Читать книгу Oscar Wilde: A Life in Letters - Оскар Уайльд, Merlin Holland, F. H. Cornish - Страница 24

[Circa 16 June 1877] 1 Merrion Square North

My dear Kitten, Many thanks for your delightful letter. I am glad you are in the midst of beautiful scenery and Aurora Leigh.

I am very much down in spirits and depressed. A cousin of ours to whom we were all very much attached has just died – quite suddenly from some chill caught riding. I dined with him on Saturday and he was dead on Wednesday. My brother and I were always supposed to be his heirs but his will was an unpleasant surprise, like most wills. He leaves my father’s hospital about £8000, my brother £2000, and me £100 on condition of my being a Protestant!

He was, poor fellow, bigotedly intolerant of the Catholics and seeing me ‘on the brink’ struck me out of his will. It is a terrible disappointment to me; you see I suffer a good deal from my Romish leanings, in pocket and mind.

My father had given him a share in my fishing lodge in Connemara, which of course ought to have reverted to me on his death; well, even this I lose ‘if I become a Roman Catholic for five years’ which is very infamous.

Fancy a man going before ‘God and the Eternal Silences’ with his wretched Protestant prejudices and bigotry clinging still to him.

However, I won’t bore you with myself any more. The world seems too much out of joint for me to set it right.

I send you a little notice of Keats’s grave I have just written which may interest you. I visited it with Bouncer and Dunskie.

If you would care to see my views on the Grosvenor Gallery send for the enclosed, and write soon to me. Ever yours

OSCAR WILDE

I heard from little Bouncer from Constantinople lately: he said he was coming home. Love to Puss.