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Title: The Portrait of Mr. W. H.
Author: Oscar Wilde [
Titles by Wilde]
The Portrait of Mr. W. H.
CHAPTER I
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 aesthetical 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 costermonger, 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 A.D.C. 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 A.D.C. 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 contrasting 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 love and am beloved
Where I may not remove nor be removed.
This sonnet Cyril declared would be quite unintelligible 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 dispose
entirely 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 unbiassed 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 seventh
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 fill'd up his line,
Then lack'd 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 decay'd,
And my sick Muse doth 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 St.
Thomas, and St. 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 very 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 dare say 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 had 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 is 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 Shakespearean 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 Shakespearean 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.
CHAPTER 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
in 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 renew'd -
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 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 tatter'd weed, of small worth held:
Then being ask'd 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 grow'st:
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?
Spend'st 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 mistake
Shakespeare's meaning entirely. 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
Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time.
When wasteful wars shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war's 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 judgement 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, {1} the lord of
his love to whom he was bound in vassalage, {2} the delicate minion
of pleasure, {3} the rose of the whole world, {4} the herald of the
spring {5} decked in the proud livery of youth, {6} the lovely boy
whom it was sweet music to hear, {7} and whose beauty was the very
raiment of Shakespeare's heart, {8} 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 {9} 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 gayest, thy own worth then not knowing,
Or me, to whom thou gavest it, else mistaking;
So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,
Comes home again, on better judgement 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 in 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 be 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; but perhaps
the most perfect description of his wonderful mastery over dramatic
art was in A Lover's Complaint, where Shakespeare says of him:-
In him a plenitude 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 who 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 (mimae 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.
CHAPTER 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 reiteration 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 from 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 judgment. 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
letter, 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
l'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 Oudry. 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.
Footnotes:
{1} Sonnet xx. 2.
{2} Sonnet xxvi. 1.
{3} Sonnet cxxvi. 9.
{4} Sonnet cix. 14.
{5} Sonnet i. 10.
{6} Sonnet ii. 3.
{7} Sonnet viii. 1.
{8} Sonnet xxii. 6.
{9} Sonnet xcv. 1.
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Oscar Wilde's short story: The Portrait of Mr. W. H.
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