{"id":167750,"date":"2025-11-30T15:14:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T15:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/167750\/"},"modified":"2025-11-30T15:14:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T15:14:12","slug":"oscar-wildes-forgotten-friend-who-nurtured-him-back-from-prison-life-on-the-french-riviera-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/167750\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscar Wilde\u2019s forgotten friend who nurtured him back from prison life on the French Riviera \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a mild December afternoon in 1898, two men sat beneath a large umbrella on the terrace of L\u2019H\u00f4tel des Bains, high on a pine-clad hill above the sleepy fishing port of La Napoule, 8km west of Cannes. Their lunch \u2013 red mullet, steak and potatoes, cheese and a sweet omelette \u2013 was satisfactory, though \u201cthere was no champagne on the list fit to drink\u201d, complained the Irish-born editor and writer Frank Harris to his companion, who had signed the hotel register under the pseudonym he adopted after prison, \u201cSebastian Melmoth\u201d.<\/p>\n

They made an unlikely pair: Harris \u2013 42, flamboyantly dressed, small in stature and lifted by his Cuban heels, his voice booming \u2013 beside Oscar Wilde<\/a>, 44, visibly weakened, greying and heavier now, \u201cunshaven and slovenly\u201d, as Harris later put it. <\/p>\n

Much to the proprietor\u2019s surprise, the two Irishmen had swept in and taken the three best rooms on the top floor of this bains-de-mer hideaway for an indeterminate stay in the winter off-season. Wilde, broke and adrift, had not needed much convincing. Harris had brought him south from the \u201cawful rooms\u201d of grey Paris, offering, with real generosity, the chance to work again in quiet coastal air, all expenses paid. <\/p>\n

Call it a shimmering fantasy, or perhaps a scatterbrained scheme. Despite Harris\u2019s reputation as something of a rogue, Wilde trusted him \u2013 he was a friend \u2013 and a man of letters, acting as Oscar\u2019s self-appointed benefactor and impresario, who would later write Wilde\u2019s first biography.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Wilde, physically worn down after two years of hard labour in Reading Gaol, initially clung to the idea that in Mediterranean light he might write \u201cjust as naturally as a bird sings\u201d. At La Napoule, he was immediately struck by the \u201csapphire blue sea\u201d and the red porphyry of the Est\u00e9rel. \u201cI am on the Riviera, with blue-and-gold weather, under a sun warm as wine and apricot-coloured\u2026,\u201d he wrote to a friend. To Andr\u00e9 Gide on December 14th he confided: \u201cPerhaps here I will be able to find my soul again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"FrankFrank Harris (1856-1931), Irish-born literary editor and journalist. Photograph: Bettmann via Getty <\/p>\n

But according to Harris\u2019s Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions (1916), nothing could coax him into writing a single line. Wilde simply \u201cloafed delightfully\u201d: rising late, lingering over breakfast, then wandering down to speak with fishermen on the beach. Afternoons were filled with slow walks through the pines, occasional recitations from The Ballad of Reading Gaol, or with a mildly bored Wilde dozing in the sun.<\/p>\n

Life, however, was not entirely without distractions. Wilde would occasionally head to Cannes, sipping absinthe in a roadside cafe and gazing across the bay towards the imagined outline of Capri. \u201cThe fishing population of the Riviera have the same freedom from morals as the Neapolitans,\u201d he told Robert Ross. To another friend he wrote: \u201cEven at Napoule there is romance: it comes in boats and takes the form of fisher-lads, who draw great nets, and are bare-limbed: they are strangely perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Wilde lay dying in Paris, he pleaded with his friend Robert Ross: \u2018Look out for some little cup in the hills near Nice where I can go when I am better \u2026 ‘ The Riviera dream never quite left him<\/p>\n

Harris had soon gone off, leaving Wilde with an ample supply of good champagne, absinthe and coffee, but inadequate funds to remain at the hotel. Presumably the editor was pursuing speculative ventures in Monaco and \u00c8ze, though there were other unnamed, urgent matters as well. When Harris returned to L\u2019H\u00f4tel des Bains on February 2nd, 1899, he and Wilde spent two weeks shut in their rooms in loud, alcohol-fuelled \u201cwork sessions\u201d. Their projected collaboration on the play Mr and Mrs Daventry, meanwhile, never progressed beyond a handful of rough scenes. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018I\u2019m an artist, not a reporter\u2019: Ray Burke on journalist and writer Frank HarrisOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Harris, absorbed in plans for a book of his own, was often \u201cupstairs thinking about Shakespeare at the top of his voice\u201d. Alternately bemused and exhausted, Wilde wrote to Reginald Turner: \u201cAfter our literary talk in the evening I stagger to my room, bathed in perspiration.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"OscarOscar Wilde in Rome, 1897, a year before his winter on the French Riviera. <\/p>\n

The situation deteriorated when the ever-restless Harris departed again. Finding La Napoule too isolated, Wilde moved to the overpriced H\u00f4tel Terminus in Nice, near the station, with instructions from Harris to find him a villa \u2013 an unlikely request, plus Harris had also failed to produce the money promised for the final month. Wilde pawned a ring to pay the ten-franc fare to Monte Carlo, where he told Harris he could not pay his bill; the \u201crepugnant\u201d proprietor of the Terminus had asked him to leave after English tourists recognised him and objected.<\/p>\n

Public situations played out in similar ways. At the Caf\u00e9 de la R\u00e9gence in Nice, when an Englishman and his wife sat beside them and insulted Wilde, Harris claims in My Life and Loves that he nearly struck the man with a glass pitcher before persuading the manager to remove the couple. He also chronicles Wilde\u2019s distress: \u201cGood God, Frank, how dreadful; why do they hate me so; what harm have I ever done them?\u201d Similarly, Harris describes a lunch at the seaside La R\u00e9serve in Beaulieu that ended abruptly after English visitors displayed their hostility.<\/p>\n

\"FromFrom Oscar Wilde: Autographed letter signed ‘O\u2019 and \u2018Sebastian Melmoth\u2019 to Louis Wilkinson, from H\u00f4tel des Bains, La Napoule, Cannes, postmarked February 3rd, 1899. Archives Ville de Mandelieu \/ Fonds AVFM\u00a0 <\/p>\n

By this point, Wilde had moved to a modest pension on the rue d\u2019Angleterre in Nice for three francs a night. No longer able to rely on Harris, he accepted an invitation to Switzerland, via Italy, from Harold Mellor, a young acquaintance he had met \u2013 \u201ca charming fellow\u201d, Wilde first wrote, though his enthusiasm cooled within weeks.<\/p>\n

The Riviera chapter was effectively over. Wilde left without rancour toward Harris \u2013 their quarrel in Paris still lay ahead (a brief, bitter falling-out over money and promises neither man quite kept). From Switzerland on March 1st, he even asked whether he might dedicate An Ideal Husband to him: \u201cTo Frank Harris \u2013 a slight tribute to his power and distinction as an artist, his chivalry and nobility as a friend.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be perfectly Frank<\/p>\n

But who, after all, was Frank Harris?<\/p>\n

Born James Thomas Harris in Galway in 1856, he later claimed he ran away at 14 with scholarship prize money and never returned \u2013 the first of many reinventions. In America he worked odd jobs, tried university, then moved on to ranches in Kansas and, as he later said, Texas, enlarging those years into My Reminiscences as a Cowboy, the memoir behind the 1958 Hollywood film Cowboy. Fact and flourish were fused from the start.<\/p>\n

\"FrankFrank Harris was also a short-story writer and a biographer of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. Photograph: Bettmann via Getty <\/p>\n

By the 1880s he resurfaced in London as Frank Harris, editor, critic and social operator, whose brilliance mixed uneasily with volatility. At The Fortnightly Review and The Saturday Review he promoted young writers, including HG Wells, and cultivated a circle he claimed included \u00c9mile Zola and Guy de Maupassant. He was chronically late, a habitual borrower of money and an extraordinary talker. Admirers forgave him; detractors called him a liar. Max Beerbohm joked that Harris told the truth only \u201cwhen his invention flagged\u201d.<\/p>\n

Yet he wrote with genuine force. The Man Shakespeare was eccentric but serious; his biography of GB Shaw was sharp and opinionated. His notorious erotic memoir, My Life and Loves \u2013 half confession, half theatre \u2013 was so explicit that it was banned in Britain and the US for decades, circulating privately abroad.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Oscar Wilde\u2019s talk inspired his rise and led to his downfallOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Harris\u2019s private life in the 1890s matched the turbulence. He moved between London, Paris, the Riviera and Monte-Carlo, juggling a household with May Congden and their gravely ill daughter while pursuing an intense attachment to the younger Nellie O\u2019Hara. Harris\u2019s abrupt absences were later inflated into wilder tales. His secretary, Thomas Bell, later challenged Harris\u2019s version of events \u2013 among them the claim that he had slipped away for a week of orgies in a villa at San Remo during the time Wilde was left alone in La Napoule.<\/p>\n

\"StatueStatue of Oscar Wilde on Dublin\u2019s Merrion Square. Photograph: Ellius Grace\/The New York Times<\/p>\n

In Monaco he cut an unforgettable figure \u2013 fur-lined overcoat, gold-headed cane, too much jewellery \u2013 and briefly won the confidence of Princess Alice until her husband, Prince Albert, intervened after Harris\u2019s mismanaged hotel venture.<\/p>\n

His boldest gamble came at \u00c8ze. There, Harris envisioned not just a business but a kind of personal stage \u2013 a place where he might gather writers, wandering aristocrats, gamblers, muses, all suspended for an evening above the glittering Mediterranean. On a rocky peninsula, he built C\u00e9sari Reserve, imagining a restaurant and luxury retreat with champagne-soaked literary gatherings around a pool on the edge of the sea. He poured what would now be about \u20ac3 million into the venture and went bankrupt anyway. News this summer that Bernard Arnault bought Cap Estel \u2013 currently a palace-hotel \u2013 for about \u20ac200 million would have doubtlessly amused him. Harris always believed he had been ahead of the curve.<\/p>\n

\"OscarOscar Wilde in his younger pomp. Photograph: Napoleon Sarony\/Getty <\/p>\n

Recent scholarship has softened caricatures. In After Oscar: The Legacy of a Scandal, Merlin Holland, Wilde\u2019s grandson, notes that his father, Vyvyan, admired Harris\u2019s writing and kept inscribed copies of his books, even while members of Wilde\u2019s circle, such as his close friend Robert Ross, dismissed Harris\u2019s biography of Wilde as unreliable or sensational.<\/p>\n

As Wilde lay dying in Paris, he pleaded with Ross: \u201cLook out for some little cup in the hills near Nice where I can go when I am better \u2026 \u201d The Riviera dream never quite left him \u2013 and Harris had once been part of it. He died on November 30th, 1900.<\/p>\n

Harris eventually settled in Nice with Nellie O\u2019Hara, 31 years his junior, whom he married in 1927 at 71. Visitors found his flat surprisingly simple, a contrast to the extravagance of his stories, yet Harris remained determinedly himself \u2013 argumentative, theatrical, and still convinced a last great project might rescue his reputation. He wrote steadily despite illness, dwindling means and failed publishing schemes. Richard Grant recalled that \u201cto hear Harris talk was to be enthralled, seduced and violated\u201d. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years review: writer\u2019s final years recast Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Living in relative obscurity and largely forgotten, Harris died in 1931 and was buried at the Cimeti\u00e8re de Caucade. A plaque on his final residence identifies him simply as \u201cFrank Harris, Irish journalist and writer and faithful guest of the C\u00f4te d\u2019Azur\u201d. It\u2019s not the tribute he might have imagined for himself, but it\u2019s the one that stands.<\/p>\n

Lanie Goodman is a freelance arts and travel writer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a mild December afternoon in 1898, two men sat beneath a large umbrella on the terrace of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167751,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60,7652,976],"class_list":{"0":"post-167750","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-oscar-wilde","12":"tag-weekendreview"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}