from Victorian Studies Volume 41, Number 1OSCAR WILDE AND THE DREYFUS AFFAIR
J. ROBERT MAGUIRE
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Within two years of Oscar Wilde's death in November 1900, he was hailed in the English periodical To-Day as "one of the direct instruments in freeing Alfred Dreyfus." Readers were reminded that "now that poor Wilde is dead, one may easily forget the little side of his character, and rejoice that such a brilliant star, even after its fall, lighted the way towards a great act of justice" (Healy, "Oscar Wilde" 145-46). To a public uniformly hostile to Wilde, the news was all the more astonishing in light of the existence of what his first biographer, Robert Sherard, refers to as "some malevolent comment in London, where Wilde was accused of taking part on that side of the Dreyfus affair which was not popular in England [i.e., the anti-Dreyfusard side]" (Twenty Years 440), a charge that continues to cast a shadow on Wilde's memory. I
The author of the To-Day article, Chris Healy, a journalist and bohemian poet, had had close contact with both Oscar Wilde and Émile Zola in Paris at the high tide of the Dreyfus affair. A week after Zola's death at the end of September 1902, Healy published in To-Day a personal reminiscence of the French author under the title "Emile Zola: Some Memories and a 'Revelation,'" in which he touched upon "the weird Dreyfus affaire, in whose secret history--whenever it is written--I claim the right of writing at least one chapter" (337). As for his promised revelation, Healy wrote:
I now come to an extraordinary announcement, which will surprise all those who imagine themselves as familiar with every scene of the affaire. The dramatic change in the tide of affairs which led to the suicide of Colonel Henry [protector of the guilty Commandant Esterhazy] was planned by Zola and--Oscar Wilde. [A]nd the renewed agitation which followed ended in the famous farce of Rennes [Dreyfus's second court-martial] and the release of Dreyfus. But the successful agitation was all due to the information Oscar Wilde had given. (337-38)Healy's "extraordinary announcement," not surprisingly, was greeted with derision and general disbelief. He responded in a second article, "Oscar Wilde and Zola: A Reply to Some Criticisms and Further Revelations," in which he supported his claim with additional details, noting that "to the commonplace mind only commonplace things are possible" (145). Healy had himself been an active participant in the events he describes, although in his account he appears anonymously as "a young English journalist in Paris"("Emile Zola" 337). He continued to defend his revelations as "absolutely true," and two years later published a lengthier account of the circumstances in his autobiographical Confessions of a Journalist (1904), in which he eulogized Wilde as "the rare artist, the accomplished scholar, and the kindly gentleman whose heart was a mine of generosityand good nature. May his soul rest in peace and his sins be forgiven him" (157, 138). This testimony received no more serious consideration than the earlier articles, and Healy's story has from its inception won few adherents, being generally dismissed as too fantastic for credence. But Healy's essential claim is corroborated by an unimpeachable witness: Carlos Blacker (fig. 1).The cover blurb on Michel Drouin's encyclopedic L'Affaire Dreyfus de A à Z, published during the centenary of the affair, states that, "after a hundred years one thought thateverything was known about the Dreyfus affair. But who was Carlos Blacker . . . ?" Carlos Blacker was a trustee of Constance Wilde's marriage settlement and one of her husbandOscar's oldest and closest friends. A witness for Oscar at his wedding in 1884, Blacker was his "best friend," in the eyes of W. R. Paton, a long-time friend of both, while Wilde described himself as Blacker's "oldest and most faithful friend."1 A brilliant talker and a versatile linguist, Blacker had great charm and a notably kind and generous nature. There had been a time "for many years up to 1893" when he and Wilde had seen one another daily, as Blacker later described the intimate nature of their friendship to Otho Holland (BP, 21 Dec. 1900).2 Things changed for Blacker early in 1893 when, in the course of aquarrel with his close friend the Duke of Newcastle, the Duke in the heat of anger made unfounded accusations of serious misconduct against him in the presence of witnesses. As rumors of the Duke's charges were whispered about London, Blacker chose to leave England and join his sister and her family in Freiburg, Germany. In the early months of his difficulties with Newcastle, Blacker had turned for help to Wilde, who responded by agreeing to represent Blacker in the latter's absence in proceedings aimed at securing a retraction and an apology from the Duke. In the ensuing negotiations, in which Wilde continued to be involved to the time of his arrest, he not only made a powerful enemy in Newcastle but his involvement in the matter appears as well to have furthered the growing distance between him and his once close friend and adviser Sir George Lewis, the Duke's solicitor, the loss of whose counsel Wilde later lamented in his prison cell: "[W]hen I was deprived of his advice and help and regard, I was deprived of the one great safeguard of my life" (De Profundis 21). Wilde's efforts on Blacker's behalf, however, served to strengthen the bonds of a long and mutually supportive friendship that was founded upon a unique compatibility of temperament. "You were always my staunch friend and stood by my side for many years," Wilde wrote to Blacker shortly after his release from prison:
Often in prison I used to think of you: of your chivalry of nature, of your limitlessgenerosity, of your quick intellectual sympathies, of your culture so receptive, so refined. What marvelous evenings, dear Carlos, we used to have! What brilliant dinners! What days of laughter and delight! . . . [W]e tired many a moon with talk, and drank many a sun torest with wine and words. You were always the truest of friends and the most sympathetic of companions. (Letters 621)Following an abject apology by the Duke seven years later, he and Blacker resumed a friendship that the Duke not long before his death assured Blacker was "the greatest friendship of my life" (BP, 14 Sept. 1926). In his letter of apology to Blacker a fewweeks before Wilde's death, Newcastle wrote: "I want to tell you how deeply I deplore all that you have suffered in the past through me. . . . Even your troubles over Dreyfus are more or less due to me because if all had been well you would probably not have left England" (BP, 8 Oct. 1900). Blacker's troubles over Dreyfus were the result of the extraordinary hidden role that he came to play in the Dreyfus affair as friend and trusted confidant of Colonel Alessandro Panizzardi, the Italian military attaché in Paris (fig. 2) and an active partner in espionage with his German counterpart and fellow member of the Triple Alliance, Colonel Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen. It was Schwartzkoppen to whom Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army, was accused of selling military secrets. Dreyfus had been court-martialled, found guilty, and sent to serve a life sentence on Devil's Island (fig. 3). Panizzardi, who freely exchanged information with Schwartzkoppen, was fully informed at an early date of Schwartzkoppen's dealings with the real traitor, Commandant Marie-Charles-Ferdinand Walsin-Esterhazy, and uncomfortably aware of the innocence of Dreyfus. At a time when, in Blacker's words, "three beings alone knew the whole & entire truth [about Dreyfus], namely God & the two Military Attachés" (Memo), Blacker became the fourth such being when his intimatefriend Panizzardi confided "the whole & entire truth" to him. The two then developed a plan aimed at publicly establishing the innocence of Dreyfus and the guilt of Esterhazy.Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare, a quondam Oxford don whose influential history, The Dreyfus Case (1898), was by his own admission inspired by Blacker, predicted that when the facts of Blacker's part in the affair would ultimately be known he would receive the honor due him as "the pioneer of a noble cause" (BP, c. 28 Jun. 1898) and his name would be in the mouths of the thousands of French people who were committed to thecause of truth and justice. Blacker, however, never released Conybeare from the bond of secrecy under which he had informed him of his part in the case. The secret of Blacker's role has been so well kept--mainly as the result of his own insistence on anonymity and his extreme reticence about an episode in his life with unforgettably painful associations for him--that after a century Conybeare's prediction has yet to be realized.
Blacker came to confide the information obtained from Panizzardi to Wilde, in the hope of providing him with the moral and intellectual stimulus to resume writing following his release from prison. More important to Wilde at the time, however, abandoned on all sides by former friends, was the solace of Blacker's company. When, following their emotional reunion in March 1898 after not having seen one another since before Wilde's imprisonment, repeated appeals by Wilde for further meetings proved fruitless, he became convinced that Blacker too had turned his back on him. Wilde's close companions at the time were Chris Healy and the latter's employer, Rowland Strong, both journalists caught up in the Dreyfus case. When Wilde, in despair and anger over what he perceived to be his abandonment by Blacker, betrayed the latter's confidence to them, Healy immediately went to Zola with the information and Strong went to Esterhazy. The results of these retailings of Blacker's confidences to Wilde were critical to both the Dreyfusard and the anti-Dreyfusard causes, and fatal not only to Blacker's plan but also to his "ancient friendship" with Wilde, which ended in bitterness on both sides, echoing one of Wilde's staple dramatic themes: betrayal.
In his introduction to The Letters of Oscar Wilde (1962), Rupert Hart-Davis states that "except for three unimportant omissions, made to avoid giving pain to descendants and clearly indicated, Wilde's letters are here printed exactly as he wrote them" (xii). The three omissions relate to the break-up of the friendship between Wilde and Blacker, anepisode that has remained as obscure as the roles the two played in the Dreyfus affair, "the most interesting public mystery story of all time," in the words of C. P. Snow. When in July 1986 a collection of Blacker's papers, including a number of letters from Wilde, was sold by Sotheby's in London, the sale catalogue referred to "the never-fully-explained ending of [Blacker's] friendship with Wilde" (Sotheby's, headnote to lots 122-52). What follows is based principally upon Blacker's papers, now in a private collection--most importantly a confidential memorandum of his dealings with Panizzardi as well as his diaries and correspondence with Panizzardi, Constance Wilde, W. R. Paton, Conybeare, and others active in the Dreyfus affair. Use has also been made of unpublished papers in a private collection relating to the abortive publication in England of the traitor Esterhazy's version of events following his flight from France in September 1898.
Despite the intimate nature of their long friendship, Blacker had been ignorant of the side of Wilde's life revealed at the trials.3 Although he remained loyal after the scandal broke, their friendship had been severely strained when, four months after Wilde's release from prison, he resumed his fatal relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas in Naples, thus precluding any possibility of a hoped-for reconciliation with his wife Constance, forwhom Blacker had been acting as adviser and intermediary. Like most of Wilde's few remaining friends, Blacker ceased to communicate with him. "After thus returning to his vomit (forgive the expression)," Blacker wrote of his exasperation at the time to Wilde's brother-in-law Otho Holland, "it was obvious that he was hopeless and beyond redemption" (BP, 21 Dec. 1900). II
After the brief idyll with Douglas came to an unhappy end--"the most bitter experience of a bitter life," according to Wilde--he returned to Paris from Italy despondent and penniless in February 1898. Vincent O'Sullivan, a sympathetic and supportive friend during this period, wrote with hindsight long after that he
sometimes wondered why [Wilde] did not stay in Italy, by what reasoning he persuaded himself to come back to Paris. Paris killed him. . . . [I]n Italy he would have lived longer, and, I should think, happier. Paris, then, the Dreyfus-case Paris, cannot be figured by the Paris of to-day. (197-98)Wilde's arrival coincided with the start of the second week of Émile Zola's trial for defamation for publication the previous month of his celebrated open letter to thePresident of France, J'Accuse. Zola accused members of the General Staff and other high-ranking officers of the French army of complicity in the wrongful conviction three years earlier of Captain Dreyfus, and of protecting the actual traitor, Commandant Esterhazy.Wilde was unaware of Carlos Blacker's presence in Paris until a month after his arrival. Before the two were reunited, each, unknown to the other, had become deeply entangled in the Dreyfus affair. Their presence in the case, if not the precise nature of their involvement, can be traced in the labyrinthine court records where the name of "un homme de lettres anglais, M. Carlos Blaker [sic]" is linked by witnesses with that of another "homme de lettres anglais, M. Melmoth [Wilde's post-prison pseudonym], quiconnaissait un M. Blaker [sic]." Other witnesses refer to Wilde by name--"Count" Esterhazy in his testimony refers to his friend respectfully as "Sir" Oscar Wilde (Revision 599, 735, 741, 787). Although Wilde's presence in the case has thus been known from the outset, owing to the obscurity of the official record he has remained an elusive and only dimly perceived actor in the great drama, all but ignored in the vast literature of theDreyfus affair and his role never precisely described. In a recent rare instance where he appears by name, a leading authority on the affair notes his presence only to confuse him with another vaguely observed figure on the periphery of the case, the English writer and journalist David Christie Murray, whose part in a farcical episode recorded by Esterhazy in his Les dessous de l'affaire Dreyfus (1898) the writer mistakenly attributes to Wilde (Thomas 342-43). In the definitive modern history of the case, Jean-Denis Bredin's highly acclaimed L'Affaire, neither Wilde nor Blacker is mentioned.
A few days after his arrival in Paris on February 13, Wilde reported in a letter to Robert Ross that "I see no one here but a young Irishman called Healy, a poet" (Letters 706). Chris Healy at the time was acting as "secretary" to Rowland Strong, Paris correspondent of the London newspapers the Observer and the Morning Post as well as the New York Times. Strong, who claimed descent from Chateaubriand, was then totally caught up in the Dreyfus affair, regarding it as the world's most important news story. He recognized in Esterhazy the key to the mystery surrounding the case and was convinced that if he stuck to him closely enough and long enough he eventually would scoop the world presson the story. Wilde had tried unsuccessfully to get in touch with Strong when passing through Paris en route to Naples the previous September--possibly at the suggestion of Strong's intimate friend Alfred Douglas--as a potential source of funds for the journey. Failing to find Strong on that occasion, Wilde had obtained the travel money from Vincent O'Sullivan. On his return to Paris, Wilde apparently immediately looked upStrong and thus met Healy. III
The day following Wilde's arrival, Strong was introduced to Esterhazy at the offices of the leading anti-Semitic and anti-Dreyfusard newspaper, the Libre Parole, by Wilde's old friend Robert Sherard, who had won Esterhazy's friendship by championing his causesome weeks earlier in a lengthy article in the Saturday Review in which he was sharply critical of the generally hostile attitude of his colleagues of the English press. Esterhazy's recollection of the meeting was colored by later events when, after having fallen out with Strong, he had come to regard him with scorn as "a contemptible clown," "an absolute swine," and "one of the most despicable scoundrels" he was to encounter in the course of the entire affair. He recalled that Sherard presented to him
a little man with a red beard, whom he introduced as Mr. Rowland Strong, correspondent of English and American newspapers, and a ferocious enemy into the bargain of all Dreyfusards, past, present and future. The little man, whose cuffs were frayed and very dirty, smelled of alcohol ten feet away; but he greeted me at once with a fervor which I found extraordinary in an Englishman.From the day of their first meeting, Esterhazy recalled, he and "the little red-haired man, Strong," became inseparable. Strong overwhelmed him with "unbelievable demonstrations of friendship and devotion, fulminating against the Dreyfusards without letup, writing me daily, bombarding me with telegrams, importuning my friends by telephone when he had not seen me for several hours to inquire what I had been doing, what I was going to do, why I did not come to see him," defending him in a dispute with a journalist from the Figaro, and sending his secretary, "Hilley" ("a bizarre individual"; "a specimen of individual unspeakably vile and disgusting"), to maintain constant communication with him. Esterhazy and Strong met regularly at the latter's favorite resort, a bar called the Horse Shoe. "I confess that I have often found him in a bar which he frequented," Esterhazy wrote, "where he tossed down 15 or 20 whiskeys with a nonchalance that was equaled only by his capacity, after which he was always dead drunk every evening, or more or less so, every time I saw him at night" (Esterhazy MS).
Shortly after Strong's introduction to Esterhazy, Strong in turn introduced Esterhazy to Wilde in a bar in the rue Saint-Honoré. Healy, who claims to have been present, recalled that "Wilde regaled them with a flow of his gayest witticisms" (Confessions 157) andestablished an immediate rapport with Esterhazy. As a fictional villain in a fin-de-siècle melodrama, the fantastic self-styled Count Esterhazy, with a physical appearance tomatch his villainy, would seem overdrawn in both respects. At fifty, he was on the inactive list, owing to chronic poor health. Photographs at the time show him as gaunt and tubercular, with a long, black military mustache, a hooked nose (described as "predatory" [Steevens 186]), prominent cheek bones and piercing, dark, deep-set eyes, glowering in a fixed and menacing scowl (fig. 4). A "specialist in mental prestidigitation" (Baumont 284), he possessed a quick intelligence, a sardonic sense of humor, an active, energetic, and enterprising temperament, and a fertile and endlessly inventive imagination. To his employer Schwartzkoppen, his paid spy was "the most marvelous, audacious & wonderful canaille that it was possible to imagine, either in fiction or history, & capable of any & every villainy, including murder" (Memo). "As a villain," Blacker felt bound to admit to F. C. Conybeare, he found Esterhazy in his astounding audacity "superb and magnificent" (BP, 22 Feb. 1898). Ernest La Jeunesse, companion and chronicler of Wilde's final days, thought that it would require the pen of Voltaire to describe the dinners and symposia of Wilde and Esterhazy in the months following theirinitial meeting. Esterhazy's panic-inspired rage as he felt the case closing round him, his extravagant outbursts and theatrical tirades, both amused and fascinated Wilde. La Jeunesse recalled "Le Commandant"--as Wilde, "with a tender irony and hint of admiration," called him--saying to Wilde in one memorable exchange: "We are the two greatest martyrs in all humanity, but (after a hesitant silence) I have suffered more" (593).When Henry Davray, Wilde's French translator, remonstrated with him for his intimacy with such a "crapule," Wilde excused the friendship on the ground that since his release from prison he had been obliged to frequent the society of thieves and assassins. "If Esterhazy had been innocent," he explained, "I should have had nothing to do with him" (Bennett 215).
Blacker routinely divided his time between Paris and Freiburg, where Schwartzkoppen had spent the three years immediately preceding his posting to the German Embassy in Paris in 1891. When the Dreyfus case broke in November 1897 with the public accusation of Esterhazy by Dreyfus's brother, Schwartzkoppen was immediately recalled to Berlin. In Freiburg, Blacker learned that shortly before his recall, Schwartzkoppen had stated in a letter to his former commanding general in Freiburg that Dreyfus was innocent. By the time of his arrival in Paris, a week before Wilde, Blacker had become deeply immersed in the case. He found the city on the opening day of Zola's trial "in a ferment" and went immediately to see his "old & intimate friend Panizzardi, knowing that I would learn the whole truth from him." Blacker found Panizzardi "very excited & distressed. He seemed aged & worn, & he unbosomed himself to me without hesitation, seeming to find comfort in so doing." The rapid pace of events since the public naming of Esterhazy and the recall of Schwartzkoppen, propelled by an incendiary and violently partisan press, had reduced Panizzardi to a state of near nervous collapse amid what Romain Rolland called the "holy hysteria" that gripped the nation. Tormented by the terrible truth of Dreyfus's innocence--the burden of which knowledge he was no longer able to share with his absent friend and ally Schwartzkoppen--Panizzardi was at the same time the object of increasingly hostile attention from the press and "was meeting with scant courtesy from the Generals & officers he met." Following their reunion, Blackerand Panizzardi "were constantly together & the subject of conversation was principally this terrible miscarriage of justice & discussions as to how this unhappy victim could be assisted" (Memo). IV
On February 23, the Dreyfusard cause suffered a crushing setback when Zola was found guilty of the charges against him and sentenced to a year in prison and a fine of 3,000 francs. What made the task of establishing Dreyfus's innocence "exceedingly difficult," Panizzardi informed Blacker, was the fact that under instructions from their respective governments the German and Italian ambassadors had already officially made known "the whole and the entire truth" in confidential communications to "the President [of France] & all the Ministers & most of the important political personages"--all to no avail.Official public declarations had similarly been disregarded. The official pronouncements had been deemed sufficient by both Germany and Italy; both governments declined to do more, and Schwartzkoppen and Panizzardi were under orders not to involve themselves personally in the affair. Following the conviction of Zola, it became clear that in the face of an impenetrable wall of resistance from the French government and the Army General Staff, neither in the French press nor in the courts could the struggle for justice in the Dreyfus case be won. In the circumstances, Blacker and Panizzardi hit upon a plan to confront world opinion with irrefutable proof of Esterhazy's guilt by publishing in the foreign press facsimiles of incriminating documents in Esterhazy's hand that Panizzardi had received from his colleague Schwartzkoppen, together with details of the traitor's dealings with the German attaché.
On March 10, the King of Italy sent for Panizzardi in order to learn at first hand the truth of the Dreyfus affair in detail. Blacker and Panizzardi decided to take advantage of theopportunity for Panizzardi "to ask the King of Italy to write to the German Emperor requesting him as a personal favor to allow some of Esterhazy's documents to be handed to Panizzardi with a view to their being published in a neutral country, Switzerland, Belgium, or England. With this intention [Panizzardi] left for Rome, subsequently went to Berlin, & was back in Paris ten days later the 20th March," prepared to proceed with the plan (Memo). For help in implementing the plot in England, Blacker had in the meantime turned to another old and trusted friend, F. C. Conybeare. "There is nothing . . . that has ever excited me like this Zola affair," Blacker assured Conybeare. "Of course I could not rest until I had the truth in the matter & I have it & can prove it" (BP, 22 Feb. 1898). Surprise being essential to the success of the plan, and for the personal safety of the conspirators, preparations were carried forward in the greatest secrecy.
While thus preoccupied, Blacker received a letter from Oscar Wilde's estranged wife Constance, who on March 4 wrote from Italy to inform him that "Oscar is or at least wasin Paris at the Hôtel de Nice, rue des Beaux Arts. Would it be at all possible for you to go and see him there?" She had received a copy of The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898) from Wilde's publisher and found it "exquisite, and I hope that the great success it has had in London at all events will urge him on to write more. I hear that he does nothing now but drink" (BP). Unaware that Wilde and Douglas had separated, Blacker felt unable to comply with Constance's request, as he informed Wilde: "[March 8] Wrote letter to Oscartelling him what his wife had written to me and telling him how sorry I was that I could not see him as he had chosen his way in life." Constance responded promptly to Blacker's scruples by writing reassuringly that she "naturally would not have asked you to seeOscar, if I had thought there was any chance of your meeting that person whom I know that very naturally you loathe. I heard long ago that Oscar was not with him" (BP, 10Mar. 1898). Wilde added his own reassurance about Douglas in reply to Blacker's letter, in a note in which he expressed his gratitude for Blacker's kindness to Constance and his children. "My dear Carlos," he wrote,
I cannot express to you how thrilled and touched by emotion I was when I saw your handwriting last night. Please come and see me tomorrow (Thursday) at five o'clock if you possibly can: if not, pray make some other appointment: I want particularly to see you, and long to shake you by the hand again, and to thank you for all the sweet and wonderful kindness you and your wife have shown to Constance and the boys.Blacker noted Wilde's missive in his diary: "[March 9] I received a letter from Oscar asking me to go to see him tomorrow at 5 and that he had separated from his vile friend. [A further impediment to a meeting, however, was the strong objection on the part of Blacker's wife Carrie to her husband's having anything whatever to do with Wilde--a recurring subject of disagreement between them since the appalling revelations that hadcome to light at Wilde's trials] . . . Bed at 12 with conversation with Carrie about going to see Oscar." Blacker hesitated, and deferred the proposed meeting for a few days, informing Wilde by telegram that he would see him the following Sunday. Meanwhile, he was drawn in anticipation to the dingy Hôtel de Nice to see where Wilde was living: "[March 12] Out . . . in morning to Bon Marché. Afterwards walked and saw Oscar's hotel. Walked home." The following day, their long-deferred reunion took place: "[March 13] At 4 called on Oscar and saw him for the first time since 19th February 95." Wilde hadthen been at the summit of his glory, poised on the edge of the abyss.I am living here quite alone: in one room, I need hardly say, but there is an armchair for you. I have not seen Alfred Douglas for three months. (Letters 714)
The contrast between past and present could not have been more bleak at the emotionally charged meeting. Blacker, like Constance, was convinced that Wilde's only hope of salvaging the wreckage of his life was to resume writing. Having recently so successfully inspired Conybeare with his own passionate commitment in the Dreyfus case, Blacker thought the same intellectual and moral stimulus might point the way for Wilde toward the path to salvation. Secure in the affection and trust of their old friendship, Blacker was moved to disclose the extent of his own present involvement in the affair as well as the secret information he had received from Panizzardi and the details of the plot he was developing with Conybeare to expose Esterhazy in the English press, everything in shortexcept the identity of his informant, whom Wilde assumed to be Schwartzkoppen. The reunion with his "dear old friend" was for Wilde a rare solace. He had by now, however, come to accept the truth of what Constance had sadly acknowledged a year before in a letter to her brother, that her husband's fate was "rather like Humpty Dumpty's, quite as tragic and quite as impossible to put right" (Letters 515). Wilde knew himself to be broken beyond any real hope of recovery and that he would never write again. "Life, that I have loved so much--too much--has torn me like a tiger," he had written to Blacker a few days before their meeting, "so when you come and see me, you will see the ruin and wreck of what once was wonderful and brilliant. . . . I don't think I shall ever write again: la joie de vivre is gone" (Letters 715).
With the recent breach in their friendship healed, Wilde presented Blacker with a copy of The Ballad of Reading Gaol, inscribed, "From the author: in affectionate remembrance ofmany kind messages. Paris. 98. Oscar Wilde" (BP)4. The interview was proceeding to a close in the warmth of their re-established intimacy when Blacker became aware thatWilde was not in fact living "quite alone," as he had said in his letter, but that he had a young companion--most likely Maurice Gilbert, whom Wilde had recently "met by chance" and who, as he had informed his publisher a week before, "grows dearer to me daily" (Letters 711). Whether the encounter was by mischance or intentional on the part of Wilde, adamantly unapologetic about this aspect of his life, is not clear. Blacker wasdeeply troubled by the revelation and reported the distressing news to his wife and to Constance: "[March 14] Spoke with Carrie about Oscar's not having been made better by his experience. . . . Wrote to Mrs. Holland [Constance] about my interview with Oscar." "Many thanks for your letter," Constance replied, "tho' your account of Oscar is a very sad one" (BP, 18 Mar. 1898). Conybeare's reaction was less restrained: "In view of thefacts you state in your letter about O.W.," he wrote, "I am really not sure your wife's judgment is not sound [in her objection to her husband's seeing Wilde]. . . . [I]n view of his jeune homme blonde, I should, if I were you, certainly take your wife's advice. . . . Probably the best thing he can do is to drink himself to death, or better yet--shoot himself right off" (BP, 21 Mar. 1898).
While Blacker was profoundly disturbed by the outcome of the meeting, Wilde wascheered and his spirits were buoyed to be reconciled with "the only old friend I have in Paris" (Letters 737). He promptly asked Blacker for a loan: "[March 15] Letter from Oscar asking me to let him have 200 francs which I took to him at the café in the Place du Théâtre Français as I was driving to the theatre with Carrie and felt in the mostfrightful rage all the time. Did not enjoy it at all. Left after 4th act. . . . Very bad temper." Wilde was grateful for the loan and the two planned to meet again the following day, but Carrie, in light of what her husband had reported, objected all the more strenuously to his having any further contact with Wilde: "[March 16] Letter from Oscar thanking me for francs 150. . . . Was to have gone to see Oscar but Carrie would not let me." Disappointed, Wilde wrote to say that he was "in dreadful straits," having been forced to pay his hotel bill with the money Blacker had lent him. Blacker replied with a further advance: "[March 18] Left 100 francs for Oscar at café." His wish to see Wilde, however, in response to the latter's plea for a meeting, served only to aggravate the long-standing discord about him between husband and wife: "[March 19] Out in morning with Carrie with friction because she would not allow me to see Oscar."
Wilde attributed the recent reinstatement of his allowance, which had been terminated when he joined Douglas in Italy, to Blacker's intercession on his behalf with Constance. "A thousand thanks for your great kindness," he wrote. "Really you have saved my life for me, for a little at any rate, and your friendship and interest give me hope." He wasprompted to appeal again for a meeting: "I do hope to see you soon. Could we dine together at some little restaurant; . . . just you and I together" (Letters 726). On the strength of the reinstated allowance, Wilde moved to the Hôtel d'Alsace, where he took two rooms--"same street, much cleaner," he informed Blacker (Letters 727). At the same time, he was involved in an accident in a fiacre, and he begged Blacker once more to come to see him: "[March 28] During lunch a carte telegram came from Oscar telling me that he had had an accident, cut his mouth badly, asking me to go to see him in the afternoon. Carrie would not allow me to go. . . . [S]ent telegram to Oscar telling him I can't go to him."
Despite Wilde's repeated appeals, it was more than two weeks since they had met, and Wilde, routinely shunned and cut by former friends, had become painfully aware that Blacker, like almost everyone else, was avoiding him. "I am so sorry that you can't come to see me," he wrote in reply to Blacker's latest refusal. "What happened to me was simply that through the horse coming down I was thrown almost through the front window of a fiacre, and cut my lower lip almost in two. It was quite dreadful, and, of course, a hideous shock to my nerves. It is so horrible to have no one to look after one, or to see one, when one is cooped up in a wretched hotel." Beneath the note of self-pity there was a hint of resentment in a bit of ominous information teasingly added by Wildethat was sure to cause Blacker alarm: "I have not been out since Friday, except one night when I was dragged out to meet Esterhazy at dinner! The Commandant was astonishing. I will tell you all he said some day. Of course he talked of nothing but Dreyfus et Cie" (Letters 727).
Convinced that Blacker had abandoned him, Wilde made no further appeals for a meeting. "I thought I had got back my friend," he later observed ruefully to Robert Ross of a loss that was as painful to him as it was unexpected, adding, with an uncharacteristic show of pique:
[H]e treated me with utter indifference, never invited me to have bite or sup with him at a café, or elsewhere, and in the course of five months only came four times to see me. . . . One cannot demand friendship as a right. One cannot extort affection with a knife. To awaken gratitude in the ungrateful were as vain as to try to wake the dead by cries." (see note 1)Of the torment of his deepening isolation, he confessed to Ross that, "I cannot bear being alone" (Letters 740). Recalling Wilde's "curious prevision" that he would not survive the century, Rowland Strong observed years later that "[Wilde] had no reason to feel that he was slipping away from the world, but was inwardly conscious that the world was slipping away from him" (46-47). Another close observer, Vincent O'Sullivan, referring to the effect of the slights and rebuffs by former friends and other humiliations to which Wilde was daily exposed, concluded that "Wilde endured too much cruelty in the Paris of his time; he received too many wounds, hardly ever resented them openly, but finally died of them" (199). No wound was more grievous, or more deeply resented, than what he perceived to be his abandonment by Blacker--"an old friend for whom I had made many sacrifices" (see note 1).Elizabeth Robins, a young American actress friend of Wilde's, in a tribute to their friendship, which flourished at a time when Wilde was at the pinnacle of his fame ("I could do nothing for him; he could and did do everything in his power for me"), noted his capacity for retaliation when angered, describing him as "brilliant beyond the power of report, overbearing yet urbane, unless crossed, and then most alarming" (Powell 315). Deeply hurt and brooding over Blacker's neglect, Wilde's response could not have been more alarming. The means of retaliation were ready at hand in the form of the precious secret that Blacker had entrusted to him. With as scant regard for his solemn bond of silence as Blacker had shown for the claims of their "ancient friendship," Wilde revealed the carefully guarded information to his more faithful, albeit more recent, friends, Healy and Strong. Whether this was a desperate act of revenge or an alcoholic lapse in bibulouscompany--as Blacker professed to believe--is not entirely clear. Healy promptly went with the information to Zola, with results of critical importance to the Dreyfusard cause, while, in a grand paradox that may have had its own appeal for Wilde, Strong repeated everything to Esterhazy. "Paradoxes," as Wilde had famously observed in "The Decay of Lying," "are always dangerous things" (Intentions 31)--and the present instance proved to be no exception. The consequences were fatal to the plan Blacker had nurtured so passionately and, with his own and his family's personal safety threatened and himself the object of savage attacks in the press, Blacker eventually felt constrained to leave Paris.
On April 4, the newspaper Le Siècle published the first of four documents that proved to be of decisive importance in exposing the guilt of Esterhazy in a series of dramatic revelations.5 The appearance of the first of the documents, the "Lettre d'un Diplomate," took Blacker completely by surprise. To his astonishment, the letter "substantially contained" the secret information he had received from Panizzardi, which "then became generally known for the first time" (Memo), thus anticipating a crucial element of his own plan. The document "created a great sensation," in Blacker's words, enabling the Dreyfusard cause overnight to regain the initiative that had been lost with Zola's conviction several weeks earlier. Joseph Reinach, in his exhaustive history of the affair, states that the "Lettre d'un Diplomate" was written in his home by two prominent Dreyfusards, Yves Guyot and Francis de Pressensé, based on information provided byZola ("sur des notes de Zola"--Reinach 3: 559n5). Where Zola got the new information--information not available to him and his well-informed supporters at the time of his trial--has remained a mystery, the key to which Chris Healy offered to a skeptical public in his "extraordinary announcement" in To-Day and again, with insistence, in his Confessions. Blacker had no doubt as to who had betrayed his confidence, as he told his trusted friend and confidant, the archaeologist and philologist Salomon Reinach--one of four others, including Wilde, who were privy to the Blacker/Panizzardi plan.6 Salomon Reinach, like his brother Joseph an ardent and active Dreyfusard, in a report of his confidential conversations with Blacker, wrote that "Zola got some of his information from Oscar Wilde, who had got it from Blacker, the intimate friend of Panizzardi. Wilde betrayed theconfidence of his compatriot, but this did not lessen the great value of the information obtained" (Extrait de conversations). V
Healy relates that "it was my fortune to see much of Émile Zola at a time when every newspaper in the world was giving his adventures the leading place in its columns" (Confessions 121). "Indeed," he added, "[I] was admitted to an interview on manyoccasions when other journalists were turned away" (124). He states that Wilde confided to him the secret information that he had received from "a friend [Blacker] who was familiar with Colonel von Schwartzkoppen" and that he, Healy, "immediately went toZola and told him all. . . . Zola was anxious to meet Wilde but the latter refused to see him, on the curious ground that Zola was a writer of immoral romances. . . . But the successful agitation [that followed] was all due to the information Oscar Wilde had given" (Confessions 125-26). Whether Healy's further statement that "the dramatic change in the tide of affairs . . . was planned by Zola and--Oscar Wilde" (Confessions 125) was intended to suggest that the two developed a plan in concert remains uncertain. While Healy waspuzzled by Wilde's refusal to meet Zola, Wilde had good reason not to wish to see the French writer, who, during Wilde's imprisonment, had refused to sign a petition circulated among men of letters in Paris for mitigation of his harsh criminal sentence. Seven years before, Robert Sherard, then working on a biography of Zola, had taken Wilde and Blacker to meet the French author, who had considered the visit to be "a great honor" (Ellmann 304n). Later, in London in 1893, Zola recorded the pleasure of passing an hour at the Alhambra and speaking with "the very charming and remarkable poet Oscar Wilde, who had very thoughtfully sent a basket of flowers to my wife" at the Savoy Hotel (Burns 65). Following Wilde's conviction, however, according to Sherard, Zola's "indignation was so violent against Wilde that one might have fancied him the editor of a religious magazine, or the writer of moral text-books" (Real Oscar Wilde 199).
On the appearance of the "Lettre d'un Diplomate," "unfortunately," Blacker wrote,
. . . I was considered the author of it, & it was attributed to me. Then commenced my troubles. I was attacked by the low and infamous press, & for days my family & I were insulted & dragged through the most filthy dirt. Anonymous and foul letters were addressed to me threatening me with assaults & death to myself & my family. I was followed & tracked without a moment's intermission for months & it was only on the frontier when I left France that I finally saw two men leaving the train who had been watching me from the next carriage.A week after the publication of the "Lettre d'un Diplomate," Strong struck a telling blowfor the anti-Dreyfusard cause in an article dated Paris, March 29--the day after Wilde's teasing letter to Blacker and four days after the date of the "Lettre d'un Diplomate." The article appeared in the New York Times on April 10. "I have been told on excellent authority," Strong wrote,Four days after the publication of the "Lettre d'un Diplomate" appeared an article signedby Casella in which he described interviews with Schwartzkoppen & Panizzardi, & what they had said to him regarding the innocence of Dreyfus.
Then Panizzardi's fate was sealed as far as remaining in Paris was concerned. The low press attacked him, anonymous letters poured in threatening to attack him & spit in his face in public & even his Ambassador was molested. From the 8th to the 15th of April he showed a bold front. He dined with us every night during this last week of his stay in Paris. He wished to entrust me with all his documents & papers, as he was afraid they might in some way be got hold of, but I could not accept the responsibility. At length on the 15th April, his position having become quite untenable, he left Paris for Berne on theplea of a mission there. (Memo)
that an English gentleman connected with the aristocracy named Blacker has obtained from Col. von Schwartzkoppen's own lips a statement to the effect that Major Esterhazy [had sold documents to the German military attaché]. . . . The Englishman, however, has secured through the good offices of Major Panizzardi copies of a certain number of thedocuments, and these are to be published shortly in The Daily News or The Daily Chronicle. Of course, Major Esterhazy, whom I have questioned on this subject on behalf of The New York Times, declares that the documents, if they exist, are forgeries. (19)The premature disclosure, with Esterhazy's preemptive denial and charge of forgery, destroyed any remaining hope of success for the plan so long in preparation and about to be launched by Blacker and Conybeare. "The project unhappily fell through at the lastmoment," Conybeare wrote of their disappointment, "because the conditions of secrecy, under which alone we could work, were menaced by the rashness of outsiders" (267).The cross-purposes to which Healy and Strong put the information obtained from Wilde brought their association to an abrupt end. Having incurred the enmity of Esterhazy and the hatred of Strong (Confessions 173), Healy departed for England to pursue his journalistic career in London, and was succeeded in the position of Strong's "so-called secretary," as Esterhazy phrased it (Esterhazy MS), by Maurice Gilbert. Nameless but unmistakably identified in Healy's Confessions by reference to his relationship to Chateaubriand, Strong is described in uncomplimentary terms by Healy as "a Parisianjournalist who carried on the campaign against Dreyfus in the English press," "a fierce anti-Semite," and a "Jew-baiter" (157, 164, 171). Strong, for his part, regarded Healy as "a born stool-pigeon," and he warned Esterhazy to be careful about what he said in his presence (Esterhazy MS).
Amid the turmoil, Wilde was in a troubled state when Healy parted from him. "The last time I saw Wilde," Healy recalled, "he was kneeling in the Church of Nôtre Dame. The sun streamed through the windows, the organ was pealing a majestic chant, and his head was bowed, almost hidden. Perhaps some vision of what his life might have been came to him and scourged his soul anew. I only know that when I left him he was still kneeling before the altar, his face hidden by his hands" (Confessions 137).
Although Blacker was confirmed in his suspicion of Wilde, he did not immediately confront him with it, attributing the betrayal of trust to Wilde's "having again become a drunkard [who] repeated everything [he] had told him to Strong, another drunkard"(Extrait de conversations). They were briefly reunited on news of the sudden and unexpected death of Constance in Genoa on April 7 at the age of forty. "I suppose you have heard the terrible news. Constance is dead," Wilde notified Blacker. "I would like to see you tomorrow (Wednesday) at any hour you like" (Letters 730). Blacker responded immediately: "[April 12] Carte telegram from Oscar saying that his wife Mrs. Hollandwas dead. . . . Went immediately to see Oscar but he was not in." He went again the following day, but it was clear that the friendship had not survived the mutual betrayal: "[April 13] Went to see Oscar, found Robbie Ross there. . . . [April 14] Robbie Ross to lunch. Long conversation with him afterwards. Went to Oscar's for an hour. He had to go to his tailor." They did not meet again until a final confrontation two months later ended in their total estrangement.
On May 24, the second installment of Casella's abortive deposition, the third of the four documents referred to above, appeared in Le Siècle ("[May 24] Casella's 2nd letter appeared in the Siècle in which he only recapitulated what was known before"). While Blacker and Conybeare had been frustrated in their original plan, they finally delivered their long-planned coup de grace to Esterhazy in an article titled "The Truth About Dreyfus," published in the National Review in England on June 1 under the nom de plume Huguenot. "This article," in the words of a contemporary writer, "was destined to exercise a remarkable influence upon events" (Barlow 277). Four days after its appearance, Joseph Reinach published extensive excerpts from it with an approving commentary in the Siècle, for which the Minister of War ordered him as an officer in the reserve to appear before a military Court of Enquiry for insulting the General Staff. VI
In the ensuing uproar, anti-Dreyfusard newspapers stepped up their attack on Blacker, identified by Strong to the hostile press as the source of the article. Having decided to leave Paris with his family, Blacker, on the eve of his departure, went to see Wilde for what proved to be their last meeting. Wilde was then staying at a small inn called L'Idée a half hour by train from Paris, at Nogent-sur-Marne, a favorite warm-weather retreat of Wilde and his intimate circle--Rowland Strong, Maurice Gilbert, and Alfred Douglas, the latter of whom had reappeared in Paris in April--and where they were occasionally joined by Esterhazy, for whom Wilde and Douglas were "deux hommes de beaucoup d'esprit" (Revision 599). The precise reason for Blacker's visit is not clear, although both he and Wilde left a record of it. Convinced as Blacker was of Wilde's complicity with his enemies, it seems likely that in the face of the unnerving newspaper attacks he came to plead with Wilde to stop fueling the press campaign with compromising information about Blacker's past life and difficulties with the Duke of Newcastle, the intimate nature of which information made it apparent that Wilde was the source. In the circumstances,Wilde's account of the visit to Robert Ross, a firm friend of both Blacker and Wilde, seems disingenuous. Writing from Nogent two weeks later, Wilde reported:
[Blacker] came down to see me about a fortnight ago--enquired affectionately into my financial position--actually wept floods of tears--begged me to let him pay the balance of my hotel bill--a request that I did not think it right to refuse--and left me with violent protestations of devotion. A week later he wrote me a Nonconformist conscience letter in which he said that as he did not approve of my knowing Bosie [Douglas] he thought it would be morally wrong of him to help me in any way except by advice! He also added that his wife disapproved of my knowing Bosie!! So Tartuffe goes out of my life.7Blacker's cryptic diary notes of the meeting are even less enlightening: "[June 7] . . . went to see Oscar who told me about Sherard, etc., as I had not seen him for 2 months. . . . After lunch went to see Oscar again at 4 to 6, had a long talk about several things. . . . [June 8] Upat 9 after having a good laugh with Carrie at Oscar." The following day, Blacker left for Boulogne with his family.
In order to clear Reinach of the charge of authorship of the article in the National Review, of which he had been accused along with Blacker in the anti-Dreyfusard press, Conybeare wrote an open letter to Reinach claiming authorship and signing himself by name, adding for weight the tag, "of the University of Oxford." It was as a friend of France, Conybeare wrote, that he had
thought it well to publish the information on the subject of the Dreyfus affair, which Ihave obtained from the surest and most reliable sources. . . .In his appearance before the Court of Enquiry on June 24, Reinach read Conybeare's letter, described at the time as "the terrible letter from Oxford which sealed Esterhazy's doom before the bar of the world's educated opinion" (Barlow 285). Despite the fact that the letter, when "reproduced by the press of the entire world," created an "immense sensation," according to Reinach, he was found guilty and stripped of his commission in the territorial army.I affirm to you that the French War Office is in danger of seeing published in foreign papers facsiÉmiles of documents which have been sold by Esterhazy to Colonel Schwartzkoppen, and which are all written in Esterhazy's hand.
I affirm to you that this very thing as nearly as possible happened in the month of February last, and that the sword of Damocles is always suspended over the head of theWar Office. (Barlow 287)
As the press attacks on Blacker continued with mounting intensity through the month of June, he wrote Wilde an accusing letter from Boulogne. "C. Blacker has behaved like a hypocritical ass to me," Wilde complained to Robert Ross, "and finally wrote me a letter accusing me of having written some attack on him that appeared in some Paris paper! I need hardly say that I never read the paper, or saw the attack, and that I never write anonymous attacks on people anywhere. I was so angry, I wrote him a very strong letter," in which Wilde indignantly protested his innocence and demanded an apology for the "disgraceful accusation." For Blacker's instruction, he reminded him of "a few truths about himself."8 No apology was forthcoming from Blacker, whose diary, under the banner heading for the day's entry, "Letter From Oscar Saying Goodbye," records with finality: "[June 25] After lunch just before dinner letter from Oscar which put an end to our friendship forever." Bitterness persisted on both sides and the two were never reconciled: "[7 January 1899] At dinner spoke about Oscar: that he would finish in the gutter as he deserves" (fig. 5).
Blacker wrote of his suspicions of Wilde's perfidy to their long-time friend W. R. Paton, a Greek scholar then in Turkey. Incensed by Blacker's report, Paton was roused to take precipitate action. "Although I entered into an engagement with myself & you not tomention O.W., I must tell you what I did," Paton replied, VII
I wrote a letter to the papers narrating the facts with all the eloquence & ire I had. Then on second thoughts instead of sending it to a paper I sent it to [James] Bryce with whom I am in intimate correspondence as regards the Eastern question & said that he might send it to the papers if he thought fit; but that I wished at least to place my feelings on record by submitting it to him. He replies that it shocked more than surprised him, that after consideration he did not have it published, but has communicated it to several people including the late Home Secretary [Herbert Henry Asquith, Home Secretary at the time of Wilde's trials]. (BP, 11 Sept. 1898)The "malevolent comment in London, where Wilde was accused of taking part on that side of the Dreyfus affair which was not popular in England," referred to by Robert Sherard, may have been owing as much to the circulation of Paton's letter among "several people" of influence in England by the future Viscount Bryce as to Wilde's "passing acquaintance" with Esterhazy, which Sherard suggested as the cause (Twenty Years 440).
In November 1900, Blacker was in Freiburg when he was notified, apparently by Ross,that Wilde was dying. He left immediately for Paris, arriving on November 28, but delayed coming to the Hôtel d'Alsace until the morning after Wilde's death. The sight of the deathbed stirred old memories and bitterness gave way to tears of pity and regret. "When I saw him on his bed," Blacker wrote to Constance's brother Otho Holland, "and considered the old days, and the suffering he had endured and had caused others tosuffer, I broke down and cried as I am almost ashamed to have cried." Later the same day, before the coffin was closed, he returned to the Hôtel d'Alsace for a second time, bringing flowers in the name of Wilde's children. "I had known him for 20 years," he continued in his letter to Otho Holland, "and for many years up to 1893 saw him daily. I need hardly therefore say what pain his fate has been to me. After 1895 I saw him a counted number of times, and then he treated me with great cruelty and injustice and we parted. I always hoped that he would mend and that we would meet again, and thereforethis final severance under the circumstances has grieved me deeply. . . . It is all too sad" (BP,21 Dec. 1898).
Blacker had long been in the habit of confiding totally without reserve in his most intimate friend W. R. Paton, who, like Blacker, had known Wilde for twenty years. Writing of his emotional visit to the deathbed, Blacker bared his soul to Paton in a letter that Paton looked upon as not only "sacred," but, for the agony of mind it revealed, "one of the most terrible letters" he had ever read. Paton, as if by way of amends for the injury done Wilde by his letter to James Bryce, on receipt of Blacker's letter immediately sent it on to Bryce, with a message for Asquith and the other recipients of his earlier letter. "You will remember my having once written to you about Oscar Wilde," Paton wrote,
& that I mentioned to you his conduct to my friend, who was his friend & marriagetrustee. I cannot resist my impulse to send you this letter, which I received today from my friend. It will be obvious to you that it is not meant for publicity & is sacred. It is one of the most terrible letters I have ever read. Please destroy the letter after reading it, but mention to Mr. Asquith & others to whom you communicated my former letter that he was a man who with all his faults created real affection in his friends. You would be doing me a kindness if you would send me any obituary notices of him worth sending that appear.As an apparent afterthought, Paton added his own tribute to Wilde in a postscript: "He was a great genius. His familiar talk was golden."9 Bryce apparently acted on Paton's request that he destroy Blacker's letter after reading it, for the letter has never come to light.
Shoreham, VT
NOTES
1. Wilde to Robert Ross, undated (c. 10 July 1898), William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. Omitted from the letter in its published form.
2. I am grateful to the heirs of Carlos Blacker for permission to quote from his papers and to Merlin Holland for permission to quote from the letters of Oscar and Constance Wilde. Where cited herein, the papers of Carlos Blacker are referred to as BP; references to his "Private & Confidential" memorandum describing his dealings with Panizzardi are cited as Memo; excerpts from his diaries are indicated by the date of entry within square brackets. An account of events prepared by Esterhazy for publication in England exists in manuscript and printer's galleys and is referred to herein as Esterhazy MS. Owing to a falling out between Esterhazy and his English publisher, Grant Richards, the work was never published. Translations from original documents in French are my own.
3. Bernard Shaw wrote of himself that he "was ordinarilly acquainted with Wilde's reputation; but until he prosecuted Queensbury I had never heard a word about his homosexuality. The late Carlos Blacker, an intimate friend of Wilde's who lent me a typescript of De Profundis when the last half of it was still kept secret, told me that he also had not had the faintest suspicion of anything of the kind, and was as amazed as I was when it came to light" (xxviii).
4. The rear end-paper bears the following unexplained pencil notation in Blacker's distinctive Pitman shorthand: "26-2-09. Very depressed. Someone's picture came." The notation may be related to an event reported at length in the press in February 1909: a supposed sighting of Wilde in Turin, Italy. Among Blacker's papers at his death was a clipping of a double-column account of this from an unidentified Italian newspaper under the banner headline: "Is Oscar Wilde Still Alive?" The sighting, one of many, followedthe well-publicized dinner at the Ritz Hotel in London two months before in honor of Robert Ross, to celebrate the publication of the first collected edition of Wilde's works and mark the eighth anniversary of the author's death. Among the more than two hundred guests present, Blacker, an old friend of Ross's, was notable by his absence.
5. Two of the four documents, the first and the fourth in order of appearance in the Dreyfusard newspaper Le Siècle, were based upon information provided by Carlos Blacker. The other two consisted of the first and second installments of the deposition of Henri Casella, an Italian political columnist who had interviewed Panizzardi in Paris and Schwartzkoppen in Berlin prior to Blacker's arrival in Paris. Casella's deposition had been taken on behalf of Zola but was not admitted at his trial. The four documents were published as a collection later in the year under the title La Trahison: Esterhazy et Schwartzkoppen, by Jean Testis [F. Isaac].
6. "Blacker confided in four persons: 1. Conybeare of Oxford; 2. Paton, an Oxford Hellenist resident on Samos; 3. myself [i.e., Salomon Reinach]; and 4. Oscar Wilde"(Extrait de conversations). Salomon Reinach's report of his confidential conversations with Blacker ("he knows everything") was submitted anonymously, in a disguised handwriting and apparently without Blacker's knowledge, to the Cour de Cassation in November 1898, when the Court was considering revision of Dreyfus's court-martial. The document is reprinted in full in J. Robert Maguire and France Beck, "Chronique Dreyfusienne: Un document inédit de l'Affaire Dreyfus: les confidences de Carlos Blacker à Salomon Reinach."
7. Wilde to Ross, 27 Jun. 1898, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. Omitted from the letter in its published form.
8. Wilde to Ross, 27 Jun. 1898 and undated (c. 10 July 1898), William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. Omitted from the letters in their published form.
9. Paton to Bryce, 12 Dec. 1900 (MSS James Bryce, 115, Bodleian Library, Oxford). A few years before, in a letter to Oscar Browning, Paton had written that "[Wilde's] best friend, his marriage trustee, was and is my best friend & I used whenever I went to London to have the inestimable privilege of hearing Oscar Wilde talk to us veryintimately every day" (13 Jun. 1897, King's College Library, Cambridge).
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Thomas, Marcel. Esterhazy ou l'envers de l'affaire Dreyfus. Paris: Vernal/Philippe Lebaud, 1989.
Wilde, Oscar. De Profundis. Ed. Peter Forster. London: The Folio Society, 1991.
------. Intentions by Oscar Wilde: The Decay of Lying; Pen, Pencil and Poison; The Critic as Artist; The Truth of Masks. London: James R. Osgood, McIlvaine, 1891.
------. The Letters of Oscar Wilde. Ed. Rupert Hart-Davis. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1962.
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