place could there be for him to whom Shakespeare said, 'thou art
all my art', than this little vineyard outside the city walls. For was it
not from the sorrows of Dionysos that Tragedy sprang? Was not the light
laughter of Comedy, with its careless merriment and quick replies, first
heard on the lips of the Sicilian vine-dressers? Nay, did not the purple
and red stain of the wine-froth on face and limbs give the first suggestion
of the charm and fascination of disguise the desire for self-concealment,
the sense of the value of objectivity thus showing itself in the rude beginnings
of the art? At any rate, wherever he lay whether in the little vineyard
at the gate of the Gothic town, or in some dim London churchyard amidst
the roar and bustle of our great city - No gorgeous monument marked his
resting-place. His true tomb, as Shakespeare saw, was the poet's verse,
his true monument the permanence of the drama. So had it been with others
whose beauty had given a new creative impulse to their age. The ivory body
of the Bithynian slave rots in the green ooze of the Nile, and on the yellow
hills of the Cerameicus is strewn the dust of the young Athenian; but Antinous
lives in sculpture, and Charmides in philosophy.
III
After three weeks had elapsed, I determined to make a strong appeal to Erskine
to do justice to the memory of Cyril Graham, and to give to the world his
marvellous interpretation of the Sonnets - the only interpretation that
thoroughly explained the problem. I have not any copy of my letter, I regret
to say, nor have I been able to lay my hand upon the original; but I remember
that I went over the whole ground, and covered sheets of paper with passionate
re-iteration of the arguments and proofs that my study had suggested to
me. It seemed to me that I was not merely restoring Cyril Graham to his
proper place in literary history, but rescuing the honour of Shakespeare
himself front the tedious memory of a commonplace intrigue. I put into the
letter all my enthusiasm. I put into the letter all my faith.
No sooner, in fact, had I sent it off than a curious reaction came over
me. It seemed to me that I had given away my capacity for belief in the
Willie Hughes theory of the Sonnets, that something had gone out of me,
as it were, and that I was perfectly indifferent to the whole subject. What
was it that had happened? It is difficult to say, perhaps, by finding perfect
expression for a passion I had exhausted the passion itself. Emotional forces,
like the forces of physical life, have their positive limitations. Perhaps
the mere effort to convert any one to a theory involves some form of renunciation
of the power of credence. Perhaps I was simply tired of the whole thing,
and, my enthusiasm having burnt out, my reason was left to its own unimpassioned
judgement. However it came about, and I cannot pretend to explain it, there
was no doubt that Willie Hughes suddenly became to me a mere myth, an idle
dream, the boyish fancy of a young man who, like most ardent spirits, was
more anxious to convince others than to be himself convinced.
As I had said some very unjust and bitter things to Erskine in my latter,
I determined to go and see him at once, and to make my apologies to him
for my behaviour. Accordingly, the next morning I drove down to Birdcage
Walk, and found Erskine sitting in his library, with the forged picture
of Willie Hughes in front of him.
"My dear Erskine!" I cried, "I have come to apologise to
you."
"To apologise to me?" he said. "What for?"
"For my letter," I answered.
"You have nothing to regret in your letter," he said. "On
the contrary, you have done me the greatest service in your power. You have
shown me that Cyril Graham's theory is perfectly sound."
"You don't mean to say that you believe in Willie Hughes?" I exclaimed.
"Why not?" he rejoined. "You have proved the thing to me.
Do you think I cannot estimate the value of evidence."
"But there is no evidence at all," I groaned, sinking into a chair.
"When I wrote to you I was under the influence of a perfectly silly
enthusiasm. I had been touched by the story of Cyril Graham's death, fascinated
by his romantic theory, enthralled by the wonder and novelty of the whole
idea. I see now that the theory is based on a delusion. The only evidence
for the existence of Willie Hughes is that picture in front of you, and
the picture is a forgery. Don't be carried away by mere sentiment in this
matter. Whatever romance may have to say about the Willie Hughes theory,
reason is dead against it."
"I don't understand you," said Erskine, looking at me in amazement.
"Why, you yourself have convinced me by your letter that Willie Hughes
is an absolute reality. Why have you changed your mind? Or is all that you
have been saying to me merely a joke?"
"I cannot explain it to you," I rejoined, "but I see now
that there is really nothing to be said in favour of Cyril Graham's interpretation.
The Sonnets are addressed to Lord Pembroke. For heaven's sake don't waste
your time in a foolish attempt to discover a young Elizabethan actor who
never existed, and to make a phantom puppet the centre of the great cycle
of Shakespeare's Sonnets."
"I see that you don't understand the theory," he replied.
"My dear Erskine," I cried, "not understand it! Why, I feel
as if I had invented it. Surely my letter shows you that I not merely went
into the whole matter, but that I contributed proofs of every kind. The
one flaw in the theory is that it presupposes the existence of the person
whose existence is the subject of dispute. If we grant that there was in
Shakespeare's company a young actor of the name of Willie Hughes it is not
difficult to make him the object of the Sonnets. But as we know that there
was no actor of this name in the company of the Globe Theatre, it is idle
to pursue the investigation further."
"But that is exactly what we don't know," said Erskine. "It
is quite true that his name does not occur in the list given in the first
folio; but, as Cyril pointed out, that is rather a proof in favour of the
existence of Willie Hughes than against it, if we remember his treacherous
desertion of Shakespeare for a rival dramatist."
We argued the matter over for hours, but nothing that I could say could
make Erskine surrender his faith in Cyril Graham's interpretation. He told
me that he intended to devote his life to proving the theory, and that he
was determined to do justice to Cyril Graham's memory. I entreated him,
laughed at him, begged of him, but it was of no use. Finally we parted,
not exactly in anger, but certainly with a shadow between us. He thought
me shallow, I thought him foolish. When I called on him again his servant
told me that he had gone to Germany.
Two years afterwards, as I was going into my club, the hall-porter handed
me a letter with a foreign postmark. It was from Erskine, and written at
the Hotel d'Angleterre, Cannes. When I had read it I was filled with horror,
though I did not quite believe that he would be so mad as to carry his resolve
into execution. The gist of the letter was that he had tried in every way
to verify the Willie Hughes theory, and had failed, and that as Cyril. Graham
had given his life for this theory, he himself had determined to give his
own life also to the same cause. The concluding words of the letter were
these: "I still believe in Willie Hughes; and by the time you receive
this, I shall have died by my own hand for Willie Hughes's sake: for his
sake, and for the sake of Cyril Graham, whom I drove to his death by my
shallow scepticism and ignorant lack of faith. The truth was once revealed
to you, and you rejected it. It comes to you now stained with the blood
of two lives - do not turn away from it."
It was a horrible moment. I felt sick with misery, and yet I could not believe
it. To die for one's theological beliefs is the worst use a man can make
of his life, but to die for a literary theory! It seemed impossible.
I looked at the date. The letter was a week old. Some unfortunate chance
had prevented my going to the club for several days, or I might have got
it in time to save him. Perhaps it was not too late. I drove off to my rooms,
packed up my things, and started by the night-mail from Charing Cross. The
journey was intolerable. I thought I would never arrive.
As soon as I did I drove to the Hotel d'Angleterre. They told me that Erskine
had been buried two days before, in the English cemetery. There was something
horribly grotesque about the whole tragedy. I said all kinds of wild things,
and the people in the hall looked curiously at me.
Suddenly Lady Erskine, in deep mourning, passed across the vestibule. When
she saw me she came up to me, murmured something about her poor son, and
burst into tears. I led her into her sitting-room. An elderly gentleman
was there waiting for her. It was the English doctor.
We talked a great deal about Erskine, but I said nothing about his motive
for committing suicide. It was evident that he had not told his mother anything
about the reason that had driven him to so fatal, so mad an act. Finally
Lady Erskine rose and said, "George left you something as a memento.
It was a thing he prized very much. I will get it for you."
As soon as she had left the room I turned to the doctor and said, "What
a dreadful shock it must have been to Lady Erskine! I wonder that she bears
it as well as she does."
"Oh, she knew for months past that it was coming," he answered.
"Knew it for months past!" I cried. "But why didn't she stop
him? Why didn't she have him watched? He must have been mad."
The doctor stared at me. "I don't know what you mean," he said.
"Well," I cried, "if a mother knows that her son is going
to commit suicide -"
"Suicide!" he answered. "Poor Erskine did not commit suicide.
He died of consumption. He came here to die. The moment I saw him I knew
that there was no hope. One lung was almost gone, and the other was very
much affected. Three days before he died he asked me was there any hope.
I told him frankly that there was none, and that he had only a few days
to live. He wrote some letters, and was quite resigned, retaining his senses
to the last."
At that moment Lady Erskine entered the room with the fatal picture of Willie
Hughes in her hand. "When George was dying he begged me to give you
this," she said. As I took it from her, her tears fell on my hand.
The picture hangs now in my library, where it is very much admired by my
artistic friends. They have decided that it is not a Clouet, but an Ouvry.
I have never cared to tell them its true history. But sometimes, when I
look at it, I think that there is really a great deal to be said for the
Willie Hughes theory of Shakespeare's Sonnets. |
|
HAKESPEARE'S 
SCAR WILDE