bent; first of all for a certain number of hours, he had to sit on a stool
in his cell and disentangle and reduce to small quantities ship-rope of
enormous size used for docking ocean liners, the only instruments allowed
him to effect the work being a nail and his own fingers. The result of
this painful and atrocious penitence was to tear and disfigure his hands
beyond all hope.
"After that he was conducted into a court where he had to displace a
certain number of cannon-balls, carrying them from one place to another
and arranging them in symmetrical piles. No sooner was this edifying
labour terminated, than he had himself to undo it all and carry back the
cannon-balls one by one to the place from whence he had first taken them.
"Then finally, he was made to work the tread-mill which is a harder task
than those even that we have endeavoured faintly to describe. Imagine if
you can, an enormous wheel in the interior of which exist cunningly
arranged winding steps. Wilde, mounting on one of the steps, would
immediately set the wheel in motion by the movement of his feet; then the
steps follow each other under the feet in rapid and regular evolution,
thus forcing the legs to a precipitous action which becomes laborious,
enervating, and even maddening after a few minutes. But this enervating
fatigue and suffering the convict is obliged to overcome, whilst
continuing to move his legs for all they are worth, if he would escape
being knocked down, caught up and thrown over, by the revolving movement
of the wheel. This fantastical exercise lasts a quarter of an hour, and
the wretch obliged to indulge in it, is allowed five minutes rest before
the silly game recommences.
"The convict is always kept apart and not allowed to speak even to his
gaoler except at certain moments. All correspondence and reading is
forbidden, save for the Bible and Prayer book placed at the head of the
wooden plank, which serves him for a bed; and relatives are not admitted
to see him excepting at the end of the year.
"His food consists of meat and black bread, and of course only water is
allowed. The meal-times take place at fixed hours, for naturally he has to
follow a regular _regime_, in order to accomplish the hard labours that
are incumbent upon him.
"Many of the convicts have been known to say, on coming out of prison,
that they would have far more preferred to pass ten years in penal
servitude than work out two years of hard labour. The moral suffering men
like Oscar Wilde are forced to undergo is probably superior even to their
physical distress, and I can only repeat that this labour is the severest
which the laws of England impose."
* * * * *
Wilde endured this martyrdom to the bitter end, the only favour allowed
him being permission, towards the end of the time, to read a few books and
to write. He read Dante in his entirety, dwelling longer over the poet's
description of Hell than anything else, because here he recognized himself
"at home."
Before the doors of the gaol had been bolted on him, he wrote with a pen
that had been dipped in colourless ink, letters of tears, sobs and pains,
which were issued to the world only after the unhappy man had winged his
flight for another planet. Those letters bear every mark of the deepest
sincerity. They are not so much literature as the wail of a broken heart,
which had attached itself to the only human affection he believed was
still faithful to him. It is impossible to treat lightly the passionate
anguish which refrains from expressing itself with the same intensity as
the sorrows it had suffered, stricken with infinite sadness at the utter
shipwreck of all hope and the cowardice of the human nature that had
brought him to such low estate.
That he should have conjured up the happy times he had seen decked out in
all the charming graces of youth, and which smiled back his visage from
the limpid mirror of his marvellously artistic intelligence, is only
perfectly natural; and this evocation of happier times took on a new and
horribly strange beauty, just as the feeblest ray of light stealing
through prison walls gains in puissance from the sheer opacity of
enveloping darkness.
I will not stop here to enquire whether he found later the consolation he
so much desired, a haven of peace in the friendship of the aristocratic
adolescent, who had unwittingly caused him to become cast-a-way. It is
highly probable that the bitter words which Andre Gide heard him utter,
referred to that unfortunate intimacy: "No, he does not understand me; he
can no longer understand me. I repeat to him in each letter; we can no
more follow together the same path; you have yours, and it is certainly
beautiful; and I have mine. His path is the path of Alcibiade, whilst mine
henceforth must be that of St. Francis of Assisi."
His last most important work in prose: _De Profundis_, which reveals him
to us under an entirely different aspect, although, practically always the
same man, shows that he is still engrossed with the perpetual love of
attitudinizing, dreaming perhaps, that in spite of his sorrow and
repentance, he will be able to take up again and sing, although in an
humbler tone, the pagan hymn that had been strangled in his throat. In
this connection, we cannot help thinking of the gesture of the great
Talma, who whilst he lay a-dying, although he knew it not, took the
pendant skin of his thin neck, between his fingers, and said to those who
stood around: "Here is something which would suit finely to make up a
visage for an old Tiberius."
It seems to us that the chief characteristic of Wilde's book is not so
much its admirable accent as its subtle irony, through which there seems
to thrill the reply of Destiny to the haughty resolutions that he had
undertaken. It is as though Death itself rose up from each page to sneer
and chuckle at the master-singer; and few things are more bitter on the
part of this poet--who had with his own hands ensepulchred himself as a
willing holocaust to the deceitful gods of factitious Art,--than the
constant appeals that he makes to Nature. The song no longer rings with
the old regal note; there is none of the trepidating joy of a Whitman, or
the yielding sweetness of an Emerson; our ear detects only the melopoeia
of a heart which had been wounded in its innermost recess.
"_I tremble with pleasure when I think that on the very day of my leaving
prison both the laburnum and the lilac will be blooming in the gardens,
and that I shall see the wind stir into restless beauty the swaying gold
of the one, and make the other toss the pale purple of its plumes so that
all the air shall be Arabia for me._"[12]
These are the words of a convalescent; of a man newly risen from a bed of
sickness anticipating a richer and fuller life, unknowing that the
uplifted hand of Death suspended just above him, was destined to strike
him down at brief delay.
In the darkness of his prison cell, he dreams of the mysterious herbs that
he will find in the realms of Nature; of the balms that he shall ferret
out amongst the plants of the earth, and which will bring peace for his
anguish, and deep-seated joy for the suffering that racked his brain.
"_But Nature, whose sweet rains fall on the unjust and just alike, will
have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose
silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that
I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind
over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse
me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole._"[13]
In presence of this beautiful passage, it is painful to remember how his
hopes were fated to be shattered by the cruellest of disappointments, and
how he was doomed to die in the grey desolation of a poverty-haunted room.
Before drawing this notice to a close, it were not unfitting to recall
another name, borne by a Poet of wayward genius, who likewise wandered
astray in a forest of more than Dantean darkness, because the right way he
had for ever lost from view. That Poet was a poet of France, and the voice
of his glory and the echo of the songs he chanted resounded with that
proud and melodious note of genius which can never weary human ears.
Although this poet led a life which can be compared only to the life of
Oscar Wilde, he belonged to an order of mentality which differs too
greatly in its essential features to allow the accidents of the career of
the two men being used as a basis for comparing them closely together on
the intellectual plane.
Verlaine belonged to that race of poets who distinguish themselves by
their perfect spontaneity; he was a veritable poet of instinct, and had
heard voices which no other mortal had heard before him on earth. In place
of the metallic verses of his predecessors, the verses that for the most
part are spoken by linguistic artists, he created a sort of ethereal
music, a song so sweet and so penetrating that it haunts us eternally like
the low, passionate, whisperings of a lover's voice. He gave us more than
royal largesse of a wonderful and delicious soul, that had no part or lot
in time, a music that was created for his soul alone; and we have
willingly forgotten many a haughtier voice for the bewitching strains that
this baptised faun played for us with such artless joy on his forest-grown
reed.
The English poet was more complex and perhaps less sheerly human; and
even his errors have no other origin than the perpetual effort to astonish
us; whilst above all, that which staggers us most and stirs us so
profoundly is that these self-same errors, which had come into life under
such innocent conditions, became terribly real in virtue of that imperious
law which compels certain minds to render their dreams incarnate.
As for his work, however finely polished, however exquisite it may be and
undoubtedly is, we have to confess that it has no power to move our souls
into high passion and lofty endeavour; although it might easily have
sufficed to conquer celebrity for more than one ambitious literary
craftsman. But we feel, with regard to Wilde, that we had a legitimate
right to insist on the accomplishment of far greater things, a more
sincere and genuine output, and are so much more dissatisfied because we
clearly see the great discord between the man who palpitated with intense
life, and the esthetic dandy whose cleverness overreached itself when he
tried to work out that life on admittedly artificial lines.
This extraordinary divorce between intelligence and will-power was that
which gave rise to the striking drama of Wilde's career; albeit the word
drama looks strange and out of place, if applied only to the
sorrow-filled period that crowned with thorns the latter end of his
brilliant existence, if it be used for no other reason than to
particularize the great catastrophe that took place in the sight of all
the world. The fact is, the man's entire life was one perpetual drama.
Throughout the whole course of his existence, he persistently sought after
and that with impunity, all sorts of excitants that could at last no
longer be disguised under the name of experiences--and no doubt, others
more terrible still that fall under no human laws, would have come finally
to swell the ranks of their forerunners--and then, had the hand of Destiny
not arrested him in his course, he would have wound up by descending so
low that the artistic life of his soul would have been forever
extinguished.
That, when all is said and done, would have been the veritable, the
irremediable tragedy.
Fortunately, royal intellects such as these, can never utterly die, and
therein consists their greatest chastisement. Spasmodic movements agitate
them, revealing beneath their mendacious laughter the secret agony of
their souls; and we are suddenly called upon to witness the heart-rending
spectacle of the slow death-agony of a haughty, talented poet, a Petronius
self-poisoned through fear of Caesar or a Wilde whom a vicious and
over-wrought Public had only half assassinated, raising his poor, glazed
eyes towards the marvellous Light of Truth, whose glorious vision, we know
by the sure voice that comes "from the depths," he had caught at last....
* * * * *
Oscar Wilde had desired to live a pagan's free and untramelled life in
Twentieth-century England, forgetful of the enormous fact that no longer
may we live pagan-wise, for the shadow of the Cross has shed a steadily
increasing gloom over the conditions that enlivened the joyous existence
of olden times.
C. G.
The Trial of Oscar Wilde.
"In all men's hearts a slumbering swine lies low", says the French poet;
so come ye, whose porcine instincts have never been awakened, or if
rampant successfully hidden, and hurl the biggest, sharpest stones you can
lay your hands on at your wretched, degraded, humiliated brother, _who has
been found out_.
The Trial of Oscar Wilde
The life and death of Oscar Wilde, poet, playwright, _poseur_ and convict,
can only fittingly be summarised as a tragedy. Every misspent life is a
tragedy more or less; but how much more tragic appear the elements of
despair and disaster when the victim to his own vices is a man of genius
exercising a considerable influence upon the thought and culture of his
day, and possessing every advantage which birth, education, talent and
station can bestow? Oscar Wilde was more than a clever and original
thinker. He was the inventor of a certain literary style, and, though his
methods, showy and eccentric as they were, lent themselves readily to
imitation, none of his followers could approach their "Master" in the
particular mode which he had made his own. There can be two opinions as
to the merits of his plays. There can be only one judgment as to their
daring and audacious originality. Of the ordinary and the commonplace
Wilde had a horror, which with him was almost a religion. He was
unmercifully chaffed throughout America when he appeared in public in a
light green suit adorned with a large sunflower; but he did not don this
outrageous costume because he preferred such startling clothing. He
adopted the dress in order to be original and assumed it because no other
living man was likely to be so garbed. He was consumed, in fact, with
overpowering vanity. He was possessed of a veritable demon of self-esteem.
He ate strange foods, and drank unusual liquors in order to be unlike any
of his contemporaries. His eccentricities of dress continued to the end.
On the first night of one of his plays--it was a brilliant triumph--he was
called upon by an enthusiastic audience for the customary speech. He was
much exercised in his mind as to what he could say that would be
unconventional and sensational. No mere platitudes or banalities for the
author of "Lady Windermere's Fan," who made a god of the spirit of Epigram
and almost canonized the art of Repartee. He said, "Ladies and Gentlemen:
I am glad you like my play. I like it very much myself too," which, if
candid, was hardly the remark of a modest and retiring author. The leopard
cannot change his spots and neither can the lion his skin. Even in his
beautiful book, "De Profundis"--surely the most extraordinary volume of
recent years--the man's character is writ so plainly that he who runs may
read. Man of letters, man of fashion, man of hideous vices, Oscar Wilde
remained to the last moment of his murdered life, a self-conscious
egotist. "Gentlemen," he gasped on his death-bed, hearing the doctors
express misgivings as to their fees, "it would appear that I am dying
beyond my means!" It was a brilliant sally and one can picture the
startled faces of the medical attendants. A genius lay a-dying and a
genius he remained till the breath of life departed.
Genius we know to be closely allied to insanity and it were charitable to
describe this man as mad, besides approaching very nearly to the truth.
Something was out of gear in that finely attuned mind. Some thorn there
was among the intellectual roses which made him what he was. He pined for
strange passions, new sensations. His was the temperament of the Roman
sybarite. He often sighed for a return of the days when vice was deified.
He spoke of the glories of the Devastation, the awful woman and the
Alexandrian school at which little girls and young boys were instructed in
all the most secret and unthinkable forms of vice. Modern women satisfied
him not. Perverted passions consumed the fire of his being. He had had
children of his wife, but sexual intercourse between him and that most
unfortunate lady was more honoured in the breach than in the observance.
They had their several rooms. On many occasions Wilde actually brought the
companions of his abominable rites and sinful joys to his own home, and
indulged in his frightful propensities beneath the roof of the house which
sheltered his own sons and their most unhappy mother. Could the man
capable of this atrocity possess a normal mind? Can Oscar Wilde, who
committed moral suicide and made of himself a social pariah, be regarded
as a sane man? London society is not so strict nor straight-laced that it
will not forgive much laxity in its devoted votaries. Rumour had been busy
with the name of Oscar Wilde for a long time before the whole awful truth
became known. He was seen, constantly, at theatres and restaurants with
persons in no way fit to be his associates and these persons were not
girls or women. He paraded his shameful friendships and flaunted his
villainous companions in society's face. People began to look askance at
the famous wit. Doors began to be closed to him. He was ostracised by all
but the most Bohemian coteries. But even those who were still proud to
rank him among their friends did not know how far he had wilfully drawn
himself into the web of disgrace. Much that seemed strange and
unaccountable was attributed to his well-known love of pose. Men shrugged
their shoulders and declared that "Wilde meant no harm. It was his
vainglorious way of showing his contempt for the opinion of the world. Men
of such parts could not be judged by ordinary standards. Intellectually
Wilde was fit to mix with the immortals. If he preferred the society of
miserable, beardless, stunted youths destitute alike of decency or
honour--it was no affair of theirs," and so on _ad nauseam_. Meanwhile,
heedless of the warnings of friends and the sneers of foes, Wilde went his
own way--to destruction.
He was addicted to the vice and crime of sodomy long before he formed a
"friendship" which was destined to involve him in irretrievable ruin. In
London, he met a younger son of the eccentric Marquis of Queensbury, Lord
Alfred Douglas by name. This youth was being educated at Cambridge. He
was of peculiar temperament and talented in a strong, frothy style. He was
good-looking in an effeminate, lady-like way. He wrote verse. His poems
not being of a manner which could be acceptable to a self-respecting
publication, his efforts appeared in an eccentric and erratic magazine
which was called "The Chameleon." In this precious serial appeared a
"poem" from the pen of Lord Alfred dedicated to his father in these filial
words: "To the Man I Hate."
Oscar Wilde at once developed an extraordinary and dangerous interest in
this immature literary egg. A being of his own stamp, after his own heart,
was Lord Alfred Douglas. The love of women delighted him not. The
possession of a young girl's person had no charm for him. He yearned for
higher flights in the realms of love! He sought unnatural affection.
Wilde, experienced in all the symptoms of a disordered sexual fancy,
contrived to exercise a remarkable and sinister influence over this youth.
Again and again and again did his father implore Lord Alfred Douglas to
separate himself from the tempter. Lord Queensberry threatened, persuaded,
bribed, urged, cajoled: all to no purpose. Wilde and his son were
constantly together. The nature of their friendship became the talk of the
town. It was proclaimed from the housetops. The Marquis, determined to
rescue him if it were humanly possible, horsewhipped his son in a public
thoroughfare and was threatened with a summons for assault. On one
occasion--it was the opening night of one of the Wilde plays--he sent the
author a bouquet of choice--vegetables! Three or four times he wrote to
him begging him to cancel his friendship with Lord Alfred. Once he called
at the house in Tite Street and there was a terrible scene. The Marquis
fumed; Wilde laughed. He assured his Lordship that only at his son's own
request would he break off the association which existed between them. The
Marquis, driven to desperation, called Wilde a disgusting name. The
latter, with a show of wrath, ordered the peer from his door and he was
obliged to leave.
At all costs and hazards, at the risk of any pain and grief to himself,
Lord Queensberry was determined to break off the disgraceful _liaison_. He
stopped his son's allowance, but Wilde had, at that time, plenty of money
and his purse was his friend's. At last the father went to the length of
leaving an insulting message for Oscar Wilde at that gentleman's club. He
called there and asked for Wilde. The clerk at the enquiry office stated
that Mr. Wilde was not on the premises. The Marquis then produced a card
and wrote upon it in pencil these words, "Oscar Wilde is a Bugger." This
elegant missive he directed to be handed to the author when he should next
appear at the club.
From this card--Lord Queensberry's last resource--grew the whole great
case, which amazed and horrified the world in 1895. Oscar Wilde was
compelled, however reluctantly, to take the matter up. Had he remained
quiescent under such a public affront, his career in England would have
been at an end. He bowed to the inevitable and a libel action was
prepared.
One is often compelled to wonder if he foresaw the outcome. One asks
oneself if he realized what defeat in this case would portend. The stakes
were desperately high. He risked, in a Court of Law, his reputation, his
position, his career and even his freedom. Did he know what the end to it
all would be?
Whatever Wilde's fears and expectations were, his opponent did not
under-estimate the importance of the issue. If he could not induce a jury
of twelve of his fellow-countrymen to believe that the plaintiff was what
he had termed him, he, the Marquis of Queensberry, would be himself
disgraced. Furthermore, there would, in the event of failure, be heavy
damages to pay and the poor man was not over rich. Wilde had many and
powerful friends. For reasons which it is not necessary to enlarge upon,
Lord Queensberry was not liked or respected by his own order. The ultimate
knowledge that he was a father striving to save a loved son from infamy
changed all that, and his Lordship met with nothing but sympathy from the
general public in the latter stages of the great case.
Sir Edward Clarke was retained for the plaintiff. It is needless to refer
to the high estimation in which this legal and political luminary is held
by all classes of society. From first to last he devoted himself to the
lost cause of Oscar Wilde with a whole-hearted devotion which was beyond
praise. The upshot of the libel action must have pained and disgusted him;
yet he refused to abandon his client, and, in the two criminal trials,
defended him with a splendid loyalty and with the marked ability that
might be expected from such a counsel. The acute, energetic, silver-spoken
Mr. Carson led on the other side. It is not necessary to make more than
passing mention of the conspicuous skill with which the able lawyer
conducted the case for the defendant. Even the gifted plaintiff himself
cut a sorry figure when opposed to Mr. Carson.