moment of some hellish truth, I recognized that the universe itself was simply empty, Godless, friendless, a place so hollow that love had no reason to exist. And then, I remembered nothing more until I stood at the door, saying farewell to Oscar.
“So, this is goodbye,” he said cheerfully, as though it were a happy occasion. I struggled to feel something, and yet I felt numb.
“Have a good trip back to England,” I managed. “And be well. You will always be in my heart.” The last was not something I felt, but something that came to me, like words on a piece of paper, as though they had no connection to either myself or the situation.
“Ah, but Florrie, you have no heart,” Oscar laughed. “At least not anymore.” His voice was cold. And while the emotional impact escaped me, my dear body felt the attack and shuddered. In that moment, I recognized my fate. My essence had been taken from me and I would forever be vacant.
I did not hear from Oscar for two years. My parents had finally found a match for me of which they approved. He was an Irishman, of good breeding, a civil servant with ambitions to be a writer. Oscar, in his theatrical manner, sent a letter on hearing of my engagement. He declared that he was leaving Ireland, “probably for good,” so that we might never have need to set eyes on one another again. He demanded that I return the golden cross, since, he stated, I could never wear it again. He would keep it in memory of our time together, “the sweetest of all my youth,” he said. I could not help but picture that cynical twist to his lips as I read without passion this melodramatic epistle. I kept the cross.
The man I married was a giant, handsome enough, an athlete, an avid storyteller, but was never the good provider Mother had hoped for. In that way he was like Oscar. And in one other. His literary aspirations drove him to write for both the theater, and for print. Since I’d always entertained the notion of acting, once he discovered this, he endeavored to win me over; I enjoyed a short career on the stage and made my theatrical debut in a play written by my husband. On opening night, I received an anonymous crown of flowers, death-white lilies—I knew they had been sent by Oscar. That was just his style.
I need not reiterate my own marital history. Because my husband obtained a modicum of fame in his lifetime, all of the “facts” of our life together are a matter of record. The birth of our son Noel. The various tragedies of my husband’s professional life, and a scattering of successes. His illnesses, one of which led to his death. The fact that he left me exactly £4,723. Suffice it to say that outwardly our lives appeared normal, at least for those who travel in theatrical and literary circles. But a part of me went missing, and my husband was keenly aware of this lack. And, he knew the source. I told him. It consumed his spirit as surely as my own had been swallowed.
As to Oscar Wilde, over the years I watched him ingest the souls of others—the poor woman he eventually married, Constance Lloyd, and Lord Alfred Douglas, the man with whom he had a lifetime affair, but two of the many whose lives were altered irrevocably. Indeed, Oscar portrayed himself accurately enough in The Picture of Dorian Grey. You have likely read the accounts of his life. As always, he sums himself up best: “I was made for destruction. My cradle was rocked by the Fates.” Had I but the fortitude, I might have felt some compassion for his trials and tribulations. And in the end, when Robert Ross wrote that macabre account of Oscar’s death, describing how “blood and other fluids erupted from every orifice of his body,” I could view the words with but a scientific interest. Oscar had left me incapable of compassion. Nay, incapable of all feeling.
Try as he might, my loving husband could not overcome the damage caused by Oscar Wilde. And although I failed as a wife, still, in at least one regard I inspired my husband; his greatest work will live on, of that I am convinced, even as the works of Oscar Wilde seem to cling to life from beyond the grave. I have sworn it to myself that I