Читать книгу Oscar Wilde: A Life in Letters - Оскар Уайльд, Merlin Holland, F. H. Cornish - Страница 18

[Week ending 3 March 1877] [Oxford]

I have got rather keen on Masonry lately and believe in it awfully – in fact would be awfully sorry to have to give it up in case I secede from the Protestant Heresy. I now breakfast with Father Parkinson, go to St Aloysius, talk sentimental religion to Dunlop and altogether am caught in the fowler’s snare, in the wiles of the Scarlet Woman – I may go over in the vac. I have dreams of a visit to Newman, of the holy sacrament in a new Church, and of a quiet and peace afterwards in my soul. I need not say, though, that I shift with every breath of thought and am weaker and more self-deceiving than ever.

If I could hope that the Church would wake in me some earnestness and purity I would go over as a luxury, if for no better reasons. But I can hardly hope it would, and to go over to Rome would be to sacrifice and give up my two great gods ‘Money and Ambition’.

Still I get so wretched and low and troubled that in some desperate mood I will seek the shelter of a Church which simply enthrals me by its fascination.

I hope that now in the Sacred City you are wakened up from the Egyptian darkness that has blinded you. Do be touched by it, feel the awful fascination of the Church, its extreme beauty and sentiment, and let every part of your nature have play and room.

We have had our Sports and are now in the midst of Torpids and tomorrow the pigeons are shot. To escape I go up to town to see the Old Masters with the Kitten! who is very anxious to come. Dear little Puss is up, and looks wretched, but as pleasant and bright as ever. He is rather keen on going to Rome for Easter with me, but I don’t know if I can afford it, as I have been elected for the St Stephen’s [Club] and have to pay £42. I did not want to be elected for a year or so but David Plunket ran me in in three weeks some way rather to my annoyance.

I would give worlds to be in Rome with you and Dunskie. I know I would enjoy it awfully but I don’t know if I can manage it. You would be a safeguard against Dunskie’s attacks.

I am in for the ‘Ireland’ on Monday. God! how I have wasted my life up here! I look back on weeks and months of extravagance, trivial talk, utter vacancy of employment, with feelings so bitter that I have lost faith in myself. I am too ridiculously easily led astray. So I have idled and won’t get it and will be wretched in consequence. I feel that if I had read I would have done well up here but I have not.

I enjoy your rooms awfully. The inner room is filled with china, pictures, a portfolio and a piano – and a grey carpet with stained floor. The whole get-up is much admired and a little made fun of on Sunday evenings. They are more delightful than I ever expected – the sunshine, the cawing rooks and waving tree-branches and the breeze at the window are too charming.

I do nothing but write sonnets and scribble poetry – some of which I send you – though to send anything of mine to Rome is an awful impertinence, but you always took an interest in my attempts to ride Pegasus.

My greatest chum, except of course the Kitten, is Gussy who is charming though not educated well: however he is ‘psychological’ and we have long chats and walks. The rest of Tom’s set are capital good fellows but awful children. They talk nonsense and smut. I am quite as fond of the dear Kitten as ever but he has not enough power of character to be more than a pleasant affectionate boy. He never exerts my intellect or brain in any way. Between his mind and mine there is no intellectual friction to rouse me up to talk or think, as I used when with you – especially on those dear rides through the greenwood. I ride a good deal now and the last day rode an awful brute which by a skilful buckjump threw me on my head on Shotover. I escaped however unhurt and got home all safe.

The Dean comes sometimes and we talk theology, but I usually ride by myself, and have got such new trousers – quite the dog! I have written a very foolish letter; it reads very rambling and absurd, but it is so delightful writing to you that I just put down whatever comes into my head.

Your letters are charming and the one from Sicily came with a scent of olive-gardens, blue skies and orange trees, that was like reading Theocritus in this grey climate. Goodbye. Ever, dear boy, your affectionate friend

OSCAR WILDE

I have a vacant page.

I won’t write to you theology, but I only say that for you to feel the fascination of Rome would to me be the greatest of pleasures: I think it would settle me.

And really to go to Rome with the bugbear of formal logic on one’s mind is quite as bad as to have the ‘Protestant jumps’.

But I know you are keenly alive to beauty, and do try and see in the Church not man’s hand only but also a little of God’s.