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.2
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 Marshall3 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 Gardens4 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 4.5 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.6 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’;7 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.8
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’,9 to borrow a phrase from the poet whom you and I once thought of rescuing from the Philistine.10 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 March 1896,11 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.12
Again, Swinburne says to Marie Stuart in one of his poems,
But surely you were something better
Than innocent!13
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 haereditas14 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 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.15 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
6 April [1897]
HM Prison, Reading
My dear Robbie,
I am going to delay for a short time my letter to Alfred Douglas for certain reasons, some of which, though not all, are suggested in a letter I am sending to More Adey at the same time as this.16
I write to you now, partly for the pleasure of writing to you and getting from you in return one of your delightful literary letters, and partly because I have to blame you, and I cannot bear the idea of doing that indirectly, or in a letter addressed to another.
It is now more than a year – a year and one month to be exact – since I wrote to you telling you that I wished my friends to withdraw completely all opposition to my wife buying my life-interest in my marriage-settlement, as I did not desire anything to be done that could make an estrangement between my wife and myself. My wife had come all the way from Genoa to break to me personally the news of my dear mother’s death. She had been very sympathetic and sweet to me. Her offer of a third of the interest in case of her death was ample and right.
I wrote strongly to you, because I trusted that you would see that to make an estrangement between my wife and myself over a paltry money question would be wrong, unseemly, and unjust to both of us: you knew my wife better than any of my friends did. You were fond of her, and she was excessively fond of you. I felt sure I could rely on you to see that my wishes and hers were carried out. I was mistaken. Seven months later – on October 22nd – I found out through a violent and insulting letter from her lawyer, enraged at what seemed like double-dealing on my part, that my wishes had not been regarded.
I was at once thrust into a false position. Just as Alfred Douglas forced me into a false position with his father, and made me, with my life behind me, take action against the entire forces of Society, the Bar, and the Government, so my friends forced me, an isolated and pauper prisoner in an English gaol, to fight Sir George Lewis and Mr Hargrove. I was told again and again how important it was that I should not ‘surrender’ any of my ‘rights’ over my children. The phrase occurs in three letters now lying before me. As if I had any rights! I had none. The formal application to a Judge in Chambers by a solicitor’s clerk deprived me of Cyril and Vyvyan in less than ten minutes. It was a mere matter of form.
I wrote to Mr Holman to ask him if a divorce would not break my marriage-settlement. I felt sure it would. I received no answer. But the purchase of a small shilling book – ninepence for cash – entitled Every Man his own Lawyer would have informed my friends that when a divorce is granted a settlement is annulled unless it is specified to the contrary.
I also let my friends know that my only chance of resisting a divorce was the fact of condonation by my wife. I now hear that condonation counts as nothing where more than one offence may be alleged. My solicitor told me it was a commonplace in law, the sort of thing an office-boy would know. More Adey gravely writes to tell me that details and dates of each separate offence will have to be given, so that I may prepare my defence!
In one of his poems to Marie Stuart, Swinburne says to his heroine
But surely you were something better
Than innocent!17
and so, though the particular offence required by the law did not find part amongst my perversities of passion, still perversities there were, or else why am I here? It may be a terrible shock to my friends to think that I had abnormal passions, and perverse desires, but if they read history they will find I am not the first artist so doomed, any more than I shall be the last. To talk of my defending the case against Sir George Lewis is childish. How can I expect to be believed on a mere detail? What limit is there to the amount of witnesses he can produce? None. He and Queensberry can sweep Piccadilly for them. It makes me sick with rage when I am told about the opportunities I shall have of defending the case. What common sense have my friends got to write such twaddle to me?
However, we must accept facts as they are. My wife is now going for a divorce. She has been forced to do so. The purchase of my life-interest against her wishes and interests has left her no option. From the first she was advised by Sir George Lewis to divorce me. She resisted out of affection for me. Now she has been forced to do so. And I feel that the only thing now for me to do is to make my wife a present of my life-interest, and to submit to the divorce. It is bitter to me, but I think it is the right thing for me to do, and it would I think be more seemly and generous of me to make my full submission and leave her perfectly free. I don’t think that even a British Government with Labouchère, Stead,18 and the Social Purity League to back them would re-arrest me and send me to prison again. It would be a ridiculous thing to do. I must live in England, if I am to be a dramatist again, so I must face it if they do. But it would be a bestial infamy to again send me to a prison for offences that in all civilised countries are questions of pathology and medical treatment if their cure is desired.
You see, Robbie, how wrong you were to pretend to me that you were carrying out my wishes and my wife’s, when really you were doing the exact opposite. We all make the mistake of thinking life is complex. It is not. It is we who are complex, and people think that clever, smart, round-about schemes are the best. They are the worst. Life is quite simple. One should do the straightforward thing. Complex people waste half their strength in trying to conceal what they do. Is it any wonder they should always come to grief?
Consider now, dear Robbie, my proposal. I think my wife, who in money-matters is most honourable and high-minded, will refund the £75 paid for my share. I have no doubt she will. But I think it should be offered from me, and that I should not accept anything in the way of income from her. I can accept what is given in love and affection to me, but I could not accept what is doled out grudgingly, or with conditions. I would sooner let my wife be quite free. She may marry again. In any case I think that if free she would allow me to see my children from time to time. That is what I want. But I must set her free first, and had better do it as a gentleman by bowing my head and accepting everything.
You must consider the whole question, as it is through you and your ill-advised action it is due: and let me know what you and others think. Of course you acted for the best. But you were wrong in your view. I may say candidly that I am gradually getting to a state of mind when I think that everything that happens is for the best. This may be philosophy, or a broken heart, or religion, or the dull apathy of despair. But, whatever its origin, the feeling is strong with me. To tie my wife to me against her will would be wrong. She has a full right to her freedom. And not to be supported by her would be a pleasure to me. It is an ignominious position to be a pensioner on her. Talk over this with More Adey. Get him to show you the letter. I have written to him. Ask your brother Aleck to give me his advice. He has excellent wisdom on things.
Now to other points.
I have never had the chance of thanking you for the books. They were most welcome. Not being allowed the magazines was a blow, but Meredith’s novel19 charmed me. What a sane artist in temper! He is quite right in his assertion of sanity as the essential in romance. Still, up to the present only the abnormal have found expression in life and literature.
Rossetti’s letters are dreadful.20 Obviously forgeries by his brother. I was interested however to see how my grand-uncle’s Melmoth and my mother’s Sidonia 21 had been two of the books that fascinated his youth. As regards the conspiracy against him in later years I believe it really existed, and that the funds for it came out of Hake’s bank. The conduct of a thrush in Cheyne Walk22 seems to me most suspicious, though William Rossetti says, ‘I could discern nothing in the thrush’s song at all out of the common.’
Stevenson letters most disappointing also.23 I see that romantic surroundings are the worst surroundings possible for a romantic writer. In Gower Street Stevenson could have written a new Trois Mousquetaires. In Samoa he wrote letters to The Times about Germans. I see also the traces of a terrible strain to lead a natural life. To chop wood with any advantage to oneself, or profit to others, one should not be able to describe the process. In point of fact the natural life is the unconscious life. Stevenson merely extended the sphere of the artificial by taking to digging. The whole dreary book has given me a lesson. If I spend my future life reading Baudelaire in a café I shall be leading a more natural life than if I take to hedger’s work or plant cacao in mud-swamps.
En Route is most over-rated.24 It is sheer journalism. It never makes one hear a note of the music it describes. The subject is delightful, but the style is of course worthless, slipshod, flaccid. It is worse French than Ohnet’s.25 Ohnet tries to be commonplace and succeeds. Huysmans tries not to be, and is …26 Hardy’s novel is pleasant, and Frederic’s27 very interesting in matter … Later on, there being hardly any novels in the prison library for the poor imprisoned fellows I live with, I think of presenting the library with about a dozen good novels: Stevenson’s (none here but The Black Arrow!), some of Thackeray’s (none here), Jane Austen (none here), and some good Dumas-père-like books, by Stanley Weyman 28 for instance, and any modern young man. You mentioned Henley had a protégé.29 Also the ‘Anthony Hope’ man.30 After Easter, you might make out a list of about fourteen, and apply to let me have them. They would please the few who do not care about Goncourt’s journal. Don’t forget. I would pay myself for them.
I have a horror myself of going out into a world without a single book of my own. I wonder would there be any of my friends who would give me a few books, such as Cosmo Lennox, Reggie Turner, Gilbert Burgess, Max,31 and the like? You know the sort of books I want: Flaubert, Stevenson, Baudelaire, Maeterlinck, Dumas père, Keats, Marlowe, Chatterton, Coleridge, Anatole France, Gautier, Dante and all Dante literature; Goethe and ditto: and so on. I would feel it a great compliment to have books waiting for me, and perhaps there may be some friends who would like to be kind to me. One is really very grateful, though I fear I often seem not to be. But then remember I have had incessant worries besides prison-life.
In answer to this you can send me a long letter all about plays and books. Your handwriting, in your last, was so dreadful that it looked as if you were writing a three-volume novel on the terrible spread of communistic ideas among the rich, or in some other way wasting a youth that always has been, and always will remain, quite full of promise. If I wrong you in ascribing it to such a cause you must make allowances for the morbidity produced by long imprisonment. But do write clearly. Otherwise it looks as if you had nothing to conceal.
There is much that is horrid, I suppose, in this letter. But I had to blame you to yourself, not to others. Read my letter to More. F. Harris comes to see me on Saturday, I hope. Remember me to Arthur Clifton and his wife, who, I find, is so like Rossetti’s wife – the same lovely hair – but of course a sweeter nature, though Miss Siddal is fascinating, and her poem A1.32 Ever yours
Oscar
PS The names of the mystical books in En Route fascinate me. Try and get some of them for me when I go out. Also, try and get me a good life of St Francis of Assisi.
Flaubert: [La] Tentation [de Saint Antoine].
Trois Contes.
Salammbô.
Mérimée: Novels.
Anatole France: Thaïs [1890] and his latest works. Pierre Louÿs: Novel [Aphrodite, 1896].
La Jeunesse: Novel [L’Imitation de Notre-Maître Napoléon, 1897].
Maeterlinck: Complete.
Baudelaire: [Les] Fleurs du Mal.
Strindberg: Last plays.
Ibsen: Translation ([Little] Eyolf. [John Gabriel] Borkman). Montaigne.
Gautier: Émaux et Camées.
French Bible (University Press).
French–English Dictionary.
Some mystical books.
[Gilbert] Murray: [History of Ancient] Greek Literature [1897].
Quarterly Review for April.
[D. G.] Hogarth on Alexander the Great (Murray) [Philip and Alexander of Macedon, 1897].
Quo Vadis? (Dent) (Translation of novel by Sienkiewicz) [1896].
Epic and Romance [by W. P. Ker, 1897].
St William of Norwich [: Life and Miracles by Thomas of Monmouth. Now first edited from unique MS. by Augustus Jessopp and M.R. James, 1896].
Ancient Ideals [by H. O. Taylor, 1896].
Wagner’s Letters to Roeckel (Arrowsmith) [1887].
[J. A.] Symonds: Italian By-ways [1883].
[Franz] Hettinger on Dante. Translated by Father [H. S.] Bowden34 (Burns & Oates) [1896].
Mrs Mark Pattison: Renaissance [of Art] in France [1879].
Dom [Francis Aidan] Gasquet: Historical Essays [The Old English Bible and Other Essays, 1897].
Yeats: The Secret Rose [1897].
A. E. W. Mason: The Philanderers (Macmillan) [1897]. Also his previous novel [The Courtship of Morrice Buckler, 1896].
A Bible.
Flinders Petrie on Egypt [Egyptian Decorative Art, 1895]. Any good book on Ancient Egypt.
Translation of Hafiz, and of oriental love-poetry.
Arthur Morrison: article in Nineteenth Century on Prisons and Sir Edmund Du Cane’s reply. Also Arthur Morrison’s Criminology series.35
Spanish–French Conversation Book.
Calderon: [El] Mágico Prodigioso (translated).
[La] Devoción de la Cruz (translated).
Spanish Grammar.
Silver brushes – my brother. Bag also.
White ties, made up.
English manuscript books. Pencils. Foolscap paper.
Despatch-box! Where is it? Very Important.
Guide-Book to the Morbihan, Finisterre district. Quimper, Vannes.
Guide-Book to Pyrenees.
See is there near Boulogne any small place to go to. Not more than an hour and a half.
Reviews of Salomé.
Salomé itself.
Humphreys.36
7 April 1897
[HM Prison] Reading
My dear More,
I am sending a letter of great importance to Robbie which he will show you. It deals primarily with my divorce-suit. I have been thrust into a very false position by my friends, and have to suffer for it. I see (for reasons stated at greater length to Robbie) nothing now but to submit, and to return beforehand my life-interest, as a sort of parting-gift, so as not to leave my exit from the marriage-tie too ignominious and unworthy.
The primary fault was Robbie’s in not carrying out my own wishes and my wife’s, conveyed to him in my letter of March 1896. Also, there has been a complete misapprehension of my wife’s character, which is strong and simple, and of Mr Hargrove’s. The latter has been regarded as a solicitor of the Humphreys type, one who would bluster, and threaten, and lie. He really is a man of the highest character and position and whatever he said he would do he will carry out. To put me up to fight him and Sir George Lewis was childish.
As for buying the life-interest, Mr Hargrove would raise £5000 tomorrow for my wife if she wanted it. He was the family solicitor of her grandfather, and owes much of his own wealth – which is very considerable – to Mr Horatio Lloyd.37 Everything has been wrong. So wrong indeed have things been that it looks to me as if Alfred Douglas had been directing the operations, desirous to ‘score off’ Mr Hargrove, or my wife, or both. His sole idea seems to be to ‘score off’ people by sacrificing me. Please let me know, am I right in discerning some of his sinister small nature in the whole transaction?
At any rate, when you have read my letter to Robbie, will you seriously consider the position into which I have been led, and don’t, I beg you, write to me again about defending the case. If a man gets drunk, whether he does so on white wine or red matters little, and if a man has perversities of passion there is no use his denying particular details in a civil court, whatever he may do in a criminal one: and just as there are several counts in my indictment for things done by someone else, so I will be divorced I have no doubt for things I have never done, and I dare say with people I have never seen. I have to submit. I see nothing else for it.
It, of course, breaks entirely every link with my children. There was indeed no link left but my wife’s kindness to me. After the divorce, I suppose I shall never see them. And when I think it is all over a paltry £150 or £200 a year I really feel ashamed. My friends seem not to have realised that what I wanted was access to my children, and their affection and my wife’s. I shall await your letter with interest.
With regard to your letter about Alfred Douglas, I see of course that I 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,38 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,39 the picture of A.D. I commissioned Will Rothenstein to do, and Shannon’s pastel of the Moon.40 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
[Circa April 1897]
[HM Prison, Reading]
My dear friend,
What have I to write about except that if you had been an officer in Reading Prison a year ago my life would have been much happier. Everyone tells me I am looking better – and happier.
That is because I have a good friend who gives me the Chronicle, and promises me ginger biscuits!41
O. W.
You must get me his address some day – he is such a good fellow.42 Of course I would not for worlds get such a friend as you are into any danger. I quite understand your feelings.
The Chronicle is capital today. You must get A.3.2 to come out and clean on Saturday morning and I will give him my note then myself.
I hope to write about prison life and to try and change it for others, but it is too terrible and ugly to make a work of art of. I have suffered too much in it to write plays about it.
So sorry you have no key. Would like a long talk with you. Any more news?
22 April 1897
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 the petitioner was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment on the 20th May, 1895,44 and that his term of imprisonment will expire on the 19th of next May, four weeks from the date of this petition.
That the petitioner is extremely anxious to avoid the notoriety and annoyance of newspaper interviews and descriptions on the occasion of his release, the date of which is of course well known. Many English, French and American papers have already announced their intention of attending the ceremony of his release, for the purpose of seeking and publishing interviews with him on the question of the treatment he has been subjected to in prison, the real circumstances that led to his original trial, and the like. The petitioner is anxious to avoid any intrusion of the kind threatened, as he considers that such interviews at such a moment would be from every point of view unseemly. He desires to go abroad quietly without attracting public attention, and his petition is that he may be released on the Saturday preceding the 19th May – Saturday the 15th in fact – so that he may go abroad unobserved and incognito.
The petitioner would beg to be allowed to mention that he was for three weeks confined in Holloway Prison before his first trial: that he was then released on bail, and surrendered to his bail to stand his trial a second time: the second trial resulting in his conviction. The petitioner will accordingly have had more than two years’ detention should he be released on the 15th May as his prayer is.
The petitioner, however, is most anxious that he should not under any circumstances be transferred to another prison from the one in which he is at present confined. The ordeal he underwent in being brought in convict dress and handcuffed by a mid-day train from Clapham Junction to Reading was so utterly distressing, from the mental no less than the emotional point of view, that he feels quite unable to undergo any similar exhibition to public gaze, and he feels it his duty to say that he was assured by the former Governor of Reading Prison that he would not under any circumstances be again submitted to so terrible an experience.
Should the petitioner’s request to be released on the 15th May be granted, Mr Frank Harris, the Editor of the Saturday Review, who has kindly invited the petitioner to go on a driving-tour in the Pyrenees with him, would at once proceed abroad with him, crossing the Channel either in a yacht, or by night, so as to avoid observation and annoyance.
And your petitioner will ever pray etc.
Oscar Wilde
[17 May 1897]
[HM Prison, Reading]
Please find out for me the name of A.2.11.45 Also: the names of the children who are in for the rabbits, and the amount of the fine. Can I pay this, and get them out? If so I will get them out tomorrow. Please, dear friend, do this for me. I must get them out. Think what a thing for me it would be to be able to help three little children. I would be delighted beyond words. If I can do this by paying the fine, tell the children that they are to be released tomorrow by a friend, and ask them to be happy, and not to tell anyone.
[Postmark 17 May 1897]
HM Prison, Reading
My dear Reggie,
I write to you by kind permission of the Governor to tell you that I am to be transferred to Pentonville Prison tomorrow evening and shall be released from there. I am bound to say that the transference is to be executed under humane conditions as regards dress and not being handcuffed. Otherwise I confess I would have refused such an ordeal.
I want you, dear Reggie, to come to Pentonville Prison on Wednesday morning, to have a carriage waiting for me and to take me to some hotel in the vicinity, or wherever you think there is a quiet place. At the hotel I want to find all my clothes, your dressing-bag to which I look forward with joy and gratitude, a room to dress in, and a sitting-room. In fact, dear Reggie, you had better go yourself to an hotel tomorrow evening, and sleep there. I can dress in your room, and breakfast in a sitting-room adjoining. I dare say a hansom would do, but a little brougham with blinds might be best: you must decide. I would like coffee for breakfast, as I have been living on cocoa, and don’t think I could taste tea.
The being in London, the place I wished to avoid, is terrible: but we learn humility in prison, and I have consented to go. I dare say it is best.
I suppose I had better go to Southampton on Wednesday, by some station, if possible not a big London one: I mean Vauxhall better than Waterloo etc. So get a carriage for the drive through London. There are of course only two ways by which I can travel: either third-class, which I need hardly say, dear Reggie, I don’t mind a scrap: or first-class in a reserved carriage: it is unnecessary to explain why: you will see that while I can sit at ease with the poor, I could not with the rich: for me to enter a first-class carriage containing other people would be dreadful: they would not like it, and I would know they would not. That would distress me. So, if you can reserve a first-class carriage to Southampton, do so.
I hope that Leverson will surrender my money, and that I will have it. It is now 12.30, and he apparently has not done so. It is my own money, Reggie! He was to be the trustee of it! Can you conceive such cruelty and fraud as to try to steal it from me? I am learning bitter lessons. If however he can be got to disgorge this money he has apparently embezzled, engage a first-class carriage in any name you choose – Mr Melmoth46 is my name: so let it be that. If the train stops at Vauxhall well and good: if not, I must drive to Waterloo and simply walk into the carriage and draw down the blinds.
I am told that there is an anxiety I should cross over by the day-boat to Havre: certainly: I prefer it. I did not know there was one. Engage by telegram a private cabin for Mr Melmoth: at Havre no doubt I can stay the night.
I am so distressed by the conduct of More Adey towards me in spending without my knowledge and consent the £150 he was given for my use in a hideous litigation that nearly ended in my being divorced and so left penniless either to live in exile or to be rearrested, that I could not travel with him: I will see him if he wishes at whatever hotel I go to. Robbie I will expect at Havre in two or three days. You are the only friend I have, Reggie, with whom I would like to go away. I will be gentle to you because I am grateful to you. With the others I know I shall be bitter. They have put an adder into my heart and an asp under my tongue.
If you will consent to come away with me you will be doing a service beyond words to a very heart-broken man. If you can do all this
(1) get my things,
(2) fix on a hotel, engage a carriage, have my rooms ready,
(3) meet me at Pentonville,
(4) come away with me to Havre, and stay a week with me, well, you will be the best of dear boys. Nobody will ever shoot a tongue of scorn at you for having been kind to me. If they did, I know you would not care.
I have written to More Adey to acquaint him with the change of plan, and to ask him to hand over to you whatever money Leverson parts with in toto: even if it is only £175, that is something. Spare no expense, dear Reggie: I want to get away comfortably and quietly: and we will take with us £100. The rest keep for me.
If you consent to do this, kindly wire to the Governor here: ‘Consent Reginald Turner.’ If Leverson has parted with my money, please add ‘money received’: if he has not, well, I fear I must stay in London. I may receive £37 from my lawyer, from my wife, who has sweetly thought of its being of use to me. But I can’t go abroad for three months on £37. More Adey wrote to me on Saturday: ‘Do not worry yourself, dear Oscar, about money affairs. It is all right. You will have £37 on the day of your release.’ Can you conceive a man being so tactless, so dull of wit, so unimaginative! It drives me frantic.
Send me a letter under cover to the Governor of Pentonville Prison: in this state what you have done. Ask him in a personal letter to hand it to me on my arrival. Try and find a hotel with a good bathroom close to bedroom: this most essential. Ever yours
Oscar
PS Have just seen my solicitor. I do not like the idea of going to Stewart Headlam’s 47 at all. I don’t know him very well, and I am afraid of strangers. Please will you consider the possibility of a hotel: some quiet place – Euston Road or anywhere like that. I would much prefer it. Thank Stewart Headlam from me, but tell him I am very nervous and ill and upset. If you really wish it I will go to his house: but I would sooner not. Any quiet hotel would be better for me. I am ready to go to Southampton with you – or Dieppe, if that is preferred. But the special carriage must be got, and special cabin. Come to Pentonville at 6.30 with a closed brougham: that will be the hour: drive in to the yard.
27 May [1897]
[Dieppe]
Sir,
I learn with great regret, through the columns of your paper, that the warder Martin, of Reading Prison, has been dismissed by the Prison Commissioners for having given some sweet biscuits to a little hungry child. I saw the three children myself on the Monday preceding my release. They had just been convicted, and were standing in a row in the central hall in their prison dress, carrying their sheets under their arms previous to their being sent to the cells allotted to them. I happened to be passing along one of the galleries on my way to the reception room, where I was to have an interview with a friend. They were quite small children, the youngest – the one to whom the warder gave the biscuits – being a tiny little chap, for whom they had evidently been unable to find clothes small enough to fit. I had, of course, seen many children in prison during the two years during which I was myself confined. Wandsworth Prison especially contained always a large number of children. But the little child I saw on the afternoon of Monday the 17th, at Reading, was tinier than any one of them. I need not say how utterly distressed I was to see these children at Reading, for I knew the treatment in store for them. The cruelty that is practised by day and night on children in English prisons is incredible, except to those that have witnessed it and are aware of the brutality of the system.
People nowadays do not understand what cruelty is. They regard it as a sort of terrible mediaeval passion, and connect it with the race of men like Eccelino da Romano,49 and others, to whom the deliberate infliction of pain gave a real madness of pleasure. But men of the stamp of Eccelino are merely abnormal types of perverted individualism. Ordinary cruelty is simply stupidity. It is the entire want of imagination. It is the result in our days of stereotyped systems of hard-and-fast rules, and of stupidity. Wherever there is centralisation there is stupidity. What is inhuman in modern life is officialism. Authority is as destructive to those who exercise it as it is to those on whom it is exercised. It is the Prison Board, and the system that it carries out, that is the primary source of the cruelty that is exercised on a child in prison. The people who uphold the system have excellent intentions. Those who carry it out are humane in intention also. Responsibility is shifted on to the disciplinary regulations. It is supposed that because a thing is the rule it is right.
The present treatment of children is terrible, primarily from people not understanding the peculiar psychology of a child’s nature. A child can understand a punishment inflicted by an individual, such as a parent or guardian, and bear it with a certain amount of acquiescence. What it cannot understand is a punishment inflicted by society. It cannot realise what society is. With grown people it is, of course, the reverse. Those of us who are either in prison or have been sent there, can understand, and do understand, what that collective force called society means, and whatever we may think of its methods or claims, we can force ourselves to accept it. Punishment inflicted on us by an individual, on the other hand, is a thing that no grown person endures, or is expected to endure.
The child consequently, being taken away from its parents by people whom it has never seen, and of whom it knows nothing, and finding itself in a lonely and unfamiliar cell, waited on by strange faces, and ordered about and punished by the representatives of a system that it cannot understand, becomes an immediate prey to the first and most prominent emotion produced by modern prison life – the emotion of terror. The terror of a child in prison is quite limitless. I remember once in Reading, as I was going out to exercise, seeing in the dimly lit cell right opposite my own a small boy. Two warders – not unkindly men – were talking to him, with some sternness apparently, or perhaps giving him some useful advice about his conduct. One was in the cell with him, the other was standing outside. The child’s face was like a white wedge of sheer terror. There was in his eyes the terror of a hunted animal. The next morning I heard him at breakfast-time crying, and calling to be let out. His cry was for his parents. From time to time I could hear the deep voice of the warder on duty telling him to keep quiet. Yet he was not even convicted of whatever little offence he had been charged with. He was simply on remand. That I knew by his wearing his own clothes, which seemed neat enough. He was, however, wearing prison socks and shoes. This showed that he was a very poor boy, whose own shoes, if he had any, were in a bad state. Justices and magistrates, an entirely ignorant class as a rule, often remand children for a week, and then perhaps remit whatever sentence they are entitled to pass. They call this ‘not sending a child to prison’. It is, of course, a stupid view on their part. To a little child, whether he is in prison on remand or after conviction is not a subtlety of social position he can comprehend. To him the horrible thing is to be there at all. In the eyes of humanity it should be a horrible thing for him to be there at all.
This terror that seizes and dominates the child, as it seizes the grown man also, is of course intensified beyond power of expression by the solitary cellular system of our prisons. Every child is confined to its cell for twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four. This is the appalling thing. To shut up a child in a dimly lit cell, for twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four, is an example of the cruelty of stupidity. If an individual, parent or guardian, did this to a child, he would be severely punished. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children would take the matter up at once. There would be on all hands the utmost detestation of whomsoever had been guilty of such cruelty. A heavy sentence would, undoubtedly, follow conviction. But our own actual society does worse itself, and to the child to be so treated by a strange abstract force, of whose claims it has no cognisance, is much worse than it would be to receive the same treatment from its father or mother, or someone it knew. The inhuman treatment of a child is always inhuman, by whomsoever it is inflicted. But inhuman treatment by society is to the child the more terrible because there is no appeal. A parent or guardian can be moved, and let out a child from the dark lonely room in which it is confined. But a warder cannot. Most warders are very fond of children. But the system prohibits them from rendering the child any assistance. Should they do so, as Warder Martin did, they are dismissed.
The second thing from which a child suffers in prison is hunger. The food that is given to it consists of a piece of usually badly-baked prison bread and a tin of water for breakfast at half-past seven. At twelve o’clock it gets dinner, composed of a tin of coarse Indian meal stirabout, and at half-past five it gets a piece of dry bread and a tin of water for its supper. This diet in the case of a strong grown man is always productive of illness of some kind, chiefly, of course, diarrhoea, with its attendant weakness. In fact in a big prison astringent medicines are served out regularly by the warders as a matter of course. In the case of a child, the child is, as a rule, incapable of eating the food at all. Anyone who knows anything about children knows how easily a child’s digestion is upset by a fit of crying, or trouble and mental distress of any kind. A child who has been crying all day long, and perhaps half the night, in a lonely dimly-lit cell, and is preyed upon by terror, simply cannot eat food of this coarse, horrible kind. In the case of the little child to whom Warder Martin gave the biscuits, the child was crying with hunger on Tuesday morning, and utterly unable to eat the bread and water served to it for its breakfast. Martin went out after the breakfasts had been served, and bought the few sweet biscuits for the child rather than see it starving. It was a beautiful action on his part, and was so recognised by the child, who, utterly unconscious of the regulation of the Prison Board, told one of the senior warders how kind this junior warder had been to him. The result was, of course, a report and a dismissal.
I know Martin extremely well, and I was under his charge for the last seven weeks of my imprisonment. On his appointment at Reading he had charge of Gallery C, in which I was confined, so I saw him constantly. I was struck by the singular kindness and humanity of the way in which he spoke to me and to the other prisoners. Kind words are much in prison, and a pleasant ‘Good-morning’ or ‘Good-evening’ will make one as happy as one can be in prison. He was always gentle and considerate. I happen to know another case in which he showed great kindness to one of the prisoners, and I have no hesitation in mentioning it. One of the most horrible things in prison is the badness of the sanitary arrangements. No prisoner is allowed under any circumstances to leave his cell after half-past five p.m. If, consequently, he is suffering from diarrhoea, he has to use his cell as a latrine, and pass the night in a most fetid and unwholesome atmosphere. Some days before my release Martin was going the rounds at half-past seven with one of the senior warders for the purpose of collecting the oakum and tools of the prisoners. A man just convicted, and suffering from violent diarrhoea in consequence of the food, as is always the case, asked the senior warder to allow him to empty the slops in his cell on account of the horrible odour of the cell and the possibility of illness again in the night. The senior warder refused absolutely; it was against the rules. The man had to pass the night in this dreadful condition. Martin, however, rather than see this wretched man in such a loathsome predicament, said he would empty the man’s slops himself, and did so. A warder emptying a prisoner’s slops is, of course, against the rules, but Martin did this act of kindness to the man out of the simple humanity of his nature, and the man was naturally most grateful.
As regards the children, a great deal has been talked and written lately about the contaminating influence of prison on young children. What is said is quite true. A child is utterly contaminated by prison life. But the contaminating influence is not that of the prisoners. It is that of the whole prison system – of the governor, the chaplain, the warders, the lonely cell, the isolation, the revolting food, the rules of the Prison Commissioners, the mode of discipline, as it is termed, of the life. Every care is taken to isolate a child from the sight even of all prisoners over sixteen years of age. Children sit behind a curtain in chapel, and are sent to take exercise in small sunless yards – sometimes a stone-yard, sometimes a yard at the back of the mills – rather than that they should see the elder prisoners at exercise. But the only really humanising influence in prison is the influence of the prisoners. Their cheerfulness under terrible circumstances, their sympathy for each other, their humility, their gentleness, their pleasant smiles of greeting when they meet each other, their complete acquiescence in their punishments, are all quite wonderful, and I myself learned many sound lessons from them. I am not proposing that the children should not sit behind a curtain in chapel, or that they should take exercise in a corner of the common yard. I am merely pointing out that the bad influence on children is not, and could never be, that of the prisoners, but is, and will always remain, that of the prison system itself. There is not a single man in Reading Gaol that would not gladly have done the three children’s punishment for them. When I saw them last it was on the Tuesday following their conviction. I was taking exercise at half-past eleven with about twelve other men, as the three children passed near us, in charge of a warder, from the damp, dreary stone-yard in which they had been at their exercise. I saw the greatest pity and sympathy in the eyes of my companions as they looked at them. Prisoners are, as a class, extremely kind and sympathetic to each other. Suffering and the community of suffering makes people kind, and day after day as I tramped the yard I used to feel with pleasure and comfort what Carlyle calls somewhere ‘the silent rhythmic charm of human companionship’.50 In this, as in all other things, philanthropists and people of that kind are astray. It is not the prisoners who need reformation. It is the prisons.
Of course no child under fourteen years of age should be sent to prison at all. It is an absurdity, and, like many absurdities, of absolutely tragic results. If, however, they are to be sent to prison, during the daytime they should be in a workshop or schoolroom with a warder. At night they should sleep in a dormitory, with a night-warder to look after them. They should be allowed exercise for at least three hours a day. The dark, badly ventilated, ill-smelling prison cells are dreadful for a child, dreadful indeed for anyone. One is always breathing bad air in prison. The food given to children should consist of tea and bread-and-butter and soup. Prison soup is very good and wholesome. A resolution of the House of Commons could settle the treatment of children in half an hour. I hope you will use your influence to have this done. The way that children are treated at present is really an outrage on humanity and common sense. It comes from stupidity.
Let me draw attention now to another terrible thing that goes on in English prisons, indeed in prisons all over the world where the system of silence and cellular confinement is practised. I refer to the large number of men who become insane or weak-minded in prison. In convict prisons this is, of course, quite common; but in ordinary gaols also, such as that I was confined in, it is to be found.
About three months ago I noticed amongst the prisoners who took exercise with me a young man who seemed to me to be silly or half-witted. Every prison, of course, has its half-witted clients, who return again and again, and may be said to live in the prison. But this young man struck me as being more than usually half-witted on account of his silly grin and idiotic laughter to himself, and the peculiar restlessness of his eternally twitching hands. He was noticed by all the other prisoners on account of the strangeness of his conduct. From time to time he did not appear at exercise, which showed me that he was being punished by confinement to his cell. Finally, I discovered that he was under observation, and being watched night and day by warders. When he did appear at exercise he always seemed hysterical, and used to walk round crying or laughing. At chapel he had to sit right under the observation of two warders, who carefully watched him all the time. Sometimes he would bury his head in his hands, an offence against the chapel regulations, and his head would be immediately struck by a warder so that he should keep his eyes fixed permanently in the direction of the Communion-table. Sometimes he would cry – not making any disturbance – but with tears streaming down his face and an hysterical throbbing in the throat. Sometimes he would grin idiot-like to himself and make faces. He was on more than one occasion sent out of chapel to his cell, and of course he was continually punished. As the bench on which I used to sit in chapel was directly behind the bench at the end of which this unfortunate man was placed I had full opportunity of observing him. I also saw him, of course, at exercise continually, and I saw that he was becoming insane, and was being treated as if he was shamming.
On Saturday week last I was in my cell at about one o’clock occupied in cleaning and polishing the tins I had been using for dinner. Suddenly I was startled by the prison silence being broken by the most horrible and revolting shrieks, or rather howls, for at first I thought some animal like a bull or a cow was being unskilfully slaughtered outside the prison walls. I soon realised, however, that the howls proceeded from the basement of the prison, and I knew that some wretched man was being flogged. I need not say how hideous and terrible it was for me, and I began to wonder who it was who was being punished in this revolting manner. Suddenly it dawned upon me that they might be flogging this unfortunate lunatic. My feelings on the subject need not be chronicled; they have nothing to do with the question.
The next day, Sunday 16th, I saw the poor fellow at exercise, his weak, ugly, wretched face bloated by tears and hysteria almost beyond recognition. He walked in the centre ring along with the old men, the beggars, and the lame people, so that I was able to observe him the whole time. It was my last Sunday in prison, a perfectly lovely day, the finest day we had had the whole year, and there, in the beautiful sunlight, walked this poor creature – made once in the image of God – grinning like an ape, and making with his hands the most fantastic gestures, as though he was playing in the air on some invisible stringed instrument, or arranging and dealing counters in some curious game. All the while these hysterical tears, without which none of us ever saw him, were making soiled runnels on his white swollen face. The hideous and deliberate grace of his gestures made him like an antic. He was a living grotesque. The other prisoners all watched him, and not one of them smiled. Everybody knew what had happened to him, and that he was being driven insane – was insane already. After half an hour he was ordered in by the warder, and I suppose punished. At least he was not at exercise on Monday, though I think I caught sight of him at the corner of the stone-yard, walking in charge of a warder.
On the Tuesday – my last day in prison – I saw him at exercise. He was worse than before, and again was sent in. Since then I know nothing of him, but I found out from one of the prisoners who walked with me at exercise that he had had twenty-four lashes in the cookhouse on Saturday afternoon, by order of the visiting justices on the report of the doctor. The howls that had horrified us all were his.
This man is undoubtedly becoming insane. Prison doctors have no knowledge of mental disease of any kind. They are as a class ignorant men. The pathology of the mind is unknown to them. When a man grows insane, they treat him as shamming. They have him punished again and again. Naturally the man becomes worse. When ordinary punishments are exhausted, the doctor reports the case to the justices. The result is flogging. Of course the flogging is not done with a cat-of-nine-tails. It is what is called birching. The instrument is a rod; but the result on the wretched half-witted man may be imagined.
His number is, or was, A.2.11. I also managed to find out his name. It is Prince. Something should be done at once for him. He is a soldier, and his sentence is one of court-martial. The term is six months. Three have yet to run. May I ask you to use your influence to have this case examined into, and to see that the lunatic prisoner is properly treated?51
No report of the Medical Commissioners is of any avail. It is not to be trusted. The medical inspectors do not seem to understand the difference between idiocy and lunacy – between the entire absence of a function or organ and the diseases of a function or organ. This man A.2.11 will, I have no doubt, be able to tell his name, the nature of his offence, the day of the month, the date of the beginning and expiration of his sentence, and answer any ordinary simple question; but that his mind is diseased admits of no doubt. At present it is a horrible duel between himself and the doctor. The doctor is fighting for a theory. The man is fighting for his life. I am anxious that the man should win. But let the whole case be examined into by experts who understand brain-disease, and by people of humane feelings who have still some common sense and some pity. There is no reason that the sentimentalist should be asked to interfere. He always does harm.
The case is a special instance of the cruelty inseparable from a stupid system, for the present Governor of Reading is a man of gentle and humane character, greatly liked and respected by all the prisoners. He was appointed in July last, and though he cannot alter the rules of the prison system he has altered the spirit in which they used to be carried out under his predecessor. He is very popular with the prisoners and with the warders. Indeed he has quite altered the whole tone of the prison life. Upon the other hand, the system is of course beyond his reach so far as altering its rules is concerned. I have no doubt that he sees daily much of what he knows to be unjust, stupid, and cruel. But his hands are tied. Of course I have no knowledge of his real views of the case of A.2.11, nor, indeed, of his views on our present system. I merely judge him by the complete change he brought about in Reading Prison. Under his predecessor the system was carried out with the greatest harshness and stupidity.
I remain, sir, your obedient servant
Oscar Wilde
[Circa 28 May 1897]
[Berneval-sur-Mer]
My dear Friend,
I send you a line to show you that I haven’t forgotten you. We were old friends in gallery C.3, were we not? I hope you are getting on well and in employment.
Don’t, like a good little chap, get into trouble again. You would get a terrible sentence. I send you £2 just for luck. I am quite poor myself now, but I know you will accept it just as a remembrance. There is also 10/– which I wish you would give to a little dark-eyed chap who had a month in, I think, C.4.14 – he was in from February 6th to March 6th – a little chap from Wantage, I think, and a jolly little fellow. We were great friends. If you know him give it to him from C.3.3.
I am in France by the sea, and I suppose I am getting happy again. I hope so. It was a bad time for me, but there were many good fellows in Reading. Send me a line c/o my solicitors to my own name. Your friend
C.3.3
[28 May 1897]
Hôtel de la Plage, Berneval-sur-Mer
Dear Major Nelson,
I had of course intended to write to you as soon as I had safely reached French soil, to express, however inadequately, my real feelings of what you must let me term, not merely sincere, but affectionate gratitude to you for your kindness and gentleness to me in prison, and for the real care that you took of me at the end, when I was mentally upset and in a state of very terrible nervous excitement. You must not mind my using the word ‘gratitude’. I used to think gratitude a burden to carry. Now I know that it is something that makes the heart lighter. The ungrateful man is one who walks slowly with feet and heart of lead. But when one knows the strange joy of gratitude to God and man the earth becomes lovelier to one, and it is a pleasure to count up, not one’s wealth but one’s debts, not the little that one possesses, but the much that one owes.
I abstained from writing, however, because I was haunted by the memory of the little children, and the wretched half-witted lad who was flogged by the doctor’s orders. I could not have kept them out of my letter, and to have mentioned them to you might have put you in a difficult position. In your reply you might have expressed sympathy with my views – I think you would have – and then on the appearance of my public letter you might have felt as if I had, in some almost ungenerous or thoughtless way, procured your private opinion on official things, for use as corroboration.
I longed to speak to you about these things on the evening of my departure, but I felt that in my position as a prisoner it would have been wrong of me to do so, and that it would or might have put you in a difficult position afterwards, as well as at the time. I only hear of my letter being published by a telegram from Mr Ross, but I hope they have printed it in full, as I tried to express in it my appreciation and admiration of your own humane spirit and affectionate interest in all the prisoners under your charge. I did not wish people to think that any exception had been specially made for me. Such exceptional treatment as I received was by order of the Commissioners. You gave me the same kindness as you gave to everyone. Of course I made more demands, but then I think I had really more needs than others, and I lacked often their cheerful acquiescence.
Of course I side with the prisoners: I was one, and I belong to their class now. I am not a scrap ashamed of having been in prison. I am horribly ashamed of the materialism of the life that brought me there. It was quite unworthy of an artist.
Of Martin, and the subjects of my letter, I of course say nothing at all, except that the man who could change the system – if any one man can do so – is yourself. At present I write to ask you to allow me to sign myself, once at any rate in life, your sincere and grateful friend
Oscar Wilde
[29–30 May 1897]
Hôtel de la Plage, Berneval-sur-Mer
My dear Robbie,
Your letter is quite admirable, but, dear boy, don’t you see how right I was to write to the Chronicle? All good impulses are right. Had I listened to some of my friends I would never have written.
I am sending a postscript to Massingham53 – of some importance: if he publishes it, send it to me.
I have also asked him if he wishes my prison experiences, and if he would share in a syndicate. I think now, as the length of my letter is so great, that I could do three articles on Prison Life. Of course much will be psychological and introspective: and one will be on Christ as the Precursor of the Romantic Movement in Life, that lovely subject which was revealed to me when I found myself in the company of the same sort of people Christ liked, outcasts and beggars.54
I am terrified about Bosie. More writes to me that he has been practically interviewed about me! It is awful. More, desiring to spare me pain, I suppose, did not send me the paper, so I have had a wretched night.
Bosie can almost ruin me. I earnestly beg that some entreaty be made to him not to do so a second time. His letters to me are infamous.
I have heard from my wife. She sends me photographs of the boys – such lovely little fellows in Eton collars – but makes no promise to allow me to see them: she says she will see me, twice a year, but I want my boys.55 It is a terrible punishment, dear Robbie, and oh! how well I deserve it. But it makes me feel disgraced and evil, and I don’t want to feel that. Let me have the Chronicle regularly. Also write often. It is very good for me to be alone. I am working. Dear Robbie, ever yours
Oscar
[Late May or early June 1897]
Hôtel de la Plage,
Berneval-sur-Mer
Dear Mr Davitt,
I have been sent a cutting from a Liverpool paper which states that you intend to ask a question about the treatment of A.2.11 in Reading prison. I do not of course know if this is true, but I sincerely hope that you are in some way stirring in the matter. No one knows better than yourself how terrible life in an English prison is and what cruelties result from the stupidity of officialism, and the immobile ignorance of centralisation. You suffered for what was done by someone else.57 I, in that respect more unfortunate, for a life of senseless pleasure and hard materialism and a mode of existence unworthy of an artist, and still more unworthy of my mother’s son. But you know what prison-life is, and that there is no exaggeration in what I say. Everything that I state about the treatment of A.2.11 is absolutely true. With my own punishment I have nothing to do, except so far as it is the type of what is inflicted on much better, nicer fellows than myself. I have no bitterness at all, but I have learnt pity: and that is worth learning, if one has to tramp a yard for two years to learn it.
In any case I don’t think they will flog A.2.11 again, and that is something. But of course I am quite powerless to do any more. I merely wrote as any other of the prisoners might have written, who had a pen he could use, and found a paper sufficiently large-minded to publish his letter. But with the letter I am forced to stop. It is part of my punishment – the new part that I have to face, and am facing very cheerfully and without any despair or making any complaint. I prefix to this letter my name for the present, and my address: but my letter requires no answer. It is simply the expression of a hope. I remain, yours faithfully
Oscar Wilde
PS Enclosed letter has just been forwarded to me, through my solicitor. A.2.11 has apparently been flogged again – see postscript. I think it is simply revolting. After you have read the chap’s letter, of course tear it up. I have his address.
23 March [1898]
[Paris]
Sir,
I understand that the Home Secretary’s Prison Reform Bill is to be read this week for the first or second time, and as your journal has been the one paper in England that has taken a real and vital interest in this important question, I hope that you will allow me, as one who has had long personal experience of life in an English gaol, to point out what reforms in our present stupid and barbarous system are urgently necessary.
From a leading article that appeared in your columns about a week ago, I learn that the chief reform proposed is an increase in the number of inspectors and official visitors, that are to have access to our English prisons.
Such a reform as this is entirely useless. The reason is extremely simple. The inspectors and justices of the peace that visit prisons come there for the purpose of seeing that the prison regulations are duly carried out. They come for no other purpose, nor have they any power, even if they had the desire, to alter a single clause in the regulations. No prisoner has ever had the smallest relief, or attention, or care from any of the official visitors. The visitors arrive not to help the prisoners, but to see that the rules are carried out. Their object in coming is to ensure the enforcement of a foolish and inhuman code. And, as they must have some occupation, they take very good care to do it. A prisoner who has been allowed the smallest privilege dreads the arrival of the inspectors. And on the day of any prison inspection the prison officials are more than usually brutal to the prisoners. Their object is, of course, to show the splendid discipline they maintain.
The necessary reforms are very simple. They concern the needs of the body and the needs of the mind of each unfortunate prisoner. With regard to the first, there are three permanent punishments authorised by law in English prisons:
The food supplied to prisoners is entirely inadequate. Most of it is revolting in character. All of it is insufficient. Every prisoner suffers day and night from hunger. A certain amount of food is carefully weighed out ounce by ounce for each prisoner. It is just enough to sustain, not life exactly, but existence. But one is always racked by the pain and sickness of hunger.
The result of the food – which in most cases consists of weak gruel, badly-baked bread, suet, and water – is disease in the form of incessant diarrhoea. This malady, which ultimately with most prisoners becomes a permanent disease, is a recognised institution in every prison. At Wandsworth Prison, for instance – where I was confined for two months, till I had to be carried into hospital, where I remained for another two months – the warders go round twice or three times a day with astringent medicines, which they serve out to the prisoners as a matter of course. After about a week of such treatment it is unnecessary to say the medicine produces no effect at all. The wretched prisoner is then left a prey to the most weakening, depressing, and humiliating malady that can be conceived; and if, as often happens, he fails, from physical weakness, to complete his required revolutions at the crank or the mill he is reported for idleness, and punished with the greatest severity and brutality. Nor is this all.
Nothing can be worse than the sanitary arrangements of English prisons. In old days each cell was provided with a form of latrine. These latrines have now been suppressed. They exist no longer. A small tin vessel is supplied to each prisoner instead. Three times a day a prisoner is allowed to empty his slops. But he is not allowed to have access to the prison lavatories, except during the one hour when he is at exercise. And after five o’clock in the evening he is not allowed to leave his cell under any pretence, or for any reason. A man suffering from diarrhoea is consequently placed in a position so loathsome that it is unnecessary to dwell on it, that it would be unseemly to dwell on it. The misery and tortures that prisoners go through in consequence of the revolting sanitary arrangements are quite indescribable. And the foul air of the prison cells, increased by a system of ventilation that is utterly ineffective, is so sickening and unwholesome that it is no uncommon thing for warders, when they come in the morning out of the fresh air and open and inspect each cell, to be violently sick. I have seen this myself on more than three occasions, and several of the warders have mentioned it to me as one of the disgusting things that their office entails on them.
The food supplied to prisoners should be adequate and wholesome. It should not be of such a character as to produce the incessant diarrhoea that, at first a malady, becomes a permanent disease.
The sanitary arrangements in English prisons should be entirely altered. Every prisoner should be allowed to have access to the lavatories when necessary, and to empty his slops when necessary. The present system of ventilation in each cell is utterly useless. The air comes through choked-up gratings, and through a small ventilator in the tiny barred window, which is far too small, and too badly constructed, to admit any adequate amount of fresh air. One is only allowed out of one’s cell for one hour out of the twenty-four that compose the long day, and so for twenty-three hours one is breathing the foulest possible air.
With regard to the punishment of insomnia, it only exists in Chinese and English prisons. In China it is inflicted by placing the prisoner in a small bamboo cage; in England by means of the plank bed. The object of the plank bed is to produce insomnia. There is no other object in it, and it invariably succeeds. And even when one is subsequently allowed a hard mattress, as happens in the course of imprisonment, one still suffers from insomnia. For sleep, like all wholesome things, is a habit. Every prisoner who has been on a plank bed suffers from insomnia. It is a revolting and ignorant punishment.
With regard to the needs of the mind, I beg that you will allow me to say something.
The present prison system seems almost to have for its aim the wrecking and the destruction of the mental faculties. The production of insanity is, if not its object, certainly its result. That is a well ascertained fact. Its causes are obvious. Deprived of books, of all human intercourse, isolated from every humane and humanising influence, condemned to eternal silence, robbed of all intercourse with the external world, treated like an unintelligent animal, brutalised below the level of any of the brute-creation, the wretched man who is confined in an English prison can hardly escape becoming insane. I do not wish to dwell on these horrors; still less to excite any momentary sentimental interest in these matters. So I will merely, with your permission, point out what should be done.
Every prisoner should have an adequate supply of good books. At present, during the first three months of imprisonment, one is allowed no books at all, except a Bible, prayer-book, and hymn-book. After that, one is allowed one book a week. That is not merely inadequate, but the books that compose an ordinary prison library are perfectly useless. They consist chiefly of third-rate, badly-written, religious books, so-called, written apparently for children, and utterly unsuitable for children or for anyone else. Prisoners should be encouraged to read, and should have whatever books they want, and the books should be well chosen. At present the selection of books is made by the prison chaplain.
Under the present system a prisoner is only allowed to see his friends four times a year, for twenty minutes each time. This is quite wrong. A prisoner should be allowed to see his friends once a month, and for a reasonable time. The mode at present in vogue of exhibiting a prisoner to his friends should be altered. Under the present system the prisoner is either locked up in a large iron cage or in a large wooden box, with a small aperture, covered with wire netting, through which he is allowed to peer. His friends are placed in a similar cage, some three or four feet distant, and two warders stand between, to listen to, and, if they wish, stop or interrupt the conversation such as it may be. I propose that a prisoner should be allowed to see his relatives or friends in a room. The present regulations are inexpressibly revolting and harassing. A visit from our relatives or friends is to every prisoner an intensification of humiliation and mental distress. Many prisoners, rather than support such an ordeal, refuse to see their friends at all. And I cannot say I am surprised. When one sees one’s solicitor, one sees him in a room with a glass door, on the other side of which stands the warder. When a man sees his wife and children, or his parents, or his friends, he should be allowed the same privilege. To be exhibited, like an ape in a cage, to people who are fond of one, and of whom one is fond, is a needless and horrible degradation.
Every prisoner should be allowed to write and receive a letter at least once a month. At present one is allowed to write only four times a year. This is quite inadequate. One of the tragedies of prison life is that it turns a man’s heart to stone. The feelings of natural affection, like all other feelings, require to be fed. They die easily of inanition. A brief letter, four times a year, is not enough to keep alive the gentler and more humane affections by which ultimately the nature is kept sensitive to any fine or beautiful influences that may heal a wrecked and ruined life.
The habit of mutilating and expurgating prisoners’ letters should be stopped. At present, if a prisoner in a letter makes any complaint of the prison system, that portion of his letter is cut out with a pair of scissors. If, upon the other hand, he makes any complaint when he speaks to his friends through the bars of the cage, or the aperture of the wooden box, he is brutalised by the warders, and reported for punishment every week till his next visit comes round, by which time he is expected to have learned, not wisdom, but cunning, and one always learns that. It is one of the few things that one does learn in prison. Fortunately, the other things are, in some instances, of higher import.
If I may trespass on your space for a little longer, may I say this? You suggested in your leading article that no prison chaplain should be allowed to have any care or employment outside the prison itself. But this is a matter of no moment. The prison chaplains are entirely useless. They are, as a class, well-meaning, but foolish, indeed silly, men. They are of no help to any prisoner. Once every six weeks or so a key turns in the lock of one’s cell door, and the chaplain enters. One stands, of course, at attention. He asks one whether one has been reading the Bible. One answers ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, as the case may be. He then quotes a few texts, and goes out and locks the door. Sometimes he leaves a tract.
The officials who should not be allowed to hold any employment outside the prison, or to have any private practice, are the prison doctors. At present the prison doctors have usually, if not always, a large private practice, and hold appointments in other institutions. The consequence is that the health of the prisoners is entirely neglected, and the sanitary condition of the prison entirely overlooked. As a class I regard, and have always from my earliest youth regarded, doctors as by far the most humane profession in the community. But I must make an exception for prison doctors. They are, as far as I came across them, and from what I saw of them in hospital and elsewhere, brutal in manner, coarse in temperament, and utterly indifferent to the health of the prisoners or their comfort. If prison doctors were prohibited from private practice they would be compelled to take some interest in the health and sanitary condition of the people under their charge.
I have tried to indicate in my letter a few of the reforms necessary to our English prison system. They are simple, practical, and humane. They are, of course, only a beginning. But it is time that a beginning should be made, and it can only be started by a strong pressure of public opinion formularised in your powerful paper, and fostered by it.
But to make even these reforms effectual, much has to be done. And the first, and perhaps the most difficult, task is to humanise the governors of prisons, to civilise the warders and to Christianise the chaplains. Yours, etc.
The Author of ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’