April 1st, 1897.
My Dear Robbie,--I send you a MS. separate from this, which I hope will
arrive safely. As soon as you have read it, I want you to have it
carefully copied for me. There are many causes 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 of 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 Vivian. Well, if you are my literary executor, you must be in
possession of the only document that gives any explanation of my
extraordinary behaviour . . . 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 idiotcy with vulgar bravado. Some
day the truth will have to be known--not necessarily in my lifetime . . .
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
mother a name of high distinction in literature and art, and I cannot for
eternity allow that name to be degraded. I don't defend my conduct. I
explain it. Also there are in my letter certain passages which deal with
my mental development in prison, and the inevitable evolution of my
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 we should
seek to live. At any rate you will read those parts of my letter with
less pain than the others. Of course I need not remind you how fluid a
thing thought is with me--with us all--and of what an evanescent
substance are our emotions made. Still I do see a sort of possible goal
towards which, through art, I may progress. It is not unlikely that you
may help me.
As regards the mode of copying: of course it is too long for any
amanuensis to attempt: and your own handwriting, dear Robbie, in your
last letter seems specially designed to remind me that the task is not to
be yours. I think that the only thing to do is to be thoroughly modern
and to have it typewritten. Of course the MS. should not pass out of
your control, but could you not get Mrs. Marshall to send down one of her
type-writing girls--women are the most reliable as they have no memory
for the important--to Hornton Street or Phillimore Gardens, to do it
under your supervision? I assure you that the typewriting 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 . . . If the copy is done at Hornton
Street the lady typewriter might be fed through a lattice in the door,
like the Cardinals when they elect a Pope; till she comes out on the
balcony and can say to the world: "Habet Mundus Epistolam"; for indeed it
is an Encyclical letter, and as the Bulls of the Holy Father are named
from their opening words, it may be spoken of as the "_Epistola_: _in
Carcere et Vinculis_." . . . 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 illusions 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 narrow natures and hectic brains, to me it has done
good. I have "cleansed my bosom of much perilous stuff"; to borrow a
phrase from the poet whom you and I once thought of rescuing from the
Philistines. 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
and at as great a length as I desire. For nearly two years I had within
a growing burden of bitterness, of much of which I have now got rid. On
the other side of the prison wall there are some poor black
soot-besmirched 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.
Ever yours,