 CHAPTER 18 MITTIGATION OF PUNISHMENT, BUT NOT RELEASE On my return to London I saw Sir Ruggles Brise. No one could have shown me warmer sympathy or more discriminating comprehension. I made my report to him, and left the matter in his hands with perfect confidence. I took care to describe Oskar's condition to his friends, while assuring them that his circumstances would soon be bettered. A little later I heard that the governor of the prison had been changed, that Oskar had got books and writing materials, and was allowed to have the gas burning in his cell to a late hour, when it was turned down but not out. In fact, from that time on he was treated with all the kindness possible, and soon we heard that he was bearing the confinement and discipline better than could have been expected. Sir Evelyn Ruggles Brise had evidently settled the difficulty in the most humane spirit. Later still I was told that Oskar had begun to write de profundice in prison, and I was very hopeful about that too. No news could have given me greater pleasure. It seemed to me certain that he would justify himself to men by turning the punishment into a stepping-stone. And in this belief, when the time came, I ventured to call on Sir Ruggles Brise with another petition. Surely, I said, Oskar will not be imprisoned for the full term. Surely four or five months for good conduct will be remitted. Sir Ruggles Brise listened sympathetically, but warned me at once that any remission was exceptional. However, he would let me know what could be done if I would call again in a week. Much to my surprise he did not seem certain even about the good conduct. I returned at the end of the week and had another long talk with him. He told me that good conduct meant, in prison parlance, absence of punishment, and Oskar had been punished pretty often. Of course his offenses were minor offenses, nothing serious. Childish faults indeed for the most part. He was often talking, and he was often late in the morning. His cell was not kept so well as it might be and so forth. Peccadillos all, yet a certificate of good conduct depended on such trifling observances. In the face of Oskar's record Sir Ruggles Brise did not think that the sentence would be easily lessened. I was thunderstruck. But then no rules to me are sacrosanct. Indeed they are only tolerable because of the exceptions. I had such a high opinion of Ruggles Brise, his kindness and sense of fair play, that I ventured to show him my whole mind on the matter. Oscar Wilde, I said to him, is just about to face life again. He is more than half reconciled to his wife. He has begun a book, is shouldering the burden. A little encouragement now, and I believe he will do better things than he has ever done. I am convinced that he has far bigger things in him than we have seen yet. But he is extraordinarily sensitive and extraordinarily vain. The danger is that he may be frightened and blighted by the harshness and hatred of the world. He may shrink into himself and do nothing if the wind be not tempered a little for him. A hint of encouragement now. The feeling that men like yourself think him worthful and deserving of special kindly treatment, and I feel certain he will do great things. I really believe it is in your hands to save a man of extraordinary talent and get the best out of him if you care to do it. Of course I care to do it," he cried. You cannot doubt that, and I see exactly what you mean, but it will not be easy. Won't you see what can be done? I persisted. Put your mind to discover how it should be done, how the Home Secretary may be induced to remit the last few months of wild sentence. After a little while he replied, You must believe that the authorities are quite willing to help in any good work, more than willing, and I am sure I speak for the Home Secretary as well as for myself. But it is for you to give us some reason for acting, a reason that could be avowed and defended. I did not at first catch his drift, so I persevered. You admit that the reason exists, that it would be a good thing to favour wild, then why not do it? We live," he said, under parliamentary rule. Suppose the question were asked in the house, and I think it very likely in the present state of public opinion that the question would be asked. What should we answer? It would not be an avowable reason that we hoped wild would write new plays and books, would it? That reason ought to be sufficient, I grant you, but you see yourself it would not be so regarded. You are right, I suppose, I had to admit. But if I got you a petition from men of letters asking you to release wild for his health's sake, would that do? Sir Ruggles Brise jumped at the suggestion. Certainly," he exclaimed, if some men of letters, men of position, wrote asking that wild sentence should be diminished by three or four months on account of his health, I think it would have the best effect. I will see Meredith at once," I said, and some others. How many names should I get? If you have Meredith," he replied, you don't need many others. A dozen would do, or fewer if you find a dozen too many. I don't think I shall meet with any difficulty," I replied, but I will let you know. You will find it harder than you think," he concluded, but if you get one or two great names, the rest may follow. In any case, one or two good names will make it easier for you. Naturally I thanked him for his kindness, and went away absolutely content. I had never set myself a task which seemed simpler. Meredith could not be more merciless than a royal commission. I returned to my office in the Saturday review, and got the Royal Commission report on this sentence of two years imprisonment with hard labour. The Commission recommended that it should be wiped off the statute book as too severe. I drafted a little petition as colourless as possible. In view of the fact that the punishment of two years imprisonment with hard labour has been condemned by a royal commission as too severe, and inasmuch as Mr. Wilde has been distinguished by his work in letters, and is now we hear suffering in health, we, your petitioners, pray, and so forth, and so on. I got this printed, and then sat down to write to Meredith, asking when I could see him on the matter. I wanted his signature first to be printed underneath the petition, and then issue it. To my astonishment, Meredith did not answer at once, and when I pressed him and set forth the facts, he wrote to me that he could not do what I wished. I wrote again, begging him to let me see him on the matter. For the first time in my life he refused to see me. He wrote to me to say that nothing I could urge would move him, and it would therefore only be painful to both of us to find ourselves in conflict. Nothing ever surprised me more than this attitude of Meredith's. I knew his poetry pretty well, and knew how severe he was on every sensual weakness, perhaps because it was his own pitfall. I knew too what a fighter he was at heart, and how he loved the virile virtues. But I thought I knew the man, knew his tender kindliness of heart, the founts of pity in him, and I felt certain I could count on him for any office of human charity or generosity. But no, he was impenetrable, hard. He told me long afterwards that he had rather a low opinion of Wilde's capacities, instinctive, deep-rooted contempt, too, for the showman in him, and an absolute abhorrence of his vice. That vile, sensual self-indulgence puts back the hands of the clock, he said, and should not be forgiven. For the life of me I could never forgive Meredith. Never afterwards was he of any importance to me. He had always been to me a standard bearer in the eternal conflict, a leader in the liberation war of humanity, and here I found him pitiless to another who had been wounded on the same side in the great struggle. It seemed to me appalling. True, Wilde had not been wounded in fighting for us. True, he had fallen out and come to grief as a drunkard might. But after all, he had been fighting on the right side, had been a quickening intellectual influence. It was dreadful to pass him on the wayside and allow him callously to bleed to death. It was revoltingly cruel. The foremost Englishman of his time, unable even to understand Christ's example, much less reach his height. This refusal of Meredith's not only hurt me, but almost destroyed my hope, though it did not alter my purpose. I wanted a figurehead for my petition, and the figurehead I had chosen I could not get. I began to wonder and doubt. I next approached a very different man, the late Professor Chirton Collins, a great friend of mine who, in spite of an almost pedantic rigor of mind and character, had in him at bottom a curious spring of sympathy. A little pool of pure love for the poets and writers whom he admired. I got him to dinner and asked him to sign the petition. He refused, but on grounds other than those taken by Meredith. Of course Wild ought to get out. He said the sentence was a savage one and showed bitter prejudice, but I have children, and my own way to make in the world, and if I did this I should be tarred with the wild brush. I cannot afford to do it. If he were really a great man I hope I should do it, but I don't agree with your estimate of him. I cannot think I am called upon to bell the British cat in his defence. It has many claws and all sharp. As soon as he saw the position was unworthy of him he shifted to new ground. If you were justified in coming to me I should do it, but I am no one. Why don't you go to Meredith, Swinburne, or Hardy? I had to give up the Professor as well as the poet. I knocked in turn at a great many doors, but all in vain. No one wished to take the odium on himself. One man, since become celebrated, said he had no position. His name was not good enough for the purpose. Others left my letters unanswered. Yet another sent a bare acknowledgement, saying how sorry he was, but that public opinion was against Mr Wilde. With one accord they all made excuses. One day Professor Tyrrell of Trinity College Dublin happened to be in my office, while I was setting forth the difference between men of letters in France and England, as exemplified by this conduct. In France, among authors, there is a recognised espride car, which constrains them to hold together. For instance, when Zola was threatened with prosecution for Nanna, a dozen men like Charbillet, Feuillet, Dumafiz, who hated his work and regarded it as sensational, tawdry, immoral even, took up the cudgels for him at once, declared that the police were not judges of art and should not interfere with a serious workman. All these Frenchmen, though they disliked Zola's work and believed that his popularity was won by a low appeal, still admitted that he was a force in letters, and stood by him resolutely, in spite of their own prepossessions and prejudices. But in England the feeling is altogether more selfish. Everyone consults his own sordid self-interest, and is rather glad to see a social favourite come to grief. Not a hand is stretched out to help him. Suddenly Tyrell broke in upon my exposition. I don't know whether my name is of any good to you, he said, but I agree with all you have said, and my name might be classed with that of Chirton Collins, though of course I have no right to speak for literature. And without more ado he signed the petition, adding Regis Professor of Greek at Trinity College Dublin. When you next see Oscar, he continued, please tell him that my wife and I asked after him. We both held him in grateful memory as a most brilliant talker and writer, and a charming fellow to boot. Confusion take all their English puritanism. Merely living in Ireland tends to make an Englishman more humane. But one name was not enough, and Tyrell's was the only one I could get. In despair, and knowing that George Wyndham had had a great liking for Oscar and admiration for his high talent, I asked him to lunch at the Savoy, laid the matter before him, and begged him to give me his name. He refused, and in face of my astonishment, he excused himself by saying that as soon as the rumour had reached him of Oscar's intimacy with Bozy Douglas, he had asked Oscar whether there was any truth in the scandalous report. You see, he went on, Bozy is by way of being a relation of mine, and so I had the right to ask. Oscar gave me his word of honour that there was nothing but friendship between them. He lied to me, and that I can never forgive. A politician unable to forgive a lie. Surely one can hear the mocking laughter of the gods. I could say nothing to such poetry affected nonsense. Politician like Wyndham showed me how the wind of popular feeling blew, and I recognised that my efforts were in vain. There is no fellow feeling among English men of letters. In fact, they hold together less than any other class, and by himself none of them wished to help a wounded member of the flock. I had to tell Sir Ruggles Bries that I had failed. I have been informed since that if I had begun by asking Thomas Hardy, I might have succeeded. I knew Hardy, but never cared greatly for his talent. I dare say if I had had nothing else to do I might have succeeded in some half-degree. But all these two years I was extremely busy and anxious. The storm-clouds in South Africa were growing steadily darker, and my attitude to South African affairs was exceedingly unpopular in London. It seemed to me vitally important to prevent England from making war on the Boers. I had to abandon the attempt to get Oscar's sentence shortened, and comfort myself with Sir Ruggles Bries's assurance that he would be treated with the greatest possible consideration. Still, my advocacy had had a good effect. Oscar himself has told us what the kindness shown to him in the last six months of his prison life really did for him. He writes in De Profundis that for the first part of his sentence he could only wring his hands in impotent despair and cry, What an ending! What an appalling ending! But when the new spirit of kindness came to him he could say with sincerity, What a beginning! What a wonderful beginning! He sums it all up in these words, Had I been released after eighteen months, as I hoped to be, I would have left my prison loathing it and every official in it with a bitterness of hatred that would have poisoned my life. I have had six months more of imprisonment, but humanity has been in the prison with us all the time, and now when I go out I shall always remember great kindnesses that I have received here from almost everybody. And on the day of my release I shall give many thanks to many people and ask to be remembered by them in turn. This is the man who Mr Justice Wills addressed as insensible to any high appeal. Some time passed before I visited Oscar again. The change in him was extraordinary. He was light-hearted, gay and looked better than I had ever seen him. Clearly the austerity of prison life suited him. He met me with a jest. It is you, Frank, he cried as if astonished, always original. You come back to prison of your own free will. He declared that the new Governor, Major Nelson was his name, had been as kind as possible to him. He had not had a punishment for months, and, oh, Frank, the joy of reading when you like and writing as you please, the delight of living again. He was so infinitely improved that his talk delighted me. What books have you, I asked. I thought I should like the Oedipus Rex, he replied, gravely. But I could not read it. It all seemed unreal to me. Then I thought of St. Augustine, but he was worse still. The fathers of the church were still farther away from me. They all found it so easy to repent and change their lives. It does not seem to me easy. At last I got hold of Dante. Dante was what I wanted. I read the purgattaria all through, forced myself to read it in Italian to get the full flavour and significance of it. Dante, too, had been in the depths and drunk the bitter leaves of despair. I shall want a little library when I come out, a library of a score of books. I wonder if you will help me to get it. I want Flaubert, Stevenson, Baudelaire, Metalink, Dumapeur, Keats, Marlowe, Chatterton, Anatol France, Theophile Gautier, Dante, Goethe, Meredith's poems, and his egoist, the song of Solomon, too, Job, and of course the Gospels. I shall be delighted to get them for you, I said, if you will send me the list. By the by I hear that you have been reconciled to your wife. Is that true? I should be glad to know it's true. I hope it will be all right, he said gravely. She is very good and kind. I suppose you have heard, he went on, that my mother died since I came here, and that leaves a great gap in my life. I always had the greatest admiration and love for my mother. She was a great woman, Frank, a perfect idealist. My father got into trouble once in Dublin, perhaps you have heard about it. Oh yes, I said, I have read the case. It is narrated in the first chapter of this book. Well, Frank, she stood up in court and bore witness for him with perfect serenity, with perfect trust, and without a shadow of common womanly jealousy. She could not believe that the man she loved could be unworthy, and her conviction was so complete that it communicated itself to the jury. Her trust was so noble that they became infected by it and brought him in guiltless. Extraordinary was it not. She was quite sure, too, of the verdict. It is only noble souls who have that assurance and serenity. When my father was dying it was the same thing. I always see her sitting there by his bedside with a sort of dark veil over her head, quite silent, quite calm. Nothing ever troubled her optimism. She believed that only good can happen to us. When death came to the man she loved, she accepted it with the same serenity, and when my sister died she bore it in the same high way. My sister was a wonderful creature, so gay and high-spirited, embodied sunshine I used to call her. When we lost her, my mother simply took it that it was best for the child. Women have infinitely more courage than men, don't you think? I have never known anyone with such perfect faith as my mother. She was one of the great figures of the world. What she must have suffered over my sentence I don't dare to think. I'm sure she endured agonies. She had great hopes of me. When she was told that she was going to die and that she could not see me, for I was not allowed to go to her, may the prison help him, and turned her face to the wall. She felt about the prison as you do, Frank, and really I think you are both right. It has helped me. There are things I see now that I never saw before. I see what pity means. I thought a work of art should be beautiful and joyous, but now I see that that ideal is insufficient, even shallow. A work of art must be founded on pity. A book or poem which has no pity in it had better not be written. I shall be very lonely when I come out, and I can't stand loneliness and solitude. It is intolerable to me, hateful. I have had too much of it. You see, Frank, I am breaking with the past altogether. I am going to write the history of it. I am going to tell how I was tempted and fell, how I was pushed by the man I loved into that dreadful quarrel of his, driven forward to the fight with his father, and then left to suffer alone. That is the story I am now going to tell. That is the book of pity and of love which I am writing now. A terrible book. I wonder would you publish it, Frank? I should like it to appear in the Saturday. I'd be delighted to publish anything of yours, I replied, and happier still to publish something to show that you have at length chosen the better part. And I'll be giving a new life. I'd pay you too whatever the work turns out to be worth to me, in any case much more than I pay Bernard Shaw or anyone else. I said this to encourage him. I'm sure of that, he answered. I'll send you the book as soon as I've finished it. I think you'll like it. And there for the moment the matter ended. At length I felt sure that all would be well with him. How could I help feeling sure? His mind was richer and stronger than it had ever been, and he had broken with all the dark past. I was overjoyed to believe that he would do greater things than he had ever done, and this belief and determination were in him too, as anyone can see on reading what he wrote at this time in prison. There is before me so much to do that I would regard it as a terrible tragedy if I died before I was allowed to complete at any rate a little of it. I see new developments in art and life, each one of which is a fresh mode of perfection. I long to live so that I can explore what is no less than a new world to me. Do you want to know what this new world is? I think you can guess what it is. It is the world in which I have been living. Sorrow then, and all that it teaches one, is my new world. I used to live entirely for pleasure. I shunned suffering and sorrow of every kind. I hated both. Through the prison bars Oscar had begun to see how mistaken he had been, how much greater and more salutary to the soul suffering is than pleasure. Out of sorrow have the world's been built, and at the birth of a child or a star there is pain. End of chapter 18 Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions by Frank Harris Chapter 19 His Saint Martin's Summer, His Best Work Part 1 Shortly before he came out of prison one of Oscar's intimates told me he was destitute and begged me to get him some clothes. I took the name of his tailor and ordered two suits. The tailor refused to take the order. He was not going to make clothes for Oscar Wilde. I could not trust myself to talk to the man, and therefore sent my assistant editor and friend, Mr. Blanchon, to have it out with him. The tradesman's soul yielded to the persuasiveness of cash in advance. I sent Oscar the clothes and a check, and shortly after his release got a letter thanking me. A little later I heard on Good Authority a story which Oscar afterwards confirmed, that when he left Reading Jail the correspondent of an American paper offered him one thousand pounds for an interview dealing with his prison life and experiences, but he felt it beneath his dignity to take his sufferings to market. He thought it better to borrow than to earn. He is partly to be excused perhaps when one remembers that he had still some pounds left of the large sums given him before his condemnation by Miss S. Ross, Moore A.D. and others. Still his refusal of such a sum as that offered by the New York paper shows how utterly contemptuous he was of money. Even at a moment when one would have thought money would have been his chief preoccupation. He always lived in the day and rather heedlessly. As soon as he left prison he crossed with some friends to France and went to stay at the Hotel de la Plage at Berneval, a quiet little village near Dieppe. Monsieur André Gide, who called on him there almost as soon as he arrived, gives a fair mental picture of him at this time. He tells how delighted he was to find in him the Oscar Wilde of old. No longer the sensualist puffed out with pride and good living, but the sweet Wilde of the days before 1891. I found myself taken aback not two years, he says, but four or five. There was the same dreamy look, the same amused smile, the same voice. He told Monsieur Gide that prison had completely changed him, had taught him the meaning of pity. You know, he went on, how fond I used to be of Madame Bovary, but Flaubert would not admit pity into his work, and that is why it has a petty and restrained character about it. It is the sense of pity by means of which a work gains in expanse and by which it opens up a boundless horizon. Do you know, my dear fellow, it was pity which prevented my killing myself. During the first six months in prison I was dreadfully unhappy, so utterly miserable that I wanted to kill myself. But what kept me from doing so was looking at the others and seeing that they were as unhappy as I was, and feeling sorry for them. Oh, dear, what a wonderful thing pity is, and I never knew it. He was speaking in a low voice, without any excitement. Have you ever learned how wonderful a thing pity is? For my part I thank God every night, yes, on my knees I thank God for having taught it to me. I went into prison with a heart of stone, thinking only of my own pleasure, but now my heart is utterly broken. Pity has entered into my heart. I have learned now that pity is the greatest and the most beautiful thing in the world, and that is why I cannot bear ill-will towards those who caused my suffering and those who condemned me. No, not to any one, because without them I should not have known all that. Alfred Douglas writes me terrible letters. He says he does not understand me, that he does not understand that I do not wish everyone ill, and that everyone has been horrid to me. No, he does not understand me, he cannot understand me any more. But I keep on telling him that in every letter. We cannot follow the same road. He has his, and it is beautiful. I have mine. His is that of Alcibiades. Mine is now that of St. Francis of Assisi. How much of this is sincere, and how much merely imagined and stated in order to incarnate the new ideal to perfection would be hard to say. The truth is not so saintly simple as the Christianized Oscar would have us believe. The unpublished portions of De Profundis, which were read out in the Douglas Ransom Trial, prove what all his friends know, that Oscar Wilde found it impossible to forgive or forget what seemed to him personal ill-treatment. There are beautiful pages in De Profundis, pages of sweetest Christ-like resignation and charity, and no doubt in a certain mood Oscar was sincere in writing them. But there was another mood in him, more vital and more enduring, if not so engaging, a mood in which he saw himself as one betrayed and sacrificed and abandoned, and that he attributed his ruin wholly to his friend, and did not hesitate to speak of him as the Judas whose shallow selfishness and imperious ill-temper and unfulfilled promises of monetary help had driven a great man to disaster. That unpublished portion of De Profundis is in essence from beginning to end one long curse of Lord Alfred Douglas, an indictment apparently impartial, particularly at first, but in reality a bitter and merciless accusation, showing in Oscar Wilde a curious want of sympathy even with the man he said he loved. Those who would know Oscar Wilde as he really was will read that piece of rhetoric with care enough to notice that he reiterates the charge of shallow selfishness with such venom that he discovers his own colossal egotism and essential hardness of heart. Love, we are told, suffereth long and is kind, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeeth all things, endureth all things. That sweet generous, all-forgiving tenderness of love was not in the pagan Oscar Wilde and therefore even his deepest passion never won to complete reconciliation and ultimate redemption. In this same talk with Monsieur Gide, Oscar is reported to have said that he had known beforehand that a catastrophe was unavoidable. There was but one end possible. That state of things could not last. There had to be some end to it. This view, I believe, is Gide's and not Oscar's. In any case, I am sure that my description of him before the trials as full of insolent self-assurance is the truer truth. Of course he must have had some forebodings. He was warned, as I've related, again and again, but he took character colour from his associates and he met Queensborough's first attempts at attack with utter disdain. He did not realise his danger at all. Gide reports him more correctly as adding, Prison has completely changed me. I was relying on it for that. Douglas is terrible. He cannot understand that. Cannot understand that I am not taking up the same existence again. He accuses the others of having changed me. I may publish here part of a letter of a prison warder which Mr. Stuart Mason reproduced in his excellent little book on Oscar Wilde. He says, No more beautiful life had any man lived. No more beautiful life could any man live than Oscar Wilde lived during the short period I knew him in prison. He wore upon his face an eternal smile. Sunshine was on his face. Sunshine of some sort must have been in his heart. People say he was not sincere. He was the very soul of sincerity when I knew him. If he did not continue that life after he left prison then the forces of evil must have been too strong for him. But he tried. He honestly tried and in prison he succeeded. All this seems to me in the main true. Oscars gave evacity would have astonished any stranger. Besides the regular hours and scant plain food of prison had improved his health and the solitude and suffering had lent him a deeper emotional life. But there was an intense bitterness in him, a profound underlying sense of injury which came continually to passion at expression. It as soon as the miserable petty persecution of the prison was lifted from him all the joyous gaiety and fun of his nature bubbled up irresistibly. There was no contradiction in this complexity. A man can hold in himself a hundred conflicting passions and impulses without confusion. At this time the dominant chord in Oscar was pity for others. To my delight the world had evidence of this changed Oscar Wilde in a very short time. On May 28th, a few days after he left prison there appeared in the Daily Chronicle a letter more than two columns in length pleading for the kindlier treatment of little children in English prisons. The letter was written because Warder Martin of Reading Prison had been dismissed by the commissioners for the dreadful crime of having given some sweet biscuits to a little hungry child. I must quote a few paragraphs of this letter because it shows how prison had deepened Oscar Wilde how his own suffering had made him, as Shakespeare says, pregnant to good pity and also because it tells us what life was like in an English prison in our time. Oscar wrote I saw the three children myself on the Monday preceding my release. They had just been convicted and were standing in a row in the central hall in their prison dress carrying their sheets under their arms previous to their being sent to the cells allotted to them. They were quite small children, the youngest the one to whom the Warder gave the biscuits being a tiny chap for whom they had evidently been unable to find clothes small enough to fit. I had, of course, seen many children in prison during the two years during which I was myself confined. Wandsworth Prison especially contained always a large number of children but the little child I saw on the afternoon of Monday the 17th at Reading was tinier than any one of them. I need not say how utterly distressed I was to see these children at Reading for I knew the treatment in store for them. The cruelty that is practised by day and night on children in English prisons is incredible except to those who have witnessed it and are aware of the brutality of the system. People nowadays do not understand what cruelty is ordinary cruelty is simply stupidity the prison treatment of children is terrible primarily from people not understanding the peculiar psychology of the child's nature a child can understand a punishment inflicted by an individual such as a parent or guardian and bear it with a certain amount of acquiescence what it cannot understand is a punishment inflicted by society it cannot realise what society is the terror of a child in prison is quite limitless I remember once in Reading as I was going out to exercise seeing in the dimly lit cell opposite mine a small boy two warders not unkindly men were talking to him with some sternness apparently or perhaps giving him some useful advice about his conduct one was in the cell with him the other was standing outside the child's face was like a white wedge of sheer terror there was in his eyes the terror of a hunted animal the next morning I heard him at breakfast time crying and calling to be let out his cry was for his parents from time to time I could hear the deep voice of the warder on duty telling him to keep quiet yet he was not even convicted of whatever little offence he had been charged with he was simply on remand that I knew by his wearing his own clothes he seemed neat enough he was however wearing prison socks and shoes this showed that he was a very poor boy whose own shoes if he had any were in a bad state justices and magistrates an entirely ignorant class as a rule often remand children for a week and then perhaps remit whatever sentence they are entitled to pass they call this not sending a child to prison it is of course a stupid view on their part to a little child whether he is in prison on remand or after conviction is not a subtlety of position he can comprehend to him the horrible thing is to be there at all in the eyes of humanity it should be a horrible thing for him to be there at all this terror that seizes and dominates the child as it seizes the grown man also is of course intensified beyond power of expression by the solitary cellular system of our prisons every child is confined to its cell for 23 hours out of the 24 this is the appalling thing to shut up a child in a dimly lit cell for 23 hours out of the 24 is an example of the cruelty of stupidity if an individual parent or guardian did this to a child he would be severely punished the second thing from which a child suffers in prison is hunger the food that is given to it consists of a piece of usually badly baked prison bread and a tin of water for breakfast at half past 7 at 12 o'clock it gets dinner composed of a tin of coarse Indian meal stir about and at half past 5 it gets a piece of dry bread and a tin of water for its supper this diet in the case of a strong man is always productive of illness of some kind chiefly of course diarrhea with its attendant weakness in fact in a big prison astringent medicines are served out regularly by the warders as a matter of course a child is as a rule incapable of eating the food at all anyone who knows anything about children knows how easily a child's digestion is upset by a bit of crying or trouble and mental distress of any kind a child who has been crying all day long and perhaps half the night in a lonely dimly lit cell and is preyed upon by terror simply cannot eat food of this course horrible kind in the case of the little child to whom Warder Martin gave the biscuits the child was crying with hunger on Tuesday morning and utterly unable to eat the bread and water served to it for breakfast Martin went out after the breakfast had been served and bought the few sweet biscuits for the child rather than see it starving it was a beautiful action on his part and was so recognized by the child who utterly unconscious of the regulation of the prison board told one of the senior warders how kind this junior warder had been to him the result was of course a report and a dismissal I know Martin extremely well and I was under his charge for the last seven weeks of my imprisonment I was struck by the singular kindness and humanity of the way in which he spoke to me and to the other prisoners kind words are much in prison and a pleasant good morning or good evening will make one as happy as one can be in prison he was always gentle and considerate a great deal has been talked and written lately about the contaminating influence of prison on young children what is said is quite true a child is utterly contaminated by prison life but this contaminating influence is not that of the prisoners it is that of the whole prison system of the governor, the chaplain, the warders the solitary cell the isolation the revolting food the rules of the prison commissioners the mode of discipline as it is termed of the life of course no child under 14 years of age should be sent to prison at all it is an absurdity and like many absurdities of absolutely tragical results this letter I am informed brought about some improvement in the treatment of young children in British prisons but in regard to adults the British prison is still the torture chamber it was in Wilde's time prisoners are still treated more brutally there than anywhere else in the civilized world the food is the worst in Europe insufficient indeed to maintain health in many cases men are only saved from death by starvation through being sent to the infirmary though these facts are well known punch the pet organ of the British middle class was not ashamed a little while ago to make a mock of some suggested reform by publishing a picture of a British convict with the villainous face of a Bill Sykes lying on a sofa in his cell smoking a cigar with champagne at hand this is not altogether due to stupidity as Oscar tried to believe but to reasoned selfishness punch and the class for which it caters would like to believe that many convicts are unfit to live whereas the truth is that a good many of them are superior in humanity to the people who punish and slander them while waiting for his wife to join him Oscar rented a little house the chalet bourgeois about 200 yards away from the hotel at Bernival and furnished it here he spent the whole of the summer writing bathing and talking to the few devoted friends who visited him from time to time never had he been so happy never in such perfect health he was full of literary projects indeed no period of his whole life was so fruitful in good work he was going to write some biblical plays one entitled Pharaoh first and then one called Ahab and Jezebel which he pronounced Isabelle deeper problems too were much in his mind he was already at work on the ballad of Reading jail but before coming to that let me first show how happy the songbird was and how divinely he sang when the dreadful cage was opened and he was allowed to use his wings in the heavenly sunshine here is a letter from him shortly after his release which is one of the most delightful things he ever wrote fitly enough it was addressed to his friend of friends Robert Ross and I can only say that I'm extremely obliged to Ross for allowing me to publish it Hotel de la plage Bernival near Dieppe Monday night May 31st 1897 my dearest Robbie I have decided that the only way in which to get boots properly is to go to France to receive them the douane charged three francs how could you frighten me as you did the next time you ordered boots come to Dieppe to get them sent to you it is the only way and it will be an excuse for seeing you I am going tomorrow on a pilgrimage I always wanted to be a pilgrim and I have decided to start early tomorrow to the shrine of Notre Dame de Lies do you know what Lies is it is an old word for joy I suppose the same as letitia laiditia I just heard tonight of the shrine or chapel by chance as you would say from the sweet woman of the aubergine who wants me to live always at Bernival she says Notre Dame de Lies is wonderful and helps everyone to the secret of joy I do not know how long it will take me to get to the shrine as I must walk but from what she tells me it will take at least six or seven minutes to get there and as many to come back in fact the chapel of Notre Dame de Lies is just fifty yards from the hotel isn't it extraordinary I intend to start after I have had my coffee and then to bathe need I say that this is a miracle I wanted to go on a pilgrimage and I find the little grey stone chapel of Our Lady of Joy is brought to me it has probably been waiting for me all these purple years of pleasure and now it comes to meet me with Lies as its message I simply don't know what to say I wish you were not so hard to poor heretics and would admit that even for the sheep who has no shepherd there is a stellar marist to guide it home but you and more especially more treat me as a dissenter it is very painful and quite unjust yesterday I attended Mass at ten o'clock and afterwards bathed so I went into the water without being a pagan the consequence was that I was not tempted by either sirens or mermaidens or any of the green haired following of Glaucus I really think that this is a remarkable thing in my pagan days the sea was always full of tritons blowing conches and other unpleasant things now it is quite different and yet you treat me as the president of Mansfield College and after I had canonized you too dear boy I wish you would tell me if your religion makes you happy you can seal your religion from me in a monstrous way you treat it like writing in the Saturday review of a Pollock or dining in Wardall Street of the fascinating dish that is served with tomatoes and makes men mad I know it is useless asking you so don't tell me I felt an outcast in chapel yesterday not merely but a little in exile I met a dear farmer in a cornfield and he gave me a seat on his bunk in church so I was quite comfortable he now visits me twice a day and as he has no children and is rich I have made him promise to adopt three two boys and a girl I told him that if he wanted them he would find them he said he was afraid that they would turn out badly I told him everyone did that he really has promised to adopt three orphans he is now filled with enthusiasm at the idea he is to go to the curée and talk to him he told me that his own father had fallen down in a fit one day as they were talking together and that he had caught him in his arms and put him to bed where he died and that he himself had often thought how dreadful it was that if he had a fit there was no one to catch him in his arms it is quite clear that he must adopt orphans is it not I feel that Bernabal is to be my home I really do Notre Dame de Lies would be sweet to me if I go on my knees to her and she will advise me it is extraordinary being brought here by a white horse that was a native of the place and knew the road and wanted to see its parents now of advanced years it is also extraordinary that I knew Bernabal existed and was arranged for me Monsieur Bonnet wants to build me a chalet one thousand meters of ground I don't know how much that is but I suppose about a hundred miles and a chalet with a studio a balcony a salamanger a huge kitchen and three bedrooms a view of the sea and trees all for twelve thousand francs four hundred and eighty pounds if I can write a play I am going to have it begun fancy one's own lovely house and grounds in France for four hundred and eighty pounds no rent of any kind pray consider this and approve if you think well of course not till I have done my play an old gentleman lives here in the hotel he dines alone in his room and then sits in the sun he came here for two days and has stayed two years his sole sorrow is that there is no theatre Monsieur Bonnet is a little heartless about this and says that as the old gentleman goes to bed at eight o'clock the theatre would be of no use to him the old gentleman says he only goes to bed at eight o'clock because there is no theatre they argued the point yesterday for an hour I sided with the old gentleman but logic sides with Monsieur Bonnet I believe I had a sweet letter from the Sphinx she gives me a delightful account of Ernest subscribing to Romaike while his divorce suit was running and not being pleased with some of the notices considering the growing appreciation of Ibsen I must say that I am surprised the notices were not better but nowadays everybody is jealous of everyone else except of course husband and wife I think I shall keep this last remark of mine for my play have you got my silver spoon from Reggie you got my silver brushes out of Humphries who is bald so you might easily get my spoon out of Reggie who has so many or used to have you know my crest is on it it is a bit of Irish silver and I don't want to lose it there is an excellent substitute called Britannia metal very much liked at the Adelphi and elsewhere Wilson Barrett writes I prefer it to silver it would suit dear Reggie admirably Walter Bizant writes I use none other Mr Beerbone Tree also writes since I have tried it I am a different actor my friends hardly recognize me so there is obviously a demand for it I am going to write a political economy in my heavier moments the first law I laid down is whenever there exists a demand there is no supply this is the only law that explains the extraordinary contrast between the soul of man and man's surroundings civilizations continue because people hate them a modern city is the exact opposite of what everyone wants 19th century dress is the result of our horror of the style the tall hat will last as long as people dislike it Dear Robbie I wish you would be a little more considerate and not keep me up so late talking to you it is very flattering to me and all that but you should remember that I need rest good night you will find some cigarettes and some flowers by your bedside coffee is served below at eight o'clock do you mind if it is too early for you I don't at all mind lying in bed an extra hour I hope you will sleep well you are short as Lloyd is not on the veranda Tuesday morning nine thirty the sea and sky are opal no horrid drawing master's line between them just one fishing boat going slowly and drawing the wind after it I am going to Bays six o'clock bathed and have seen a chalet here which I wish to take for the season quite charming a splendid view a large writing room a dining room and three lovely bedrooms besides servants rooms and also a huge balcony in this blank space he had roughly drawn a ground plan of the imagined chalet I don't know the scale of the drawing but the rooms are larger than the plan is one salamanger two salon three balcony all on ground floor with steps from balcony to ground the rent for the season or year is what do you think thirty two pounds of course I must have it I will take my meals here separate and reserved table it is within two minutes walk do tell me to take it when you come again your room will be waiting for you all I need is a domestique the people here are most kind I made my pilgrimage the interior of the chapel is of course a modern horror but there is a black image of Notre Dame de Lies the chapel is as tiny as an undergraduate's room at Oxford I hope to get the curée to celebrate Mass in it soon as a rule the service is only held there in July and August but I want to see a Mass quite close there is also another thing I must write to you about I adore this place the whole country is lovely and full of forest and deep meadow it is simple and healthy if I live in Paris I may be doomed to things I don't desire I am afraid of big towns here I get up at seven thirty I am happy all day I go to bed at ten I am frightened of Paris I want to live here I have seen the terrain it is the best here and only one left I must build a house if I could build a chalet for twelve thousand francs five hundred pounds and live in a home of my own how happy I would be I must raise the money somehow it would give me a home quiet, retired, healthy and near England if I live in Egypt I know what my life would be if I live in the south of Italy I know I should be idle and worse I want to live here do think over this and send me over the architect Monsieur Bonnet is excellent and is ready to carry out any idea I want a little chalet of wood and plaster walls the wooden beams showing and the white square of plaster diapering the framework like I regret to say Shakespeare's house like old English 16th century farmer's houses so your architect has me waiting for him yes he is waiting for me do you think the idea absurd I got the chronicle many thanks I see the writer on Prince A211 does not mention my name foolish of her it is a woman I as you the poem of my days are away am forced to write I have begun something that I think will be very good I breakfast tomorrow with the Stanards what a great passionate splendid writer John Strange Winter is how little people understand her work bootles baby is an oeuvre symboliste it is really only the style and the subject that are wrong pray never speak lightly of bootles baby indeed pray never speak of it at all I never do yours Oscar please send a chronicle to my wife Mrs. C. M. Holland Maison-Bangarelle bevet près de Neuchâtel just marking it and if my second letter appears mark that also cut out the letter and enclose it in an envelope to Mr. Arthur Cretenden Postrestant GPO Reading with just these lines dear friend the enclosed will interest you there is also another letter waiting in the post office for you from me with a little money ask for it if you have not got it you're sincerely C-33 I have no one but you dear Robbie to do anything of course the letter to Reading must go at once as my friends come out on Wednesday morning early this letter displays almost every quality of Oscar Wilde's genius in perfect efflorescence his gaiety, joyous merriment and exquisite sensibility who can read of the little chapel to Notre-Dame-de-Lies without emotion quickly to be changed to mirth by the sunny humour of those delicious specimens of self-advertisement Mr. Birbone Tree also writes since I have tried it I am a different actor my friends hardly recognise me this letter is the most characteristic thing Oscar Wilde ever wrote a thing produced in perfect health at the top most height of happy hours more characteristic even than the importance of being earnest for it has not only the humour of that delightful, fast comedy but also more than a hint of the deeper feeling which was even then forming itself into a masterwork that will form part of the inheritance of men forever End of Part 1 of Chapter 19 Recording by Martin Giesen in Hazelmere Surrey Chapter 19 of Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions this LibriVox recording is in the public domain Recording by Martin Giesen Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions by Frank Harris Chapter 19 His St. Martin's Summer, His Best Work Part 2 The Ballad of Reading Jail belongs to this summer of 1897 a fortunate conjuncture of circumstances the prison discipline excluding all sense indulgence the kindness shown him towards the end of his imprisonment and of course the delight of freedom gave him perfect physical health and hope and joy in work and so Oscar was enabled for a few brief months to do better than his best he assured me and I believe that the conception of the ballad belonged to him in prison and was due to the alleviation of his punishment and the permission accorded to him to write and read freely a divine fruit borne directly of his pity for others and the pity others felt for him The Ballad of Reading Jail was published in January 1898 over the signature of C-33 Oscar's number in prison in a few weeks it ran through dozens of editions in England and America and translations appeared in almost every European language which is proof not so much of the excellence of the poem as the great place the author held in the curiosity of men the enthusiasm with which it was accepted in England was astounding one reviewer compared it with the best of Sophocles another said that nothing like it has appeared in our time no word of criticism was heard the most cautious called it a simple poignant ballad one of the greatest in the English language this praise is assuredly not too generous yet even this was due to a revulsion of feeling in regard to Oscar himself rather than to any understanding of the greatness of his work the best public felt that he had been dreadfully over punished and made a scapegoat for worse offenders and was glad to have the opportunity of repairing its own fault by overemphasizing Oscar's repentance and over praising, as it imagined, the first fruits of the converted sinner the ballad of Reading Jail is far and away the best poem Oscar Wilde ever wrote we should try to appreciate it as the future will appreciate it we need not be afraid to trace it to its source and note what is borrowed in it and what is original after all necessary qualifications are made it will stand as a great and splendid achievement shortly before the ballad was written a little book of poetry called A Shopsher Lad was published by A. E. Hausman now I believe Professor of Latin at Cambridge there are only a hundred odd pages in the booklet but it is full of high poetry sincere and passionate feeling set to varied music his friend Reginald Turner sent Oscar a copy of the book and one poem in particular made a deep impression on him it is said that his actual model for the ballad of Reading Jail was the dream of Eugene Aram with the ancient mariner thrown in on technical grounds but I believe that Wilde owed most of his inspiration to a Shopsher Lad here are some verses from Hausman's poem and some verses from the ballad on moonlit heath and lonesome bank the sheep beside me graze and yon the gallows used to clank fast by the four crossways a careless shepherd once would keep the flocks by moonlight there and high amongst the glimmering sheep the dead men stood on air they hang us now in Shrewsbury jail the whistles blow for lawn and trains all night grown on the rail to men that die at morn their sleeps in Shrewsbury jail to-night or wakes as may be tied a better lad if things went right than most that sleep outside and naked to the hangman's noose the morning clocks will ring a neck God made for other use than strangling in a string and sharp the link of life will snap and dead on air will stand heels that held up a straighter chap as treads upon the land so here I'll watch the night and wait to see the morning shine when he will hear the stroke of eight and not the stroke of nine and wish my friend as sound asleep as lads I did not know that shepherded the moonlit sheep a hundred years ago the ballad of Reading Jail it is sweet to dance to violins when love and life are fair to dance to flutes to dance to loots is delicate and rare but it is not sweet with nimble feet to dance upon the air and as one sees most fearful things in the crystal of a dream we saw the greasy hempen rope hooked to the blackened beam and heard the prayer the hangman's snare strangled into a scream and all the woe that moved him so that he gave that bitter cry and the wild regrets and the bloody sweats none knew so well as I for he who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die there are better things in the ballad of Reading Jail than those inspired by Hausman in the last of the three verses I quote there is a distinction of thought which Hausman hardly reached for he who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die there are verses too rung from the heart which have a diviner influence than any product of the intellect the chaplain would not kneel to pray by his dishonoured grave nor mark it with that blessed cross that Christ for sinners gave because the man was one of those whom Christ came down to save this too I know and wiseware it if each could know the same that every prison that men build is built with bricks of shame and bound with bars lest Christ should see how men their brothers maim with bars they blur the gracious moon and blind the goodly son and they do well to hide their hell for in it things are done that son of God nor son of man ever should look upon the vilest deeds like poison weeds bloom well in prison air it is only what is good in man that wastes and withers there pale anguish keeps the heavy gate and the water is despair and he of the swollen purple throat and the stark and staring eyes waits for the holy hands that took the thief to paradise and a broken and a contrite heart the Lord will not despise the ballad of Reading jail is beyond all comparison the greatest ballad in English one of the noblest poems in the language this is what prison did for Oscar Wilde when speaking to him later about this poem I remember assuming that his prison experiences must have helped him to realize the suffering of the condemned soldier and certainly lent passion to his verse but he would not hear of it oh no Frank he cried never my experiences in prison were too horrible too painful to be used I simply blotted them out altogether and refused to recall them what about the verse I asked we sewed the sacks we broke the stones we turned the dusty drill we banged the tins and boiled the hymns and sweated on the mill and in the heart of every man terror was lying still characteristic details Frank merely the decor of prison life not its reality that no one could paint not even Dante who had to turn away his eyes from lesser suffering it may be worthwhile to notice here as an example of the hatred with which Oscar Wilde's name and work were regarded that even after he had paid the penalty for his crime the publisher and editor alike in England and America put anything but a high price on his best work they would have bought a play readily enough because they would have known that it would make the money but a ballad from his pen nobody seemed to want the highest price offered in America but the ballad of Reading Jail was one hundred dollars Oscar found difficulty in getting even twenty pounds for the English rights from the friend who published it yet it has sold since by hundreds of thousands and is certain always to send to sell I must insert here part of another letter from Oscar Wilde which appeared in the Daily Chronicle twenty fourth March eighteen ninety eight on the cruelties of the English prison system it was headed don't read this if you want to be happy today and was signed by the author of the ballad of Reading Jail it was manifestly a direct outcome of his experiences the letter was simple and affecting but it had little or no influence on the English conscience the Home Secretary was about to reform the prison system by appointing more inspectors Oscar Wilde pointed out that inspectors could do nothing but see that the regulations were carried out he took up the position that needed reform his plea was irrefutable in its moderation and simplicity but it was beyond the comprehension of an English Home Secretary apparently for all the abuses pointed out by Oscar Wilde still flourish I can't help giving some extracts from this memorable indictment memorable for its reserve and sanity and complete absence of any bitterness the prisoner who has been allowed the smallest privilege dreads the arrival of the inspectors and on the day of any prison inspection the prison officials are more than usually brutal to the prisoners their object is of course to show the splendid discipline they maintain the necessary reforms are very simple they concern the needs of the body and the needs of the mind of each unfortunate prisoner with regard to the first there are three permanent punishments authorized by law in English prisons one hunger two insomnia three disease the food supplied to prisoners is entirely inadequate most of it is revolting in character all of it is insufficient every prisoner suffers day and night from hunger the result of the food which in most cases consists of weak gruel badly baked bread soot and water is disease in the form of incessant diarrhea this malady which ultimately with most prisoners becomes a permanent disease is a recognized institution in every prison at once worth prison for instance where I was confined for two months till I had to be carried into hospital where I remained for another two months the warders go round twice or three times a day with a stringent medicine which they serve out to the prisoners as a matter of course after about a week of such treatment it is unnecessary to say that the medicine produces no effect at all the wretched prisoner is thus left a prey to the most weakening depressing and humiliating malady that can be conceived and if as often happens he fails from physical weakness to complete his required evolutions at the crank or the mill he is reported for idleness and punished with the greatest severity and brutality nor is this all nothing can be worse than the sanitary arrangements of English prisons the foul air of the prison cells increased by a system of ventilation that is utterly ineffective is so sickening and unwholesome that it is not uncommon for warders when they come into the room out of the fresh air and open and inspect each cell to be violently sick with regard to the punishment of insomnia it only exists in Chinese and English prisons in China it is inflicted by placing the prisoner in a small bamboo cage in England by means of the plank bed the object of the plank bed is to produce insomnia there is no other object in it and it invariably succeeds and even when one is subsequently allowed a hard mattress as happens in the course of imprisonment one still suffers from insomnia it is a revolting and ignorant punishment with regard to the needs of the mind I beg that you will allow me to say something the present prison system seems almost to have for its aim the wrecking and the destruction of the mental faculties the production of insanity is if not its object certainly its result that is a well ascertained fact its causes are obvious deprived of books of all human intercourse isolated from every humane and humanizing influence condemned to eternal silence robbed of all intercourse with the external world treated like an unintelligent animal brutalized below the level of any of the brute creation the wretched man who is confined in an English prison can hardly escape becoming insane this letter ended by saying that if all the reforms suggested were carried out much would still remain to be done it would still be advisable to humanize the governors of prisons to civilize the warders and to Christianize the chaplains this letter was the last effort of the new Oscar the Oscar who had manfully tried to put the prison under his feet and to learn the significance of sorrow and the lesson of love which Christ brought into the world in the beautiful pages about Jesus which form the greater part of day profundis also written in those last hopeful months in Reading Jail Oscar shows I think that he might have done much higher work than Tolstoy or Renan had he set himself resolutely to transmute his new insight into some form of art now and then he defined the very secret of Jesus when he says forgive your enemies it is not for the sake of the enemy but for one's own sake that he says so and because love is more beautiful than hate in his own entreaty to the young man sell all that thou hast and give to the poor it is not of the state of the poor that he is thinking but of the soul of the young man the soul that wealth was marring in many of these pages Oscar Wilde really came close to the divine master the image of the man of sorrows he says has fascinated and dominated art as no Greek God succeeded in doing and again out of the carpenter's shop at Nazareth had come a personality infinitely greater than any made by myth and legend and once strangely enough destined to reveal to the world the mystical meaning of wine and the real beauties of the lilies of the field as none either on Kythyron or Anna has ever done the song of Isaiah he is despised and rejected of men a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief and we hear does it were our faces from him had seemed to him to prefigure himself and in him the prophecy was fulfilled in this spirit Oscar made up his mind that he would write about Christ as the precursor of the romantic movement in life and about the artistic life considered in its relation to conduct by bitter suffering he had been brought to see that the moment of repentance is the moment of absolution and self-realization that tears can wash out even blood in the ballad of Reading jail he wrote and with tears of blood he cleansed the hand the hand that held the steel for only blood can wipe out blood and only tears can heal and the crimson stain that was of cane became Christ's no white seal this is the highest height Oscar Wilde ever reached and alas he only trod the summit for a moment but as he says himself one has perhaps to go to prison to understand that and if so it may be worth while going to prison he was by nature a pagan who for a few months we came a Christian but to live as a lover of Jesus was impossible to this Greek born out of due time and he never even dreamed of a reconciling synthesis the arrest of his development makes him a better representative of his time he was an artistic expression of the best English mind a pagan and epicurean his rule of conduct was a selfish individualism am I my brother's keeper this attitude must entail a dreadful nemesis for it condemns one Britain in every four to a porpoise grave the result will convince the most hardened that such selfishness is not a creed by which human beings can live in society this summer of 1897 was the harvest time in Oscar Wilde's life and his golden Indian summer we owe it day profundis the best pages of prose he ever wrote and the ballad of Reading Jail is only original poem yet one that will live as long as the language we owe it also that sweet and charming letter to Robbie Ross which shows him in his habit as he lived I must still say a word or two about him in this summer in order to show the ordinary working of his mind on his release and indeed for a year or two later he called himself Sebastian Melmos but one had hardly spoken a half a dozen words to him when he used to beg to be called Oscar Wilde I remember how he pulled up someone who had just been introduced to him who persisted in addressing him as Mr. Melmoth call me Oscar Wilde he pleaded Mr. Melmoth is unknown you see I thought you preferred it said the stranger excusing himself oh dear no interrupted Oscar smiling I only use the name Melmoth to spare the blushes of the postman to preserve his modesty and he laughed in the old delightful way it was always significant to me the eager delight with which he shuffled off the new name and took up the old one which he had made famous an anecdote from his life in the chalet at this time showed that the old witty pagan in Oscar was not yet extinct an English lady who had written a great many novels and happened to be staying in Dieppe heard of him and out of kindness or curiosity or perhaps a mixture of both motives wrote and invited him to luncheon he accepted the invitation the good lady did not know how to talk to Mr. Sebastian Melmos and time went heavily at length she began to expatiate on the cheapness of things in France did Mr. Melmoth know how wonderfully cheap and good the living was only fancy she went on you would not believe what that claret you are drinking costs really questioned Oscar with a polite smile of course I get it wholesale she explained but it only costs me six months a quart oh my dear lady I'm afraid you have been cheated he exclaimed ladies should never buy wine I'm afraid you have been sadly overcharged the humor may excuse the discurty see but Oscar was so uniformly polite to everyone that the incident simply shows how ineffably he had been bored this summer of 1897 was the decisive period and final turning point in Oscar Wilde's career so long as the sunny weather lasted and friends came to visit him from time to time Oscar was content to live in the chalet bourgeois but when the days began to draw in and the weather became unsettled the dreariness of a life passed in solitude indoors and without a library became insupportable he was being drawn in two opposite directions I did not know it at the time indeed he only told me about it months later when the matter had been decided irrevocably but this was the moment when his soul was at stake between good and evil the question was whether his wife would come to him again or whether he would yield to the solicitations of Lord Alfred Douglas and go to live with him Mr. Sherrod has told in his book how he brought about the first reconciliation between Oscar and his wife and how immediately afterwards he received a letter from Lord Alfred Douglas threatening to shoot him like a dog if by any words of his Wilde's friendship was lost to him Douglas. Unluckily Mrs. Wilde's family were against her going back to her husband they begged her not to go talked to her of her duty to her children and herself and the poor woman hesitated finally her advisors decided for her and Mrs. Wilde wrote this decision to Oscar's solicitors shortly before his release Oscar's probation was to last at least a year I do not know enough about Mrs. Wilde and her relations with her family and with her husband even to discuss her inaction I dare not criticize her but she did not go to her husband when if she had gone boldly she might have saved him she knew Lord Alfred Douglas's influence over him knew that it had already brought him to grief Gede says and Oscar himself told me afterwards that he had come out of prison determined not to go back to Alfred Douglas and the old life it seems a pity that his wife did not act promptly she allowed herself to believe that a time of probation was necessary the delay wounded Oscar and all the while as he told me a little later he was resisting an influence which had dominated his life in the past I got a letter almost every day Frank begging me to come to Posilipo to the villa which Lord Alfred Douglas had rented every day I heard his voice calling come come to sunshine and to me come to Naples with its wonderful museum of bronzes and Pompeii and Peistum the city of Poseidon I am waiting to welcome you come who could resist it Frank love calling calling with outstretched arms who could stay in Bleak Bernival and watch the sheets of rain falling falling and the gray mist shrouding the gray sea and think of Naples and love and sunshine who could resist it all I could not Frank I was so lonely and I hated solitude I resisted as long as I could but when chill October came and Poseid came to Hoare for me I gave up the struggle and yielded could Oscar Wilde have won and made for himself a new and greater life the majority of men are content to think that such a victory was impossible to him everyone knows that he lost but I at least believe that he might have won his wife was on the point of yielding I have since been told on the point of complete reconciliation when she heard that he had gone to Naples and returned to his old habit of living a few days made all the difference it was at the instigation of Lord Alfred Douglas that Oscar began the insane action against Lord Queensbury in which he put to hazard his success his position his good name and liberty and lost them all two years later at the same tempting he committed soul suicide he was not only better in health than he had ever been but he was talking and writing better than ever before and full of literary projects which would certainly have given him money and position and a measure of happiness besides increasing his reputation from the moment he went to Naples he was lost and he knew it himself he never afterwards wrote anything as he used to say he could never afterwards face his own soul he could never have won up again the world says and shrugs careless shoulders it is a cheap unworthy conclusion some of us still persist in believing that Oscar Wilde might easily have won and never again been caught in that dreadful wind which whips the victims of sensual desire about unceasingly driving them hither and hither without rest in that awful place where nulla speranza li conforta mai no hope ever comforts End of chapter 19 Recording by Martin Giesen in Hazelmere Surrey