‘Suffering is one long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return…For us there is only one season, the season of Sorrow. The very sun and moon seem taken from us.’
No sooner had Wilde’s libel action against the Marquess of Queensberry collapsed about midday on 5 April than the defence solicitors, Charles Russell, sent all their working papers, witness statements and other incriminating evidence to the Director of Public Prosecutions. The DPP consulted the two senior law officers and the Home Secretary, and a warrant was issued for Wilde’s arrest, which took place at the Cadogan Hotel at 6.20 p.m. the same evening. He was charged at Bow Street Police Court the next morning and bail was refused, which was unusual since he was guilty only of a misdemeanour. Bosie visited Oscar almost every day while he was on remand in Holloway waiting for his trial, which began on 26 April. Two days beforehand the entire contents of Wilde’s Tite Street home were auctioned by the sheriffs for outstanding debts. Douglas was made to go to France on the morning after the trial started for fear that he might in some way compromise Wilde’s case, which ended on 1 May with a hung jury. A second trial was ordered. In the meantime Wilde was released on bail and was invited to stay with the Leversons until the new trial. He was finally convicted and sentenced to two years’ hard labour on 25 May.
Early in April Constance had sent their two sons abroad to Switzerland where her brother was living, while she herself stayed behind, bravely offering what support she could until after Oscar’s conviction. Then she, too, went abroad.
For the first two months Wilde was at Pentonville, before moving to Wandsworth in July and to Reading in November where he spent the rest of his sentence.
9 April 1895 HM Prison, Holloway
Dear Sphinx and Ernest, I write to you from prison, where your kind words have reached me and given me comfort, though they have made me cry, in my loneliness. Not that I am really alone. A slim thing, gold-haired like an angel, stands always at my side. His presence overshadows me. He moves in the gloom like a white flower.
With what a crash this fell! Why did the Sibyl say fair things? I thought but to defend him from his father: I thought of nothing else, and now –
I can’t write more. How good and kind and sweet you and Ernest are to me.
OSCAR
13 April 1895 HM Prison, Holloway
My dear Robert, I cannot tell you how your letters have cheered and comforted me in this awful, terrible position in which I am placed, and how glad I am that Sarah, and Goncourt, and other artists are sympathising with me. Pray assure Louÿs, Stuart Merrill, Moreas, and all others how touched – touched beyond words – I am. I am sending you a telegram to ask you if you think Sarah would buy Salomé from me. I am so pressed by my creditors that I don’t know where to turn. I would repay her of course, when all comes well, but perhaps if you mentioned to her the need I was in of 10,000 francs (£400) she might do it. Ever, with deepest affection and gratitude
OSCAR
Sherard did approach Bernhardt about Salomé. In 1892 she had written in Constance’s autograph book: ‘Je vous promets, Madame, d’avoir un immense succes dans Salomé, et je vous confirme que le public français sera très fier d’avoir la premiere de cette piece,’ but now she said it was impossible, thought about sending money, prevaricated and did nothing.
23 April 1895 HM Prison, Holloway
My dear Sphinx, I have just had a charming note from you, and a charming note from Ernest. How good you both are to me!
Willie has been writing me the most monstrous letters. I have had to beg him to stop.
Today Bosie comes early to see me. My counsel seem to wish the case to be tried at once. I don’t, nor does Bosie. Bail, or no bail, I think we had better wait. Later
I have seen counsel, and Bosie. I don’t know what to do. My life seems to have gone from me. I feel caught in a terrible net. I don’t know where to turn. I care less when I think that he is thinking of me. I think of nothing else. Ever yours
OSCAR
Monday Evening [29 April 1895] HM Prison, Holloway
My dearest boy, This is to assure you of my immortal, my eternal love for you. Tomorrow all will be over. If prison and dishonour be my destiny, think that my love for you and this idea, this still more divine belief, that you love me in return will sustain me in my unhappiness and will make me capable, I hope, of bearing my grief most patiently. Since the hope, nay rather the certainty, of meeting you again in some world is the goal and the encouragement of my present life, ah! I must continue to live in this world because of that.
Dear—came to see me today. I gave him several messages for you. He told me one thing that reassured me: that my mother should never want for anything. I have always provided for her subsistence, and the thought that she might have to suffer privations was making me unhappy. As for you (graceful boy with a Christ-like heart), as for you, I beg you, as soon as you have done all that you can, leave for Italy and regain your calm, and write those lovely poems which you do with such a strange grace. Do not expose yourself to England for any reason whatsoever. If one day, at Corfu or in some enchanted isle, there were a little house where we could live together, oh! life would be sweeter than it has ever been. Your love has broad wings and is strong, your love comes to me through my prison bars and comforts me, your love is the light of all my hours. Those who know not what love is will write, I know, if fate is against us, that I have had a bad influence upon your life. If they do that, you shall write, you shall say in your turn, that it is not so. Our love was always beautiful and noble, and if I have been the butt of a terrible tragedy, it is because the nature of that love has not been understood. In your letter this morning you say something which gives me courage. I must remember it. You write that it is my duty to you and to myself to live in spite of everything. I think that is true. I shall try and I shall do it. I want you to keep Mr Humphreys informed of your movements so that when he comes he can tell me what you are doing. I believe solicitors are allowed to see the prisoners fairly often. Thus I could communicate with you.
I am so happy that you have gone away! I know what that must have cost you. It would have been agony for me to think that you were in England when your name was mentioned in court. I hope you have copies of all my books. All mine have been sold. I stretch out my hands towards you. Oh! may I live to touch your hair and your hands. I think that your love will watch over my life. If I should die, I want you to live a gentle peaceful existence somewhere, with flowers, pictures, books, and lots of work. Try to let me hear from you soon. I am writing you this letter in the midst of great suffering; this long day in court has exhausted me. Dearest boy, sweetest of all young men, most loved and most loveable. Oh! wait for me! wait for me! I am now, as ever since the day we met, yours devoutly and with an immortal love
OSCAR
Once bail had been granted, Wilde sought refuge at his mother’s house in Chelsea. The bail sureties were Percy Douglas and the Rev. Stewart Headlam who, though no friend of Wilde’s, felt that his case was being prejudged. After a few days the Leversons offered him rooms in their Kensington house at Courtfield Gardens. They told the servants that they could have a month’s wages if any wished to leave; none did and were ‘proud to wait on poor Mr Wilde’.
[?Early May 1895] [?146 Oakley Street, Chelsea]
My dear Sweet Kind Friend, I have no words to thank you for all you do for me, but for you and Ernest Bosie and I have deepest love.
I hope to be in better spirits tonight. Your sweetness last night was wonderful. Your flowers are like him – your sending them like yourself. Dear, dear Friend, tonight I see you at 7.45. Ah! you are good and gentle and wonderful. Always devotedly yours
OSCAR
[20 May 1895] [?2 Courtfield Gardens, Kensington]
My child, Today it was asked to have the verdicts rendered separately. Taylor is probably being judged at this moment, so that I have been able to come back here. My sweet rose, my delicate flower, my lily of lilies, it is perhaps in prison that I am going to test the power of love. I am going to see if I cannot make the bitter waters sweet by the intensity of the love I bear you. I have had moments when I thought it would be wiser to separate. Ah! moments of weakness and madness! Now I see that that would have mutilated my life, ruined my art, broken the musical chords which make a perfect soul. Even covered with mud I shall praise you, from the deepest abysses I shall cry to you. In my solitude you will be with me. I am determined not to revolt but to accept every outrage through devotion to love, to let my body be dishonoured so long as my soul may always keep the image of you. From your silken hair to your delicate feet you are perfection to me. Pleasure hides love from us but pain reveals it in its essence. O dearest of created things, if someone wounded by silence and solitude comes to you, dishonoured, a laughing-stock to men, oh! you can close his wounds by touching them and restore his soul which unhappiness had for a moment smothered. Nothing will be difficult for you then, and remember, it is that hope which makes me live, and that hope alone. What wisdom is to the philosopher, what God is to his saint, you are to me. To keep you in my soul, such is the goal of this pain which men call life. O my love, you whom I cherish above all things, white narcissus in an unmown field, think of the burden which falls to you, a burden which love alone can make light. But be not saddened by that, rather be happy to have filled with an immortal love the soul of a man who now weeps in hell, and yet carries heaven in his heart. I love you, I love you, my heart is a rose which your love has brought to bloom, my life is a desert fanned by the delicious breeze of your breath, and whose cool springs are your eyes; the imprint of your little feet makes valleys of shade for me, the odour of your hair is like myrrh, and wherever you go you exhale the perfumes of the cassia tree.
Love me always, love me always. You have been the supreme, the perfect love of my life; there can be no other.
I decided that it was nobler and more beautiful to stay. We could not have been together. I did not want to be called a coward or a deserter. A false name, a disguise, a hunted life, all that is not for me, to whom you have been revealed on that high hill where beautiful things are transfigured.
O sweetest of all boys, most loved of all loves, my soul clings to your soul, my life is your life, and in all the worlds of pain and pleasure you are my ideal of admiration and joy.
OSCAR
Under strict prison regulations Wilde was allowed to write and receive only four personal letters a year. He was permitted to see one outside visitor for twenty minutes every three months. One of his first letters, full of regret and begging her forgiveness, was to Constance. Like most of his letters to his wife it has not survived (see p. 85). By special dispensation of the Prison Commissioners, she was granted a visit in September 1895 at which she and Oscar sorted out their financial affairs. Oscar had a life-interest in Constance’s marriage settlement in the event of her death and, in return for renouncing two-thirds of this she agreed to give him an annual allowance of £200 on his release. She also put aside any thoughts of divorce which she may have had. On 3 February 1896 Lady Wilde died and Constance travelled specially from Italy to break the news to him. It was but small compensation that Lugné-Poe, the French actor-manager, had staged Salomé a week after her death. More Adey, later an art-dealer and editor of the Burlington Magazine, was a close friend of both Wilde and Ross. Although not a wealthy man, he had contributed to the costs of the libel trial. He took on the thankless task of trying to sort out Wilde’s financial affairs while he was in prison.
10 March 1896 [HM Prison, Reading]
My dear Robbie, I want you to have a letter written at once to Mr Hargrove, the solicitor, stating that as my wife has promised to settle one third on me in the case of her predeceasing me I do not wish any opposition to be made to her purchasing my life-interest. I feel that I have brought such unhappiness on her and such ruin on my children that I have no right to go against her wishes in anything. She was gentle and good to me here, when she came to see me. I have full trust in her. Please have this done at once, and thank my friends for their kindness. I feel I am acting rightly in leaving this to my wife.
Please write to Stuart Merrill in Paris, or Robert Sherard, to say how gratified I was at the performance of my play: and have my thanks conveyed to Lugné-Poe; it is something that at a time of disgrace and shame I should be still regarded as an artist. I wish I could feel more pleasure: but I seem dead to all emotions except those of anguish and despair. However, please let Lugné-Poe know that I am sensible of the honour he has done me. He is a poet himself. I fear you will find it difficult to read this, but as I am not allowed writing materials I seem to have forgotten how to write: you must excuse me.
Thank More for exerting himself for books: unluckily I suffer from headaches when I read my Greek and Roman poets, so they have not been of much use, but his kindness was great in getting them sent. Ask him to express also my gratitude to the lady who lives at Wimbledon. Write to me please in answer to this, and tell me about literature – what new books etc.: also about Jones’s play and Forbes-Robertson’s management: about any new tendency in the stage of Paris or London. Also, try and see what Lemaître, Bauër, and Sarcey said of Salomé and give me a little resume: please write to Henri Bauër and say I am touched at his writing nicely. Robert knows him. It was sweet of you to come and see me: you must come again next time. Here I have the horror of death with the still greater horror of living: and in silence and misery [some lines cut out by prison officials] but I won’t talk more of this. I always remember you with deep affection. Ever your friend o. w.
I wish Ernest would get from Oakley Street my portmanteau, fur coat, clothes, and the books of my own writing I gave my dear mother. Ask Ernest in whose name the burial-ground of my mother was taken. Goodbye.
Saturday, 30 May 1896 HM Prison, Reading
Dear Robbie, I could not collect my thoughts yesterday, as I did not expect you till today. When you are good enough to come and see me will you always fix the day? Anything sudden upsets me.
You said that Douglas was going to dedicate a volume of poems to me. Will you write at once to him and say he must not do anything of the kind. I could not accept or allow such a dedication. The proposal is revolting and grotesque. Also, he has unfortunately in his possession a number of letters of mine. I wish him to at once hand all these without exception over to you; I will ask you to seal them up. In case I die here you will destroy them. In case I survive I will destroy them myself. They must not be in existence. The thought that they are in his hands is horrible to me, and though my unfortunate children will never of course bear my name, still they know whose sons they are and I must try and shield them from the possibility of any further revolting disclosure or scandal.
Also, Douglas has some things I gave him: books and jewellery. I wish these to be also handed over to you – for me. Some of the jewellery I know has passed out of his possession under circumstances unnecessary to detail, but he has still some, such as the gold cigarette-case, pearl chain and enamelled locket I gave him last Christmas. I wish to be certain that he has in his possession nothing that I ever gave him. All these are to be sealed up and left with you. The idea that he is wearing or in possession of anything I gave him is peculiarly repugnant to me. I cannot of course get rid of the revolting memories of the two years I was unlucky enough to have him with me, or of the mode by which he thrust me into the abyss of ruin and disgrace to gratify his hatred of his father and other ignoble passions. But I will not have him in possession of my letters or gifts. Even if I get out of this loathsome place I know that there is nothing before me but a life of a pariah – of disgrace and penury and contempt – but at least I will have nothing to do with him nor allow him to come near me.
So will you write at once to him and get these things: until I know they are in your possession I will be more miserable than usual. It is I know an ungracious thing to ask you to do, and he will perhaps write to you in terms of coarse abuse, as he did to Sherard when he was prevented publishing more of my letters, but I earnestly beg of you not to mind. As soon as you have received them please write to me, and make part of your letter just like your other, with all its interesting news of literature and the stage. Let me know why Irving leaves Lyceum etc., what he is playing: what at each theatre: who did Stevenson criticise severely in his letters: anything that will for an hour take my thoughts away from the one revolting subject of my imprisonment.
In writing to Douglas you had better quote my letter fully and frankly, so that he should have no loophole of escape. Indeed he cannot possibly refuse. He has ruined my life – that should content him.
I am deeply touched by the Lady of Wimbledon’s kindness. You are very good to come and see me. Kind regards to More, whom I would so like to see. o. w.
2 July 1896 HM Prison, Reading
To the Right Honourable Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department.
The Petition of the above-named prisoner humbly sheweth that he does not desire to attempt to palliate in any way the terrible offences of which he was rightly found guilty, but to point out that such offences are forms of sexual madness and are recognised as such not merely by modern pathological science but by much modern legislation, notably in France, Austria, and Italy, where the laws affecting these misdemeanours have been repealed, on the ground that they are diseases to be cured by a physician, rather than crimes to be punished by a judge. In the works of eminent men of science such as Lombroso and Nordau, to take merely two instances out of many, this is specially insisted on with reference to the intimate connection between madness and the literary and artistic temperament, Professor Nordau in his book on ‘Degenerescence’ published in 1894 having devoted an entire chapter to the petitioner as a specially typical example of this fatal law.
The petitioner is now keenly conscious of the fact that while the three years preceding his arrest were from the intellectual point of view the most brilliant years of his life (four plays from his pen having been produced on the stage with immense success, and played not merely in England, America, and Australia, but in almost every European capital, and many books that excited much interest at home and abroad having been published), still that during the entire time he was suffering from the most horrible form of erotomania, which made him forget his wife and children, his high social position in London and Paris, his European distinction as an artist, the honour of his name and family, his very humanity itself, and left him the helpless prey of the most revolting passions, and of a gang of people who for their own profit ministered to them, and then drove him to his hideous ruin.
It is under the ceaseless apprehension lest this insanity, that displayed itself in monstrous sexual perversion before, may now extend to the entire nature and intellect, that the petitioner writes this appeal which he earnestly entreats may be at once considered. Horrible as all actual madness is, the terror of madness is no less appalling, and no less ruinous to the soul.
For more than thirteen dreadful months now, the petitioner has been subject to the fearful system of solitary cellular confinement: without human intercourse of any kind; without writing materials whose use might help to distract the mind: without suitable or sufficient books, so essential to any literary man, so vital for the preservation of mental balance: condemned to absolute silence: cut off from all knowledge of the external world and the movements of life: leading an existence composed of bitter degradations and terrible hardships, hideous in its recurring monotony of dreary task and sickening privation: the despair and misery of this lonely and wretched life having been intensified beyond words by the death of his mother, Lady Wilde, to whom he was deeply attached, as well as by the contemplation of the ruin he has brought on his young wife and his two children.
By special permission the petitioner is allowed two books a week to read: but the prison library is extremely small and poor: it hardly contains a score of books suitable for an educated man: the books kindly added at the prisoner’s request he has read and re-read till they have become almost meaningless to him: he is practically left without anything to read: the world of ideas, as the actual world, is closed to him: he is deprived of everything that could soothe, distract, or heal a wounded and shaken mind: and horrible as all the physical privations of modern prison life are, they are as nothing compared to the entire privation of literature to one to whom Literature was once the first thing of life, the mode by which perfection could be realised, by which, and by which alone, the intellect could feel itself alive.
It is but natural that living in this silence, this solitude, this isolation from all human and humane influences, this tomb for those who are not yet dead, the petitioner should, day and night in every waking hour, be tortured by the fear of absolute and entire insanity. He is conscious that his mind, shut out artificially from all rational and intellectual interests, does nothing, and can do nothing, but brood on those forms of sexual perversity, those loathsome modes of erotomania, that have brought him from high place and noble distinction to the convict’s cell and the common gaol. It is inevitable that it should do so. The mind is forced to think, and when it is deprived of the conditions necessary for healthy intellectual activity, such as books, writing materials, companionship, contact with the living world, and the like, it becomes, in the case of those who are suffering from sensual monomanias, the sure prey of morbid passions, and obscene fancies, and thoughts that defile, desecrate and destroy. Crimes may be forgotten or forgiven, but vices live on: they make their dwelling house in him who by horrible mischance or fate has become their victim: they are embedded in his flesh: they spread over him like a leprosy: they feed on him like a strange disease: at the end they become an essential part of the man: no remorse however poignant can drive them out: no tears however bitter can wash them away: and prison life, by its horrible isolation from all that could save a wretched soul, hands the victim over, like one bound hand and foot, to be possessed and polluted by the thoughts he most loathes and so cannot escape from.
For more than a year the petitioner’s mind has borne this. It can bear it no longer. He is quite conscious of the approach of an insanity that will not be confined to one portion of the nature merely, but will extend over all alike, and his desire, his prayer is that his sentence may be remitted now, so that he may be taken abroad by his friends and may put himself under medical care so that the sexual insanity from which he suffers may be cured. He knows only too well that his career as a dramatist and writer is ended, and his name blotted from the scroll of English Literature never to be replaced: that his children cannot bear that name again, and that an obscure life in some remote country is in store for him: he knows that, bankruptcy having come upon him, poverty of a most bitter kind awaits him, and that all the joy and beauty of existence is taken from him for ever: but at least in all his hopelessness he still clings to the hope that he will not have to pass directly from the common gaol to the common lunatic asylum.
Dreadful as are the results of the prison system – a system so terrible that it hardens their hearts whose hearts it does not break, and brutalises those who have to carry it out no less than those who have to submit to it – yet at least amongst its aims is not the desire to wreck the human reason. Though it may not seek to make men better, yet it does not desire to drive them mad, and so, earnestly does the petitioner beg that he may be allowed to go forth while he has still some sanity left: while words have still a meaning, and books a message: while there is still some possibility that, by medical science and humane treatment, balance may be restored to a shaken mind and health given back to a nature that once knew purity: while there is still time to rid the temperament of a revolting madness and to make the soul, even for a brief space, clean.
Most earnestly indeed does the petitioner beg the Home Secretary to take, if he so desires it, the opinion of any recognised medical authorities on what would be the inevitable result of solitary confinement in silence and isolation on one already suffering from sexual monomania of a terrible character.
The petitioner would also point out that while his bodily health is better in many respects here than it was at Wandsworth, where he was for two months in the hospital for absolute physical and mental collapse caused by hunger and insomnia, he has, since he has been in prison, almost entirely lost the hearing of his right ear through an abscess that has caused a perforation of the drum. The medical officer here has stated that he is unable to offer any assistance, and that the hearing must go entirely. The petitioner, however, feels sure that under the care of a specialist abroad his hearing might be preserved to him. He was assured by Sir William Dalby, the great aurist, that with proper care there was no reason at all why he should lose his hearing. But though the abscess has been running now for the entire time of his imprisonment, and the hearing getting worse every week, nothing has been done in the way even of an attempted cure. The ear has been syringed on three occasions with plain water for the purpose of examination, that is all. The petitioner is naturally apprehensive lest, as often happens, the other ear may be attacked in a similar way, and to the misery of a shattered and debilitated mind be added the horrors of complete deafness.
His eyesight, of which like most men of letters he had always been obliged to take great care, has also suffered very much from the enforced living in a whitewashed cell with a flaring gas-jet at night: he is conscious of great weakness and pain in the nerves of the eyes, and objects even at a short distance become blurred. The bright daylight, when taking exercise in the prison-yard, often causes pain and distress to the optic nerve, and during the past four months the consciousness of failing eyesight has been a source of terrible anxiety, and should his imprisonment be continued, blindness and deafness may in all human probability be added to the certainty of increasing insanity and the wreck of the reason.
There are other apprehensions of danger that the limitation of space does not allow the petitioner to enter on: his chief danger is that of madness, his chief terror that of madness, and his prayer that his long imprisonment may be considered with its attendant ruin a sufficient punishment, that the imprisonment may be ended now, and not uselessly or vindictively pro-longed till insanity has claimed soul as well as body as its prey, and brought it to the same degradation and the same shame.
OSCAR WILDE
The Governor of Reading Gaol, Lt-Col. Isaacson, exercised his authority like a tyrant and did everything by the rule book, but shortly after this petition Isaacson was replaced by Major Nelson, whom Wilde later described as ‘a man of gentle and humane character, greatly liked and respected by all the prisoners’. The petition resulted in Wilde being allowed writing materials in his cell and a more liberal supply of books, privileges which Nelson applied as generously as he was able.
Wednesday [26 August 1896] [HM Prison, Reading]
My dear Robert, The Governor has told me that you have written to ask to see me. It is most kind and affectionate of you, but an order has already been sent to More Adey and Arthur Clifton (whom I have not seen yet) and, as you know, I am only allowed two visitors. I did not think there would have been any chance of your being in town. I hope you are well and writing a great deal. I often think of you and of our uninterrupted friendship, of twelve years’ standing, and while I bitterly regret the sorrow that I have brought on you and others of my friends, I remember with pride and gratitude your chivalry and courage on my behalf. Should the end of my terrible punishment ever come, you are one of the few people I would like to see, and be with from time to time.
Please remember me very kindly to George Ives. I was greatly touched at hearing of his desire to come and see me. In the terrible solitude and silence in which one lives a message or a memory means a great deal. I hope he is hard at work writing books. I am very glad you know him. He is such a good fellow and so clever.
Should you have anything special to communicate to me – something separate from the sympathy and affection you have, I know, for me – More Adey, who is to write to me in the course of the next fortnight, will communicate it in his letter. He has to write to me on business.
I was so disappointed at not seeing you that I have been allowed as a favour to write this letter to you. Pray remember me to any of my friends who may ask after me, and believe me, dear Robert, sincerely yours
OSCAR
Friday [25 September 1896] [HM Prison, Reading]
My dear More, I was greatly delighted to get your letter. I was afraid that Bobbie might have been ill, and that that was the cause of the delay. It was a real pleasure to hear from him at such length, and to see his old wit and pleasant satire running through his budget: I do hope he will be quite well soon: Please thank his mother for her kind messages. I am very glad she has been spared to watch over Bobbie in his illness.
I thank you very much for writing to the Home Secretary. I do hope it will have some effect. But pity seems to beat in vain at the doors of officialism; and power, no less than punishment, kills what else were good and gentle in a man: the man without knowing it loses his natural kindliness, or grows afraid of its exercise. Still, I hope something may be done. I admit that I look forward with horror to the prospect of another winter in prison: there is something terrible in it: one has to get up long before daybreak and in the dark-cold cell begin one’s work by the flaring gas-jet; through the small barred window only gloom seems to find an entrance: and days often go over without one’s being once even in the open air: days on which one stifles: days that are endless in their dull monotony of apathy or despair. If I could be released before the winter comes, it would be everything. On November 19th I will have had eighteen months of this black loathsome life: perhaps then something may be done. I know you will do your best: I have no words for my sense of your great wonderful kindness to me.
With regard to my children, I feel that for their own sake as well as for mine they should not be bred up to look on me with either hatred or contempt: a guardian amongst my wife’s relations would be for this reason impossible. Of course I would like Arthur Clifton if he would undertake the charge. And so, would you ask Arthur to be my solicitor now: Humphreys is of course of no use: though paid an enormous fee through Leverson he never once came to see me about my Bankruptcy: so I was allowed to become insolvent when there was no reason. If Arthur will be my solicitor he can on application to the Home Secretary come and see me in the Solicitors’ Room here for one hour without the presence of a warder, and with him I could discuss the whole affair, and then write to my wife on the whole subject. I would feel quite safe if Arthur was my children’s guardian. And as a solicitor his advice would be of great service. If he could come within the next fortnight it would be a great thing.
I was greatly touched by the extract from the letter of the Lady of Wimbledon. That she should keep a gracious memory of me, and have trust or hope for me in the future, lightens for me many dreadful hours of degradation or despair. I have tried to remember and write down the Florentine Tragedy: but only bits of it remain with me, and I find that I cannot invent: the silence, the utter solitude, the isolation from all humane and humanising influences, kill one’s brain-power: the brain loses its life: becomes fettered to monotony of suffering. But I take notes of books I read, and copy lines and phrases in poets: the mere handling of pen and ink helps me: the horror of prison is the horror of complete brutalisation: that is the abyss always in front of one, branding itself on one’s face daily, and the faces of those one sees. I cling to my notebook: it helps me: before I had it my brain was going in very evil circles.
I am so glad you are friends with Robert Sherard: I have no doubt he is very indiscreet, but he is very true, and saved my letters from being published. I know there was nothing in them but expressions of foolish, misplaced, ill-requited, affection for one of crude and callous nature, of coarse greed, and common appetites, but that is why their publication would have been so shameful. The gibbet on which I swing in history now is high enough. There is no need that he of all men should for his own vanity make it more hideous.
I am so glad Pierre Louÿs has made a great name for himself. He was most cultivated, refined, and gentle. Three years ago he told me I would have to choose between his friendship and my fatal connection with A. D. I need hardly say I chose at once the meaner nature and the baser mind. In what a mire of madness I walked!…From your silence I see he still refuses to return my presents and letters…It is horrible he should still have the power to wound me and find some curious joy in doing so…I won’t write about him any more today. He is too evil, and there is a storm outside…
Poor Aubrey: I hope he will get all right. He brought a strangely new personality to English art, and was a master in his way of fantastic grace, and the charm of the unreal. His muse had moods of terrible laughter. Behind his grotesques there seemed to lurk some curious philosophy…
As for my clothes, my fur coat is all I need really; the rest I can get abroad. Don’t bother yourself. I hope Arthur will come and bring me good news of you and Robbie. Ever yours
OSCAR
[November 1896] [HM Prison, Reading]
[The first part of this letter is missing]
For myself, dear Robbie, I have little to say that can please you. The refusal to commute my sentence has been like a blow from a leaden sword. I am dazed with a dull sense of pain. I had fed on hope, and now Anguish, grown hungry, feeds her fill on me as though she had been starved of her proper appetite. There are, however, kinder elements in this evil prison air than there were before: sympathies have been shown to me, and I no longer feel entirely isolated from humane influences, which was before a source of terror and trouble to me. And I read Dante, and make excerpts and notes for the pleasure of using a pen and ink. And it seems as if I were better in many ways. And I am going to take up the study of German: indeed this seems to be the proper place for such a study. There is a thorn, however – as bitter as that of St Paul, though different – that I must pluck out of my flesh in this letter. It is caused by a message you wrote on a piece of paper for me to see. I feel that if I kept it secret it might grow in my mind (as poisonous things grow in the dark) and take its place with other terrible thoughts that gnaw me…Thought, to those that sit alone and silent and in bonds, being no ‘winged living thing’, as Plato feigned it, but a thing dead, breeding what is horrible, like a slime that shows monsters to the moon.
I mean, of course, what you said about the sympathies of others being estranged from me, or in danger of being so, by the deep bitterness of the feelings I expressed about Alfred Douglas: and I believe that my letter was lent and shown to others with the part about him cut out by a pair of scissors. Now I don’t like my letters shown about as curiosities: it is most distasteful to me: I write to you freely as to one of the dearest friends I have, or have ever had: and, with a few exceptions, the sympathy of others touches me, as far as its loss goes, very little. No man of my position can fall into the mire of life without getting a great deal of pity from his inferiors; and I know that when plays last too long, spectators tire. My tragedy has lasted far too long: its climax is over: its end is mean; and I am quite conscious of the fact that when the end does come I shall return an unwelcome visitant to a world that does not want me; a revenant, as the French say, as one whose face is grey with long imprisonment and crooked with pain. Horrible as are the dead when they rise from their tombs, the living who come out from tombs are more horrible still.
Of all this I am only too conscious. When one has been for eighteen terrible months in a prison cell, one sees things and people as they really are. The sight turns one to stone. Do not think that I would blame him for my vices. He had as little to do with them as I had with his. Nature was in this matter a stepmother to each of us. I blame him for not appreciating the man he ruined. An illiterate millionaire would really have suited him better. As long as my table was red with wine and roses, what did he care? My genius, my life as an artist, my work, and the quiet I needed for it, were nothing to him when matched with his unrestrained and coarse appetites for common profligate life: his greed for money: his incessant and violent scenes: his unimaginative selfishness. Time after time I tried, during those two wasted weary years, to escape, but he always brought me back, by threats of harm to himself chiefly. Then when his father saw in me a method of annoying his son, and the son saw in me the chance of ruining his father, and I was placed between two people greedy for unsavoury notoriety, reckless of everything but their own horrible hatred of each other, each urging me on, the one by public cards and threats, the other by private, or indeed half-public scenes, threats in letters, taunts, sneers…I admit I lost my head. I let him do what he wanted. I was bewildered, incapable of judgment. I made the one fatal step. And now…I sit here on a bench in a prison cell. In all tragedies there is a grotesque element. He is the grotesque element in mine. Do not think I do not blame myself. I curse myself night and day for my folly in allowing him to dominate my life. If there was an echo in these walls it would cry ‘Fool’ for ever. I am utterly ashamed of my friendship with him. For by their friendships men can be judged. It is a test of every man. And I feel more poignant abasement of shame for my friendship with Alfred Douglas…fifty thousand times more…than I do, say, for my connection with Charley Parker of which you may read a full account in my trial. The former is to me a daily source of mental humiliation. Of the latter I never think. It troubles me not. It is of no importance…Indeed my entire tragedy sometimes seems to me grotesque and nothing else. For as a result of my having suffered myself to be thrust into the trap Queensberry had laid for me – the trap he openly betted in the Orleans Club he would lure me into – as a result of that, the father ranks in history with the good parents of moral tales: the son with the Infant Samuel: and I, in the lowest mire of Malebolge, sit between Gilles de Retz and the Marquis de Sade. In certain places no one, except those actually insane, is allowed to laugh: and, indeed, even in their case it is against the regulations for conduct: otherwise I think I would laugh at that…For the rest, do not let Alfred Douglas suppose that I am crediting him with unworthy motives. He really had no motives in his life at all. Motives are intellectual things. He had passions merely. And such passions are False Gods that will have victims at all costs, and in the present case have had one wreathed with bay. He himself cannot but choose to feel some remorse. That he should really realise what he has done would be a burden too heavy for him to bear. But he must sometimes think of it. So in your letter tell me how he lives, what his occupations are, his mode of life.
And so now I have in my letter plucked the thorn out. That little scrawled line of yours rankled terribly. I now think merely of you getting quite well again, and writing at last the wonderful story of the little restaurant with the strange dish of meat served to the silent clients. Pray remember me, with my thanks, to your dear mother, and also to Aleck. The gilded Sphinx is I suppose wonderful as ever. And send from me all that in my thoughts and feelings is good, and whatever of remembrance and reverence she will accept, to the Lady of Wimbledon, whose soul is a sanctuary for those who are wounded, and a house of refuge for those in pain. Do not show this letter to others, nor discuss what I have written, in your answer. Tell me about that world of shadows I loved so much. And about his life and soul tell me also. I am curious of the thing that stung me: and in my pain there is pity.
OSCAR
In November 1895 Wilde had been declared bankrupt for Queensberry’s costs in the libel action. Percy and Lady Queensberry had said they would contribute but only did so when it was too late three years later. Oscar’s life-interest in Constance’s marriage settlement was regarded as a small potential asset by the receiver and Oscar had been anxious that Constance should purchase it unopposed for a nominal sum. Ross and Adey thought that Wilde was being too conciliatory and, without Wilde’s approval, bid against her. Constance assumed that Oscar had gone back on his word and threatened divorce. An ugly and unnecessary wrangle ensued, by the end of which Constance had reduced her offer of an annual allowance to £150 and had lost the last vestiges of trust in Oscar, which partly contributed to the fact that they never met again.
8 March 1897 HM Prison, Reading
My dear More, I am very much obliged to you for your letter, which the Governor has kindly allowed me to have and to answer. My business is I know unpleasant, but then it was not for pleasure that you took its burden on you, so I will write quite frankly to you.
Your news has distressed me a good deal. The claims of my own trustees and my brother-in-law would of course be easily withdrawn, and I thought I could, if the Queensberry debt was paid, as it should have been, by the Queensberry family, have made an effort at any rate to pay off my own personal creditors, who are really very few in number. I see, however, that this cannot be. I will now have to think of how to retain or buy my interest in my books and plays. I do not think they will be valued high. As £150 has been already paid to Humphreys who did nothing to help me (beyond of course forcing me to put in two appearances at the Bankruptcy Court where one would have been sufficient and engaging their own relative Mr Grain to appear as counsel where no counsel was required) I am reluctant to even write to them. I am very anxious however to know how I can be kept informed of the state of things, so that if my copyrights are to be sold I may have a chance of bidding for them. I am also anxious about my claim to the place in Ireland: it is now in utter rack and ruin, but I am reluctant to see it pass to a stranger: could Mr Holman, already in touch with the Receiver, let you know if anything happens? In the case of my brother’s death, without male issue, the Irish property should fetch something: £4000 or £5000 at least.
As regards the Queensberry family, I of course feel very strongly about their allowing me to be made bankrupt by their father for the costs of the trial, and for such an absolutely contemptible sum; less than half, as I told you, of what in three wasted summer months I spent on Bosie at Goring – less than one half! Their idea that it would be a sort of ‘score’ off their father not to pay him his paltry claim showed how utterly blind they were to my feelings. As for Queensberry, I suppose nobody ever had such intense pleasure of a low order at such a low cost as he had. It was in the cheapest of markets that he bought his triumph. Indeed it was the only occasion in his life that he found his pleasures economical. To send a man like myself to prison for £900, and then to take him out and make him an insolvent for £700 more, was a piece of good fortune he never looked for. As regards my own debts, they were hardly anything. Their letting their father triumph a second time over me, rather than pay so petty, so abject a sum as £700, cut me very deeply. And people who live in the world of action don’t understand that there is another world in which they who are not free live: a world in which nothing happens but emotions, and in which consequently emotions have a power, a proportion, a permanence that is beyond the possibility of description.
I was told, on Percy’s behalf, that he had laid aside the sum of £600 for me, as the equivalent of his father’s costs, to be used I suppose in buying back for me the property the Bankruptcy Receiver had seized, and possibly in other ways. I conveyed to him my thanks. I consider Percy a very good-hearted fellow, kind and considerate. I would very much like to see him again some time. He should of course have paid the costs, and left me then if necessary to settle my other debts. But he, I have no doubt, acted under advice. If he had realised matters a little more he would have seen that he merely doubled his father’s delight and exultation by not interfering to prevent my insolvency. It was the only thing Queensberry was afraid of. He need not have been…With regard to the whole question the Queensberry family must remember that through them I am in prison, through them a bankrupt, and that they can hardly allow people whom they ruined so completely to go to the workhouse.
I was touched and helped immeasurably by your telling me that some friends of mine have arranged that for eighteen months I am to have enough to live on: that gives me breathing space. But of course I cannot trespass for a lifetime on those on whom I have no more claim than any other of the poor and wretched and homeless people of whom God’s world is so full. I couldn’t do it. And I may live longer than eighteen months. A heart may be broken and yet fulfil its natural functions. The soul may sit in the shadow of death, and yet the body walk in the ways of life, and breathe and eat and know the sun and rain. I have no organic disease of any kind. I am troubled with insomnia, but I get my four or five hours of sleep every night. Supposing I live on? I should not be at all surprised if I did. I come of a long-lived race. The Queensberry family had better consider the point, the Douglases we will call them, as the other name is loathsome. There are debts of dishonour in a family as well as debts of honour. If the Douglas estates have to be burdened with a prospective claim of some paltry life-interest, let them be so burdened. A family cannot ruin a man like me, and look on the whole thing merely as a subject for sentiment or reminiscence over the walnuts and the wine. People, as somebody in one of Ibsen’s plays says, don’t do these things. It is dreadful that it should fall on me to remind them. They should consult their family solicitor, and let him communicate the result to my solicitor. That is all that is necessary.
You say in your letter that Bosie is so anxious to make ‘some little return’ to me for all I ‘spent on him’. Unfortunately, I spent on him my life, my genius, my position, my name in history; for these no little, or big return is possible. But as regards the mere wretched pounds, shillings, and pence side of my ruin – the workhouse aspect – he must seriously consider the whole point. It is his duty to do so. His duty to himself as much, far more indeed, than to me. When people play a tragedy they should play it in the ‘grand style’. All smallness, pettiness, meagreness of mood or gesture is out of place. If the Douglases don’t recognise this, let me be informed. But I don’t doubt that they will. It is a perfectly obvious matter. And as for me, my life will of course necessarily be one of great retirement, simplicity and economy of living, and many modes of self-denial, imposed and accepted. But a certain small permanence is requisite even for the practice of the virtues of thrift and economy. Bosie must consider the matter. I will be much obliged if you will copy out all that I have written, from the bottom of page one, and send it off to him. It will relieve my own letter to him of a very unpleasing duty, one that a little thought on his part would have spared me.
As regards my children, I sincerely hope I may be recognised by the Court as having some little, I won’t say right, but claim to be allowed to see Cyril from time to time: it would be to me a sorrow beyond words if I were not. I do hope the Court will see in me something more than a man with a tragic vice in his life. There is so much more in me, and I always was a good father to both my children. I love them dearly and was dearly loved by them, and Cyril was my friend. And it would be better for them not to be forced to think of me as an outcast, but to know me as a man who has suffered. Pray let everything be done on my behalf that is possible. A little recognition by the Court would help me so much. And it is a terrible responsibility for the Law to say to a father that he is unfit to see his own children: the consciousness of it often makes me unhappy all day long.
As regards my life-interest, should Mr Hargrove make any proposal about it, it of course will be communicated to me by you at once. It will require grave consideration. The advances cannot come from me, can they? Should my own solicitor come to see me, pray let it be the last week in this month. I am quite distressed at the idea of his only charging £1.1 and expenses. I think he should have at least £3.3. Let the money be got from Leverson, and whatever Mr Stoker is owed be paid to him from the same fund in Leverson’s hands.
I fear you see traces of bitterness in my business letters. Yes, that is so. It is very terrible. In the prison in which my body is I am shown much kindness, but in the prison in which my soul is I can show myself none. I hope that neither in your heart nor in Robbie’s, nor in the heart of any that have been good to me, will bitterness of any kind ever find a place. It makes one suffer very deeply. Your affectionate friend
OSCAR WILDE
I quite see that I must accept, gratefully indeed, my discharge as a bankrupt, when I get it, and then set to work to try and pay off some of the debts. I suppose it won’t be done till I go out of prison? I would like things held over, on account of the sale of copyrights etc. At present I receive no communication at all from the Receiver. That is, I suppose, right.
For the list of books, so many thanks. I am going to ask for a Bible in French: la Sainte Bible.
Around the beginning of 1897, with pen and paper now freely available to him, Wilde started a long letter to Douglas. When it was finished it ran to 50,000 words. Major Nelson consulted the Prison Commissioners who refused to allow its despatch and said that it could be given to the prisoner on his release, which it was. Despite Wilde’s instructions to Ross, Douglas was neither sent a copy nor the original. What seems most likely is that Ross, taking Wilde’s literary executorship seriously, persuaded him that keeping the manuscript was vital if, as seems to have been Wilde’s ultimate intention, the letter was to be published. De Profundis, as it became known, was indeed published by Ross but in a much expurgated form five years after Wilde’s death in 1905. Ross then gave the manuscript to the British Museum to be closed for fifty years and it first appeared unedited in 1962.
1 April 1897 HM Prison, Reading
My dear Robbie, I send you, in a roll separate from this, my letter to Alfred Douglas, which I hope will arrive safe. As soon as you, and of course More Adey whom I always include with you, have read it, I want you to have it carefully copied for me. There are many reasons why I wish this to be done. One will suffice. I want you to be my literary executor in case of my death, and to have complete control over my plays, books and papers. As soon as I find I have a legal right to make a will I will do so. My wife does not understand my art, nor could be expected to have any interest in it, and Cyril is only a child. So I turn naturally to you, as indeed I do for everything, and would like you to have all my works. The deficit that their sale will produce may be lodged to the credit of Cyril and Vyvyan.
Well, if you are my literary executor, you must be in possession of the only document that really gives any explanation of my extraordinary behaviour with regard to Queensberry and Alfred Douglas. When you have read the letter you will see the psychological explanation of a course of conduct that from the outside seems a combination of absolute idiocy with vulgar bravado. Some day the truth will have to be known: not necessarily in my lifetime or in Douglas’s: but I am not prepared to sit in the grotesque pillory they put me into, for all time: for the simple reason that I inherited from my father and my mother a name of high distinction in literature and art, and I cannot, for eternity, allow that name to be the shield and catspaw of the Queensberrys. I don’t defend my conduct. I explain it.
Also there are in the letter certain passages which deal with my mental development in prison, and the inevitable evolution of character and intellectual attitude towards life that has taken place: and I want you, and others who still stand by me and have affection for me, to know exactly in what mood and manner I hope to face the world. Of course from one point of view I know that on the day of my release I shall be merely passing from one prison into another, and there are times when the whole world seems to me no larger than my cell, and as full of terror for me. Still I believe that at the beginning God made a world for each separate man, and in that world which is within us one should seek to live. At any rate, you will read those parts of my letter with less pain than the others. Of course I need not remind you how fluid a thing thought is with me – with us all – and of what an evanescent substance are our emotions made. Still, I do see a sort of possible goal towards which, through art, I may progress. It is not unlikely that you may help me.
As regards the mode of copying: of course it is too long for any amanuensis to attempt: and your own handwriting, dear Robbie, in your last letter seems specially designed to remind me that the task is not to be yours. I may wrong you, and hope I do, but it really looks as if you were engaged in writing a three-volume novel on the dangerous prevalence of communistic opinions among the rich, or some dreadful subject of vital interest, or in some other way wasting a youth that I cannot help saying has always been, and will always remain, quite full of promise. I think that the only thing to do is to be thoroughly modern, and to have it type-written. Of course the manuscript should not pass out of your control, but could you not get Mrs Marshall to send down one of her type-writing girls – women are the most reliable, as they have no memory for the important – to Hornton Street or Phillimore Gardens to do it under your supervision? I assure you that the type-writing machine, when played with expression, is not more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation. Indeed many, among those most devoted to domesticity, prefer it.
I wish the copy to be done not on tissue paper but on good paper such as is used for plays, and a wide rubricated margin should be left for corrections. The copy done and verified from the manuscript, the original should be dispatched to A. D. by More, and another copy done by the type-writer so that you should have a copy as well as myself. Also I would wish two type-written copies to be made from the fourth page of sheet 9 to the last page of sheet 14: from ‘and the end of it…I must forgive you’ down to ‘Between art and myself there is none’ (I quote from memory). Also on page 3 of sheet 18 from ‘I am to be released if all goes well’ to ‘bitter herbs…whole’ on page 4. These welded together with anything else you may extract that is good and nice in intention, such as first page of sheet 15, I wish sent, one copy to the Lady of Wimbledon – whom I have spoken of, without mentioning her name – the other to Frankie Forbes-Robertson. I know both these sweet women will be interested to know something of what is happening to my soul – not in the theological sense, but merely in the sense of the spiritual consciousness that is separate from the actual occupations of the body. It is a sort of message or letter I send them – the only one, of course, I dare send. If Frankie wishes she can show it to her brother Eric, of whom I was always fond, but of course it is a strict secret from the general world. The Lady of Wimbledon will know that too.
If the copying is done at Hornton Street the lady type-writer might be fed through a lattice in the door like the Cardinals when they elect a Pope, till she comes out on the balcony and can say to the world ‘Habet Mundus Epistolam’; for indeed it is an Encyclical Letter, and as the Bulls of the Holy Father are named from their opening words, it may be spoken of as the Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis.
There is no need to tell A. D. that a copy has been taken, unless he should write and complain of injustice in the letter or misrepresentation: then he should be told that a copy has been taken. I earnestly hope the letter will do him good. It is the first time anyone has ever told him the truth about himself. If he is allowed to think that the letter is merely the result of the influence of a plank-bed on style, and that my views are distorted by the privations of prison-life, no good will follow. I hope someone will let him know that the letter is one he thoroughly deserves, and that if it is unjust, he thoroughly deserves injustice. Who indeed deserves it more than he who was always so unjust to others?
In point of fact, Robbie, prison-life makes one see people and things as they really are. That is why it turns one to stone. It is the people outside who are deceived by the illusion of a life in constant motion. They revolve with life and contribute to its unreality. We who are immobile both see and know. Whether or not the letter does good to his narrow nature and hectic brain, to me it has done great good. I have ‘cleansed my bosom of much perilous stuff’, to borrow a phrase from the poet whom you and I once thought of rescuing from the Philistine. I need not remind you that mere expression is to an artist the supreme and only mode of life. It is by utterance that we live. Of the many, many things for which I have to thank the Governor there is none for which I am more grateful than for his permission to write fully to A. D. and at as great length as I desired. For nearly two years I had within me a growing burden of bitterness, much of which I have now got rid of. On the other side of the prison-wall there are some poor black soot-smirched trees that are just breaking out into buds of an almost shrill green. I know quite well what they are going through. They are finding expression.
There is another very serious thing about which I have to write to you, and I address myself to you because I have got to blame you, and I am far too fond of you to blame you to anyone else. On the 20th [acually 10th] March 1896, more than a year ago now, I wrote to you in the very strongest terms telling you that I could not bear the idea of any discord being made between myself and my wife on such a subject as money, after her sweetness in coming here from Italy to break to me the news of my mother’s death, and that I desired my friends to withdraw their proposal to purchase my life-interest against her wishes. You should have seen that my wishes were carried out. You were very wrong not to do so. I was quite helpless in prison and I relied on you. You thought that the thing to do was the clever thing, the smart thing, the ingenious thing. You were under a mistake. Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing. Look at the result! Are you pleased with it?
Again, a complete error was made in the estimate formed of Mr Hargrove. He was regarded as a solicitor of the Humphreys class, one who would threaten to gain an end, bluster, extort, and the like. Quite the contrary. He is a man of very high character, and extremely good social position. Whatever he said he meant. The idea of putting me – a wretched prisoner and pauper – up to fight Mr Hargrove and Sir George Lewis was grotesque. The idea of bidding against them absurd. Mr Hargrove – the family solicitor of the Lloyds for thirty years – would advance my wife £10,000 if she wanted it, and not feel it. I asked Mr Holman whether in case of a divorce a settlement was not ipso facto broken. I received no answer. I find that it is as I suspected.
Again, how silly the long serious letters advising me ‘not to surrender my rights over my children’, a phrase that occurs seven times in the correspondence. My rights! I had none. A claim that a formal appeal to a Judge in Chambers can quash in ten minutes is not a right. I am quite astounded at the position I have been placed in. How much better if you had done as I asked you, as at that time my wife was kind and ready to let me see my two children and be with them occasionally. A. D. put me into a false position with regard to his father, forced me into it, and held me there. More Adey, with the best intentions, forced me into a false position with regard to my wife. Even had I any legal rights – and I have none – how much more charming to have privileges given to me by affection than to extort them by threats. My wife was very sweet to me, and now she, very naturally, goes right against me. Of her character also a wrong estimate was made. She warned me that if I let my friends bid against her she would proceed to a certain course, and she will do so.
Again, Swinburne says to Marie Stuart in one of his poems,
But surely you were something better Than innocent!
and really my friends must face the fact that (setting aside such details in my indictment as belonged to my bosom-friend, three in number) I am not in prison as an innocent man. On the contrary, my record of perversities of passion and distorted romances would fill many scarlet volumes. I think it right to mention this – however surprising, and no doubt shocking, it will sound to many – because More Adey in his letter tells me that the opposite side will be obliged to furnish strict details of the dates and places and exact circumstances of the terrible charges to be brought against me. Does he seriously imagine that if I submitted to more cross-examination I would be believed? Does he propose I should do so, and repeat the Queensberry fiasco? It is the case that the charges are not true. But that is a mere detail. If a man gets drunk, whether he does so on white wine or red is of no importance. If a man has perverse passions, their particular mode of manifestation is of no importance either.
I said from the first that I relied entirely on my wife’s condonation. I now learn that no condonation is of any value where more than one offence may be charged. My wife has simply to say that she condoned X, but knew nothing of Y, and would not hear of condoning Z. There is a little shilling book – ninepence for cash – called Every Man his own Lawyer. If my friends had only sent it to me, or even read it themselves, all this trouble, expense, and worry would have been saved. However, while I blame you ab initio, I am now in a mood of mind that makes me think that everything that happens is for the best, and that the world is not a mere chaos in which chance and cleverness clash. What I have to do is simply this. I have got to submit to my divorce. I don’t think that the Government could possibly prosecute me again. Even for a British Government it would be too brutal a procedure. I have also, before that, to restore to my wife my interest in the settlement-money before it is taken from me. I have thirdly to state that I will accept nothing from her at all in the way of income or allowance. This seems to be the simple, straightforward, and gentlemanly thing to do. It is a great blow to me. I feel the legal deprivation of my children poignantly.
My friendship with A. D. brought me first to the dock of the Criminal Court, then to the dock of the Bankruptcy Court, and now to the dock of the Divorce Court. As far as I can make out (not having the shilling primer on the subject) there are no more docks into which he can bring me. If so, I can draw a breath of relief. But I want you to seriously consider my proposal, to ask More to do so, and his lawyer, and to write to me, and to get More to write to me, as soon as possible about it. I think my wife will have no objection to refunding the £75 paid for the damnosa haereditas of my life-interest. She is quite just on money matters. But personally I hope there will be no bargaining. A grave mistake has been made. Submission has to follow. I propose that my life-interest should be restored to my wife, its rightful owner, as a parting gift from me. It will render my exit from marriage less ignominious than to wait for its being done by legal coercion. Whether I am married or not is a matter that does not concern me. For years I disregarded the tie. But I really think that it is hard on my wife to be tied to me. I always thought so. And, though it may surprise some of my friends, I am really very fond of my wife and very sorry for her. I sincerely hope she may have a happy marriage, if she marries again. She could not understand me, and I was bored to death with the married life. But she had some sweet points in her character, and was wonderfully loyal to me. On this point of my surrendering everything, pray let More and yourself write at once, after you have considered the point.
Also, I would take it as a great favour if More would write to the people [his brother Willie and his sister-in-law] who pawned or sold my fur coat since my imprisonment, and ask them from me whether they would be kind enough to state where it was sold or pawned as I am anxious to trace it, and if possible get it back. I have had it for twelve years, it was all over America with me, it was at all my first nights, it knows me perfectly, and I really want it. The letter should be quite courteous, addressed first to the man: if he doesn’t answer, to the woman. As it was the wife who pressed me to leave it in her charge, it might be mentioned that I am surprised and distressed, particularly as I paid out of my own pocket since my imprisonment all the expenses of her confinement, to the extent of £50 conveyed through Leverson. This might be stated as a reason for my being distressed. Their letters must be kept. I have a most particular reason for wishing it to be done – in fact, one vitally important. And the letter being one of civil request, with the reasons set forth, cannot involve argument or denial. I just require documentary evidence for my protection.
I hope to see Frank Harris on Saturday week, or soon. The news of the copying of my letter will be welcome, when I hear from you about my divorce. If Arthur Clifton would like to see the copy show it to him, or your brother Aleck. Ever yours
OSCAR WILDE
7 April 1897
[HM Prison] Reading
My dear More,
[The first paragraphs of this letter, repeating much of what Wilde said to Ross in the previous letter, have been omitted]
With regard to your letter about Alfred Douglas, I see of course that 1 must clearly ascertain what he and his family are going to do. On the occasion of my bankruptcy, which it was disgraceful of them to allow, I received through you and others a promise from Percy that £500 was to be at my disposal on my release, it being considered by him and his brother that it would be better to give the money to me instead of to their father. This promise will, I suppose, I don’t doubt, be carried out, and as my release takes place in a few weeks and I am anxious to arrange my life for the next couple of years, will you kindly write to Percy and ask him to let you have the money for me. It must not go into Leverson’s hands, as he would probably use it for his own purposes or in his business. I wish you to have it.
I also think it right that Percy should know a little of the mere outlines of my unfortunate acquaintance with his brother. The friendship began in May 1892 by his brother appealing to me in a very pathetic letter to help him in terrible trouble with people who were blackmailing him. I hardly knew him at the time. I had known him eighteen months, but had only seen him four times in that space. I was, however, I admit, touched by his letter, and his appeal, and did at once get him out of his trouble at considerable difficulty and annoyance to myself. Alfred Douglas was very grateful, and practically never left me for three years – not till he had got me into prison. I wish Percy to know of my incessant efforts to break off a friendship so ruinous to me artistically, financially, and socially.
In December 1893 I went so far as to fly abroad and leave a false address to try and escape from him. During the whole time he was in Egypt I refused to write to him or take any notice of his incessant letters and telegrams. It was only on his rushing back to Paris and sending me a telegram that seemed to threaten suicide that I consented even to see him. To get him out of my life was one of the objects of my life. I completely failed to accomplish it. Nothing that I could do could keep him out of my house.
As regards money, let Percy know that I spent on A. D. and with him more than £5000 in two years and a half, exclusive of bills. This I did not do as a pleasure to myself. I was forced to. I never remember on any one occasion from May 1892 to April 1895, the date of my arrest, A. D. having any money at all from either his father or his mother. He came to me for everything, nor is it any exaggeration to say that from his morning shave to his midnight hansom I was obliged to pay for every single item in his day’s expenditure. He refused to have his meals at home and insisted on having them with me at the most expensive restaurants. He arrived at twelve o’clock every morning, and practically he never left me till after midnight. It was ruinous to me in every way, but I could not get rid of him. Explain to Percy that I never gave his brother large sums of money. His name hardly appears in my cheque-book. Where it does it was simply because when he was away or abroad he used to draw cheques on his own bank where his account was always overdrawn and telegraph to me to implore me to cover it by lodging to his account the amount so that his cheque might be honoured. The real expense was his support, left entirely to me.
Also, pray explain to Percy that the night A. D. arrived from Algiers I implored him to let us tell him (Percy) the truth. He absolutely refused, and insisted on the comedy of his father’s delusions. Also, let Percy know the exact circumstances of my entering the absurd action. A. D. had brought to my hotel a companion of his own, one whose age, appearance, public and private profession, rendered him the most unsuitable companion possible for me in the terribly serious position in which I was placed. On my remonstrating with him, and asking him to let his companion return to his home, he made a violent scene, and preferring the society of his companion to mine retired at once to another hotel, where I subsequently had to pay the bill for them both, I need hardly say.
From his new quarters he began to bombard me with revolting letters. On the Thursday I went to my club and found Queensberry’s hideous card. I returned at once to the hotel where I found a no less loathsome letter from Alfred Douglas. I felt I stood between Caliban and Sporus, and that I was in hideous danger from both of them, and, just as I had bolted from the son in December ‘93 to Paris, so I determined to bolt at once, to Paris again, from father as well as son. Unfortunately the bill for the ten days Alfred Douglas had planted himself on me, with his companion at the close of the period, was £148, and the hotel people would not allow my luggage to be removed till I had paid the bill in full, which I could not do. At that moment A. D. arrived, saw his father’s card, and by taunts of cowardice and terror drove me to the fatal step. I stumbled like an ox into the shambles. My last straw for clutching to was the expense. I told Humphreys I had no money. A. D. at once interfered, said that his family would pay the whole expense, and be too delighted to do so. Humphreys, keen for a scandalous case, and scenting money, closed at once. I was brought in a four-wheeler by both of them to apply for a warrant, and here I am in prison. I think Percy should know these facts, as from Robbie’s letter to me the Queensberry family seem to be talking foolishly about the case. So please write to Percy, and ask him from me to fulfil his promise.
Also, I want you to write to Leverson from me. During the time I was out on bail a sum of money was given to me by a friend to be of use to me in any way possible. I, not liking to have a large sum of money on me, asked Leverson and Reggie Turner to be trustees of this. They consented. Leverson personally took charge of the money. I gave Leverson a piece of paper on which my friend had written ‘I desire this money to be employed for your own personal use and that of your children as you may direct’. These were the conditions of the trust. Leverson accepted it, but told me it would be better, more convenient, only to have one trustee, and that he had arranged with Reggie to retire. I was surprised, but made no objection.
On my way to Court to receive my sentence he began asking me in the carriage to repay him £250, the balance of £500 he had advanced to Alfred Douglas and myself for the first trial. I was astonished and wounded at his selecting such a moment to worry me over a debt, and told him that I could not discuss business then, and that the money held in trust was to be applied for my mother’s wants primarily, and then, if it was necessary, for my children. He did disburse on my behalf to my mother some £280 or so: my children, my wife told me, required nothing. He now comes and proposes to deduct his debt of £250 before he hands over the balance. I cannot allow this for a single moment. He has to hand over the trust-money intact to me. He has no right to touch it for any claim of his own. He must know quite well that his proposing to pay himself in full, when my other creditors are receiving nothing, is an entire breach of the Bankruptcy Laws. This money was not given to me to pay my debts. It was given to me because I was at the time bankrupt and ruined, to be held in trust for me by a friend. Leverson first through you proposed to pay himself and to lend me an equivalent sum. I declined this entirely. When he came here, he calmly told me that ‘money was tight in the City’ and that he could not let me have the money that belonged to me! As if I cared whether money was tight in the City, or knew what it meant. I suppose it means that he was speculating with trust-money. That is a dangerous amusement. As a business man he should know better.
Kindly write to him and copy out what I have said and ask him to let me have the proper balance of the money entrusted to his care for my use. Of his original loan he has already had fifty per cent: the only one of my creditors who has had anything. For him to swoop down illegally and propose to collar the balance is not to be thought of. Nor will he do so. Of course, if he tried to do so I would never speak to him again or consent to see him, and would let everyone publicly and privately know of his dishonourable conduct. I would also take other measures.
There is also another matter: he bought for me at my sale my own portrait, the picture of A. D. I commissioned Will Rothenstein to do, and Shannon’s pastel of the Moon. He may want to be paid for these, as he said they were a present to me from himself and his wife. If so, let him deduct from what is due to me his claim. The three things themselves I wish very much could be lodged somewhere for me – in a little garret in Hornton Street, or anywhere – so that I can get them when I want. Can you do this at once?
The Sphinx has (1) The Duchess of Padua. (2) The manuscript of La Sainte Courtisane. (3) A bundle of A. D.’s letters. Would you give her from me my kind regards and most affectionate wishes and ask her to let Robbie have them, as I want them all three as soon as I am released. This is a horrid letter, but how am I to write on horrid things but horridly? Ever yours
OSCAR
6 May 1897
HM Prison, Reading
My dear More, Many thanks for your letter. Hansell has written at last and forwarded a draft of the agreement to be drawn up between my wife and myself. It is couched in legal language, and of course quite unintelligible to me. The only thing I can make out is the close, where it is laid down that I am to be deprived of my £150 if I know any ‘disreputable’ people. As good people, as they are grotesquely termed, will not know me, and I am not to be allowed to know wicked people, my future life, as far as I can see at present, will be passed in comparative solitude. I have written to Hansell that artists and the criminal classes are the only people who will know me, and that the conditions would place him, if seriously insisted on, in an absurd position: but what I want now is a legal condonation from my wife of the past, so as not to have it raked up again and again. For the rest, to have been divorced would have been horrible of course, but now that the children are publicly taken from me by a Judge’s order, and it is decided that I am unfit to be with Cyril, I am very disheartened: all I want is peace: all I ever wanted was peace: I loathe legal worries.
I don’t know when you are coming: it had better be soon: I hope you have written to the Commissioners for permission to have the private room and a visit of an hour in duration: in the case of a special visit the Governor has no authority to grant these privileges himself, otherwise he would have gladly done so.
As to Ricketts, I see his presence troubles you: well, I thought, as he had applied so often, it was not for me to refuse a kindly offer from an artist of whom I am very fond, but I think that after half-an-hour I will ask Ricketts to leave us together to talk business: he will quite understand that I have lots of tedious and uninteresting things to settle. So then you and I and Robbie will have half-an-hour for everything.
As regards clothes etc.: Robbie kindly said he would get me a blue-serge suit from Doré and an ulster: this I suppose he has done. Frank Harris also offered me some kindnesses of the same kind, so I have already written to him to say what I want in the way of other clothes, and boots, and to ask for the things to be sent to you, not later than Thursday 13th. Hats I ought to have a lot of, but I suppose they have disappeared: Heath, Albert Gate, was my hatter, and understands my needs: I would like a brown hat, and a grey hat, soft felt, seaside things. Would you, if there is time, get me eighteen collars made after the pattern you have, or say two dozen. Also, order me two dozen white handkerchiefs, and a dozen with coloured borders. Also some neckties: some dark blue with white spots and diapers, and some of whatever is being worn for summer wear. I also want eight pair of socks, coloured summer things; my size in gloves is 8¼, as my hand is so broad, but my socks need only be for an 8 glove in proportion. Also, I want two or three sets of plain mother-of-pearl (by the way I want to make ‘nacred’ an English word) studs – nacred studs: you know how difficult they are to get abroad. Also, some nice French soap, Houbigant’s if you can get it: Pritchard of King Street, St James’s, used to have it for me: either ‘Peau d’Espagne’ or ‘Sac de Laitue’ would do: a case of three. Also, some scent; Canterbury Wood Violet I would like, and some ‘Eau de Lubin’ for the toilet, a large bottle. Also some of Pritchard’s tooth-powder, and a medium toothbrush. My hair has become very grey: I am under the impression that it is quite white, but I believe that is an exaggeration: there is a wonderful thing called Koko Marikopas, to be got at 233 Regent Street, which is a wonderful hair-tonic: the name alone seems worth the money, so please get a large bottle. I want, for psychological reasons, to feel entirely physically cleansed of the stain and soil of prison life, so these things are all – trivial as they may sound – really of great importance. I don’t know if there are any night-shirts? If not, please order me half a dozen; the size of my collar will show how wide the neck should be, also, the sleeve of my shirt for length of arm: the actual length – well, I am six feet, and I like long shirts. I like them made with a turn-down collar, and a breast-pocket for a handkerchief: coloured border to collar and cuffs. If ‘the dreadful people’ don’t give up my two rugs, will you buy me one – a travelling Scotch rug, with a good fringe: not a tartan, of course: nor a shepherd’s-plaid pattern: but the sort of fleecy striped thing. I feel I here convey no idea. All these, if possible, out of the wonderful £25: pray keep envelope of the latter, that I may try to guess from whose generous hand it has come.
As for Reggie Turner, please tell him from me how charmed and touched I am by his delightful present [a dressing case]: it is most sweet and generous of him, and I accept his gift with gratitude and delight: in fact I must thank him in person, if he will let me: I hope he will come to see me between the date of my leaving here, and my starting with Frank Harris. My plans are as follows. I have had no reply from the Home Secretary, I need hardly say; and as Hansell proposes to come on Saturday the 15th with the deeds for my signature, it makes it very troublesome. I must alter Hansell’s date, I suppose. In any case my idea is this. If I am kept, as I suppose I shall be, till the 19th, I wish a carriage to be here at six o’clock: by 6.15 I will be ready. The carriage, by the Governor’s permission, is to drive into the prison: it is to be a closed one. In this I go to Twyford, six miles off: there breakfast and change, and make my way to Folkestone, Twyford being on main line. Cross over by night-boat to Boulogne, and sleep there. Stay either at Boulogne, or in the immediate vicinity by the sea, for four or five days to recruit. Then join Frank Harris and go to the Pyrenees. So you see Reggie Turner could come to Boulogne, on the Thursday. Ask him to. Of course he is to keep all this a dead secret. Also, on no account is Alfred Douglas to be told. I will see him after my voyage with Frank Harris and receive from him my letters and what is left of my presents. But not before. For him to appear at Boulogne would be horrible. I could not stand it.
Bobbie wrote to me that Leverson would hand over the money all right: it should be about £450. If you or Bobbie would keep it for me I would be much obliged. Out of his original loan of £500 Leverson has already had £250: he must wait a little for the balance. I hope you will have received the money from him by the time I see you.
As regards Humphreys, I am under the impression that I left there my dressing bag containing my silver brushes and a suit of clothes and things: would you find out? and if so, the brushes and razors I would like. Razors and shaving things, by the way, are a necessity to be procured in England. If the bag with the silver brushes is not at Humphreys, it must be with the people who sold my furs, and they should be asked for it. They also have a dark ulster of mine.
I wish you would see if you could get me a travelling basket with strap for books: one that could go under the seat of a railway carriage: Lady Brownlow gave me one, of green wicker that was charming, but I don’t know where it is now. In Bond Street, or at the Stores, I fancy you could get one. They are most useful. I will let Robbie know when he comes what English books I would like.
On the strength of Percy’s promise to pay £500, Humphreys claims from me £150 for the expenses of Bankruptcy. I don’t know if Leverson has paid this. Percy said he would pay half. It has to be paid, so if Percy does not pay half, I must pay it all through Leverson. Leverson will of course keep back what is necessary for Humphreys’s bill.
I am still anxious to know if my bags with letters have been removed from Humphreys. I would like them to be at Hornton Street.
I am very sorry to hear Robbie has not been well. When I wrote to him about people giving me books, I meant that many literary people had sent messages through him, and I would have been touched by their giving me one of their books on my release: Stuart Merrill, Lugné-Poe, and the like. It was a whim I had. I don’t know if Reggie ever hears from Charlie Hickey? If he does I wish he would ask Charlie to write to me (under cover to Reggie) and tell me how he is, and where. I have pleasant memories of him.
If the Twyford scheme is all right, perhaps this would be a good programme. Breakfast at Twyford: luncheon at Richmond with Frank Harris: dinner at Folkestone: supper at Boulogne. I would like to see Frank before my going to the Pyrenees. I wonder am I to see you on Saturday? I still suspect you of wishing to incarcerate me in a Trappist monastery, and will tax you with it in Robbie’s presence. With thousand thanks, Ever yours
OSCAR WILDE
12 May 1897
Reading Prison
My dear More, I have received from the Governor your document and read it, with great pain, I need hardly say. To begin with, with regard to money-matters.
You and Robbie both assured me by letter and personally that enough money had been subscribed for me to enable me to live in comfort for ‘eighteen months or two years’. I believed this. When one is in prison face to face with the realities of life one believes what is said to one. I now understand that there is no such sum at all, that all there is is £50, from which Hansell’s and Holman’s charges have to be deducted, so that nothing of any import will be left.
Let me say frankly that it was extremely wrong of you and Robbie to have made such a statement to me. It was wrong, unkind, and injudicious. Mr Holman also made a formal statement to Mr Hargrove that a considerable sum of money was to be placed at my disposal on my release. Mr Hargrove communicated this to my wife, and it conditioned her action with regard to refusing to increase her offer of £150 a year to £200. She wrote to me at Christmas telling me that she had received this information from Mr Holman through Mr Hargrove, and she very strongly urged me ‘to purchase an annuity’ with the sum of money in question. Mr Holman had represented it as a large sum. Subsequently, after I had mentioned to you that I was indebted to Mrs Napier for £150 (used to pay off the first instalment of Leverson’s loan) Mr Holman declared through you (your letter lies before me) that this sum should be repaid ‘at once’ to Mrs Napier. I demurred, on the ground that I would sooner repay such a debt on my release personally, but suppose I had said ‘yes’? Where was the money to come from? I naturally supposed that it was from the money you and Robbie had for me, to enable me to live without pecuniary anxiety for ‘eighteen months or two years’ at least. Did you, who strongly backed up Holman’s suggestion, propose that it should come from the little money set apart for my use of which Leverson had got hold? That would have left me penniless. Where was it to come from?
At the same interview, when you urged me to authorise the payment of my debt to Mrs Napier, I asked Robbie to go to Brussels and engage a flat for me. I said I would like a studio, sleeping-room, kitchen etc. I naturally believed there was money forthcoming for me in your hands, and proposed to spend some of it in renting a good flat with studio in Brussels, which would have cost about £100 or £120 a year. Robbie listened quite seriously, and promised to do what I wished, as soon as I had definitely decided. Why was I not told that there was no money at all? That the statement made by you and Robbie to me, and by Mr Holman to my wife’s solicitor, was utterly untrue in every detail? What advantage was gained by deceiving me and my wife? Why did you do it? What one wants in prison is the truth. You no doubt meant it to please me. So did Robbie. Mr Holman’s object I don’t know. Had the thing been done by others I would say it was a heartless, stupid and offensive hoax.
It has been done by others. On April 7th Frank Harris came to see me. He had come of his own accord, and in the two applications he had made for leave to see me had stated that it was on ‘financial business’. When I saw him he was most cordial and friendly, told me that he had made a very large sum of money – some £23,000 in South Africa – and that he had come to put his cheque-book at my disposal. I was greatly touched, I admit, at his spontaneous and unsolicited kindness, and told him that if I were set free from money anxieties I thought I could produce some good art. He said he had come for the purpose of doing so, and would send me a cheque for £500 before my release. I admit that, in my unnerved state, I was very deeply moved at his generous present, and made no attempt to conceal my feelings, which were indeed beyond my control. I now learn that he has sent a verbal message through you to say he is very sorry but cannot do it. Of course nothing would induce me to go on this driving-tour with him after that. I hardly suppose he expects it. Would you kindly write to him that you gave me his message and that I was a good deal distressed, as I had unfortunately received similar messages from everyone else who had been kind enough to promise me money, and that I found myself in such a painful and parlous state as regards my finances that I could not think of any pleasant pleasure excursion such as he had proposed till I had in some way settled my affairs and seen a possible future. This will end the driving-tour, and there is nothing in the message that could hurt his feelings, so pray give it in my own words. In fact Frank Harris has no feelings. It is the secret of his success. Just as the fact that he thinks that other people have none either is the secret of the failure that lies in wait for him somewhere on the way of Life.
As regards Percy Douglas, who comes next in his refusal to carry out his promise, I remember you asked me to allow him spontaneously to break with the evil ‘traditions of the Queensberry family’. I am afraid he has spontaneously shown that he is bien le fils de son père. One of the notes of the Queensberry character is that they are quite unscrupulous about money affairs, and extremely mean about them. On the occasion of my bankruptcy Percy stated that instead of paying off his father’s costs he would reserve the money for me, as he thought it would be much better for me to have it for myself than for his father to enjoy it. I protested strongly against this view. Outside of Queensberry I had no debts of any size. I owed the Savory £86 and Lewis the jeweller £42! These came next. However, I was not consulted. I was told that Percy had insisted on his arrangement, and that the money, or £600 of it, was to be kept for me. I believed it. I never doubted it. Humphreys, on the strength of it, sends me in a bill for £150! I supposed my friends would naturally have got the money from Percy Douglas and kept it for me: perhaps put it into something that bears a little interest – Consols or something mysterious. Of course that is not done, and when Percy is asked to fulfil his promise, he gets out of it like Frank Harris does, but to show the generosity of his nature offers to pay half the solicitor’s bill! I suppose the unfortunate man has spent the money on drink really. People like that give me a sense of nausea. I loathe the promise-makers. I could be humble and grateful to a beggar who gave me half of the crust out of his wallet, but the rich, the ostentatious, the false who ask one to a rich banquet and then when one is hungry and in want shut the door of house and heart against one and tell one to go elsewhere – I have nothing but contempt for them. The Frank Harrises of life are a dreadful type. I hope to see no more of them.
If anyone comes to you with promises and offers of help for me, tell them to give what they can give – if it be a piece of bread I could thank them – but don’t let them promise anything. I won’t have any more promises. People think that because one is in prison they can treat one as they choose. They should try to realise that where there is sorrow there is holy ground. They should know that sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things.
You see the state I am in. You saw it yesterday. I quiver in every nerve with pain. I am wrecked with the recurring tides of hysteria. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. Why? Because on every side there comes in nothing but the tidings of evil, of indifference, of pretence. You and Robbie meant to please me, to comfort me, by inventing the story of the fund adequate for ‘eighteen months or two years’ of existence free from all monetary worries. I lived on the hopes of it. Then there was £600 from Percy – £500 from Frank Harris – and what do I find at the end of it all, absolutely nothing! My wife has most kindly given orders that I am to get my first quarter of my little £150 a year on the day I leave prison. I thank God for having put the thought in her beautiful heart. At the end of it all I shall owe to her my first cup of tea or dish of food. It will taste all the sweeter to me for it.
As regards Leverson – well, of course I understand now why you did not allow me to read the paper of statement yesterday. Robbie in his letter of Monday stated that Leverson had at last consented to hand over my money intact, minus what was paid for my mother out of it. From your statement I see this is not the case. He insists on claiming a right to repay himself, alone of all my creditors, in full, and to keep back £250. This is, of course, outrageous. The money was given to me, after I had been served with a bankruptcy notice, to be of use to me personally and to my children. On the occasion of my foolishly entrusting it to Leverson I gave him the title-deed of the trust, a piece of paper on which was written ‘This is for your use and your children’s’. I told Leverson I wished Reggie Turner to be co-trustee with him. For Leverson to come now and claim alone of all my creditors to be paid 100 per cent and have his pound of flesh is simple fraud and dishonesty. If he desired to rank as a creditor he should have put in his claim when I was bankrupt. I do not allow him to take this money. His account is to be as follows. He received £880: he disbursed for my mother’s use at my request £280. I believe when Holman was so anxious for me to pay off all my debts in full from a fund that did not exist Arthur Clifton got £50: Humphreys claimed £150, of which Douglas of Hawick consents to pay half, viz. £75: so Leverson owes me about £475: will you please let me know by return why Robbie said Leverson would pay in full. I mean, was this an invention of Robbie’s to please me, like the other, more serious one? Or had Leverson said so? Pray let me know this, and Leverson’s private address. I will write to him myself. On hearing from him, if it be unsatisfactory, I will consult my solicitor. I detest fraud, when united to gross sentimentality, and wordy, vulgar expressions of devotion. Please answer by return.
The other reason I regret your not having let me see the statement is about Robbie’s meeting me. On February 27th, when you and Robbie were here, he told me he was going to meet me outside the prison. I begged him not to, but he insisted. I think that for many reasons, social, emotional, and others, it is much better he should not meet me. Yesterday I told him not to come to the prison, but to be at Twyford waiting for me. I consider it much better he should meet me abroad. My inability to go to Boulogne has rather upset me. It looks an evil omen, as though Alfred Douglas stood between me and the sun. Dieppe is relaxing, fashionable, and I am too well known there. I now see Havre is the best. There is a place close to Havre which is said to be bracing. I forget its name. Carlos Blacker used to be there a great deal.
Under these circumstances, it would be best to drive from here to Mortimer, which is on the Basingstoke line. At Mortimer I will breakfast and change. Something was said about Reggie. Would Reggie mind being at Mortimer, and bringing my things? All I want is that when I arrive a room should be ready for me to change in, and that breakfast should be served quickly. I would like all my luggage at Mortimer, as the chances of my suits fitting are questionable, so I would like a possibility of selection. As I no doubt shall be very much upset and hysterical, would you ask your doctor for any nerve-sedative. Nerves are not treated in prison. From Mortimer to Southampton there are many trains no doubt. I await with anxiety your answer about Leverson, about his address, and about Reggie. Robbie I hope to find at Havre, or rather he can follow. I don’t know how often the boat runs now, but of course he can reach Havre in many ways. I write in great distress, because I am in great distress. Ever yours
OSCAR Kindly let me have Reggie Turner’s address by return.
13 May 1897
HM Prison, Reading
My dear Robbie, I am sorry that the last visit was such a painful and unsatisfactory one. To begin with I was wrong to have Ricketts present: he meant to be cheering, but I thought him trivial: everything he said, including his remark that he supposed time went very fast in prison (a singularly unimaginative opinion, and one showing an entirely inartistic lack of sympathetic instinct), annoyed me extremely. Then your letter of Sunday had of course greatly distressed me. You and More had both assured me that there was enough money waiting for me to enable me to live comfortably and at ease for ‘eighteen months or two years’. I now find that there is exactly £50 for that purpose, and that out of this have to come the costs of two solicitors who have already had long interviews with Mr Hargrove and incurred much expense! The balance is for me!
My dear Robbie, if the £50 covers the law-costs I shall be only too pleased. If there is any balance remaining I don’t want to know anything about it. Pray don’t offer it to me. Even in acts of charity there should be some sense of humour. You have caused me the greatest pain and disappointment by foolishly telling me a complete untruth. How much better for me had you said to me, ‘Yes, you will be poor, and there are worse things than poverty. You have got to learn how to face poverty’; simply, directly, and straightforwardly. But when a wretched man is in prison, the people who are outside either treat him as if he was dead, and dispose of his effects, or treat him as if he was a lunatic, and pretend to carry out his wishes and don’t, or regard him as an idiot, to be humoured, and tell him silly and unnecessary lies, or look on him as a thing so low, so degraded, as to have no feelings at all, a thing whose entire life, in its most intimate relations with wife and child, and with all that wife and child represent to a ruined man, is to be bandied about like a common shuttlecock in a vulgar game, in which victory or failure are of really little interest, as it is not the life of the players that is at stake, but only someone else’s life.
I am afraid that you don’t realise what my wife’s character and conduct have been towards me. You don’t seem to understand her. From the very first she forgave me, and was sweet beyond words to me. After my seeing her here when we had arranged everything between us, and I was to have £200 a year during her life, and one third if I survived her, and our arrangements about the children and their transference to her guardianship had been made, so far as her expressing her desire to have nothing done in a public court but to have everything done privately between us was concerned, I wrote to you to say that all opposition to my wife’s purchase of my life-interest was to be withdrawn, as she had been very sweet to me and I was quite satisfied with her offer, and I expressly stated that I begged that my friends would do nothing of any kind that would imperil the reconciliation and affection between myself and my wife.
You wrote at once to say that my wishes would be carried out, and that my friends would never dream of doing anything that would endanger my friendly relation with my wife. 1 believed you, and trusted you. You did not tell me the truth, you and my friends did not carry out my directions, and what is the result? Instead of £200 a year I have £150. Instead of one third of the interest, which on the death of my wife’s mother will amount to about £1500 a year, I have no more than a bare £150 to the end of my days. My children will have £600 or £700 a year apiece. Their father will remain a pauper.
But that is not all. That is merely the common money side. My children are taken from me by an order of the court. I am legally no longer their father. I have no right to speak to them. If I try to communicate with them I can be put into prison for contempt of court. My wife also is of course wounded with me for what she considers a breach of faith on my part. On Monday I sign here a deed of separation of the most painfully stringent kind and of the most humiliating conditions. If I try to communicate with my wife against her will, or without her leave, I lose my wretched £150 a year at once. My life is to be ruled after a pattern of respectability. My friends are to be such as a respectable solicitor would approve of. I owe this, Robbie, to your not telling me the truth, and not carrying out my instructions. I merely wanted my friends not to interfere. I did not ask them to do anything. I begged them to do nothing.
More tells me that every single thing he did, he did with the sanction and advice of your brother Aleck, whom he describes as a ‘sober business-like’ person. Was Aleck aware that I distinctly forbade my friends to bid against my wife for my life-interest? That it was against my directions? Was it by his advice that you wrote me the letter containing the fatal untruth that has caused all this annoyance, loss, and misery? 7 have acted throughout under the advice of Aleck’ are More’s words.
And the grotesque thing about it all is that I now discover, when it is too late to do anything, that the entire proceedings have been done at my expense, that I have had to pay for Holman, whose advice and opinions have been worthless and pernicious, and that the whole cost has fallen upon me: so that out of £150 given to More Adey for my use’ and aid nothing now remains at all but I suppose about £1.10s.6d.
Don’t you see what a wonderful thing it would have been for me had you been able to hand me the £150 on my going out on Wednesday? How welcome such a sum would have been! Of what incalculable value! Now the whole thing, without my permission being asked, is spent in a stupid and ill-advised attempt to arrange my relations with my wife against my wife’s wishes, in making discord, in promoting estrangement. My soul and the soul of my wife met in the valley of the shadow of death: she kissed me: she comforted me: she behaved as no woman in history, except my own mother perhaps, could have behaved. You and my other friends have so little imagination, so little sympathy, so little power of appreciating what was beautiful, noble, lovely and of good report that you can think of nothing better – you, More Adey and, I am told, your brother Aleck – than to rush in between us with an entirely ignorant solicitor and part us first and then make mischief between us.
[Much of the middle of this letter repeats what Wilde had previously said to More Adey and has been omitted]
The most shameful conduct on More Adey’s part and the part of my friends was when my wife proceeded to the divorce. You were utterly regardless of me and my safety and position. You simply were gambling with my life. My father used to have a story about an English landlord who wrote from the Carlton to his Irish agent and said ‘Don’t let the tenants imagine that by shooting you they will at all intimidate me’. More Adey and you took up exactly the same position with regard to me. You did not care what happened.
Do you think I am writing mere rhetoric? Let me quote to you your friend More Adey’s letter conveying to me the news that George Lewis was going to divorce me on appalling charges of a new and more infamous character. ‘We,’ he says, ‘your friends’ that is – ‘we will have nothing whatever to do with your relations to your wife and we will not be influenced by threats of a divorce, a matter in which we have no concern!’…
There are your friend’s words: that is the attitude of you, More Adey, and your brother Aleck, apparently. You were all keen to repeat the Queensberry scandal and affair. First a civil trial, with me cross-examined by Carson. Then a report by the judge to the Treasury. I am divorced, and re-tried and sent to prison! That is what you were working for. Oh! but, says More Adey, when we advised you to resist and meet the ‘tainted’ evidence we didn’t mean it. We meant that you might ‘have time to get abroad’. So the great scheme was that I should be divorced on hideous grounds, and should live in exile. As my divorce would annul my settlement I would of course have had no income at all. And when I was skulking abroad More Adey would have written to me and said, ‘We have succeeded in all we aimed at: you have now no longer (1) any wife (2) any children (3) any income (4) any possibility of ever coming to London to produce a play. Mr Holman says he is very well satisfied on the whole.’
My dear Robbie, if that had happened, how would you have compared yourself, as a friend of mine, with wretched Alfred Douglas? 1 can only tell you that he would have shown up very well beside you. And really now that I reflect on your conduct and More Adey’s to me in this matter I feel I have been unjust to that unfortunate young man.
In point of fact, Robbie, you had better realise that of all the incompetent people on the face of God’s earth in any matter requiring wisdom, common sense, straightforwardness, ordinary intelligence, More Adey is undoubtedly the chief. I have written to him a letter about himself which I beg you will at once go and study. He is cultivated. He is sympathetic. He is kind. He is patient. He is gentle. He is affectionate. He is full of charming emotional qualities. He is modest – too much so – about his intellectual attainments. I value his opinion of a work of art far more than he does himself. I think he should have made, and still can make, a mark in literature. But in matters of business he is the most solemn donkey that ever stepped. He has neither memory, nor understanding, nor capacity to realise a situation, or appreciate a point. His gravity of manner makes his entire folly mask as wisdom. Every one is taken in. He is so serious in manner that one believes he can form an intellectual opinion. He can’t. He is extremely dense in all matters requiring lucidity or imagination or instinct. In business matters he is stupid. The harm he has done me is irreparable, and he is as pleased as possible with himself. Now I have realised this, I feel it right, Robbie, that you should know it. If you have ever thought him sensible, give up the idea. He is incapable, as I have written to him, of managing the domestic affairs of a tom-tit in a hedge for a single afternoon. He is a stupid man, in practical concerns.
You are a dear affectionate, nice, loving fellow: but of course in all matters requiring business faculty utterly foolish. I didn’t expect advice from you. I would have as soon expected it from Cyril. I merely expected the truth. I was quite disappointed. You have behaved very wrongly.
More gets my letter when you get this. He is to go to Leverson’s at once. His accepting a post-dated cheque is really too idiotic. My plans he will tell you. Come when you like to this place near Havre. You shall be as welcome as a flower, and attacked till you know yourself. You have a heavy atonement before you. Kindly show Aleck this letter. Ever yours
o. w. Of course it is understood that Alfred Douglas is not to be at Havre. You must write to him and say that I will receive any letter from him through you, but that he is not to attempt to see me, till I allow him. I believe he desires to return my letters and presents personally. He can do so, later on, in a month.
17 May 1897
HM Prison, Reading
Dear More, It is right to tell you that the Home Secretary against my earnest entreaties is to send me to London, the one place I wished to avoid. I am to be transferred to Pentonville tomorrow, the day announced in the papers for my transference to Wormwood Scrubs. The transference is to be conducted with humanity. I am to wear my own clothes, and not to be handcuffed. My clothes are so dreadful that I wish I had thought of having clothes here, but it will have to stand as it is.
I have written to Reggie to ask him to meet me and go abroad with me. I am so hurt with you and Robbie – not so much for what you have done, but for your failing to realise what you have done, your lack of imagination, which shows lack of sympathy, your blindness to your astounding conduct in spending money without my consent that would have been of priceless service to me – that if you came abroad with me it would only distress us both: I could talk to you of nothing but of the mode in which you very nearly repeated down to the smallest detail the whole of the Queensberry episode: forcing me into a civil trial, into a loathsome divorce, to be followed either by my arrest, in case I followed your advice and resisted the ‘tainted evidence”, or by my eternal exile, in case I followed your other advice and got ‘safe abroad’: in both cases being condemned to sheer pauperism, as the marriage settlement being broken ipso facto on my divorce, my prospective interest in it after my wife’s death should I survive her would be absolutely nil. An order of the Court would have been obtained at once.
This, my dear More, is what you were preparing for me. If after a week you care to come to Havre and give me some explanation, I shall be delighted to see you. I hope Robbie will come with you.
5 o’clock
I have seen Hansell and signed the deed of separation. I do not really like going to Stewart Headlam’s, as I don’t care much about it. I know him but slightly, and a hotel would be better.
I have written to Reggie Turner to ask him to go and stay at a hotel so that I could go to his rooms and change: I mean a quiet hotel somewhere near Euston Road. Of course if it is impossible, it is impossible. But if Reggie engages rooms I can go there and change and breakfast. Only Reggie will have to sleep at the hotel.
Of course I really will be glad to see you the morning of my release, and I know you have taken a great deal of trouble about it. So come either to the prison with Reggie or to his rooms if that is more convenient. But we must not talk about business.
Receiving no telegram about Leverson is terrible. I am utterly upset.
I think you will agree with me that I have fully carried out your advice about Leverson and been most patient with him. It seems the wrong way to treat him. I feel sure that a man of that kind should be strongly dealt with. Your method at any rate has been a terrible failure.
I hear now that Dieppe has been fixed on. I am so well known there that I dislike it, and the air is relaxing, but I suppose one can move on. I am told Robbie is to be there. Very well, but you yourself would find little pleasure in my society. I feel so bitterly about so many things, that I forget many other acts of simple kindness that did me good not harm. I admit you have had endless trouble, but then you must remember I asked you through Robbie to leave my wife and myself alone: we were on terms of affection, and I was grateful to her. The rushing in to try to get more money for me was wrong. It has resulted in less money, and in a separation and the deprivation of my children, the last quite appalling.
Your intentions were always good and kind: your heart was always ready to vibrate in true sympathy: but your judgment was wrong: and the worse the results the worse your advice got. It was a miracle I escaped the divorce, the exile, the entire abandonment.
However, for your real heart-actions, your unwearying good nature, and desire to help me, I thank you very deeply. In a week I hope to be in a sweeter mood and to have lost some of my present bitterness. Then let us meet and talk about literature, in which your instinct is always right, your judgment castigated and serene, your sympathies intellectual. I hope you will hand all money to Reggie. As soon as Leverson has paid let me know. I of course cannot leave England without the money, and I don’t want to have to go to his house for it. Ever yours
OSCAR