On my return to London I saw Sir Ruggles Brise. No one could have shown
me warmer sympathy, or more discriminating comprehension. I made my
report to him and left the matter in his hands with perfect confidence.
I took care to describe Oscar's condition to his friends while assuring
them that his circumstances would soon be bettered. A little later I
heard that the governor of the prison had been changed, that Oscar had
got books and writing materials, and was allowed to have the gas burning
in his cell to a late hour when it was turned down but not out. In fact,
from that time on he was treated with all the kindness possible, and
soon we heard that he was bearing the confinement and discipline better
than could have been expected. Sir Evelyn Ruggles Brise had evidently
settled the difficulty in the most humane spirit.
Later still I was told that Oscar had begun to write "De Profundis" in
prison, and I was very hopeful about that too: no news could have given
me greater pleasure. It seemed to me certain that he would justify
himself to men by turning the punishment into a stepping-stone. And in
this belief when the time came I ventured to call on Sir Ruggles Brise
with another petition.
"Surely," I said, "Oscar will not be imprisoned for the full term;
surely four or five months for good conduct will be remitted?"
Sir Ruggles Brise listened sympathetically, but warned me at once that
any remission was exceptional; however, he would let me know what could
be done, if I would call again in a week. Much to my surprise, he did
not seem certain even about the good conduct.
I returned at the end of the week, and had another long talk with him.
He told me that good conduct meant, in prison parlance, absence of
punishment, and Oscar had been punished pretty often. Of course his
offenses were minor offenses; nothing serious; childish faults indeed
for the most part: he was often talking, and he was often late in the
morning; his cell was not kept so well as it might be, and so forth;
peccadilloes, all; yet a certificate of "good conduct" depended on such
trifling observances. In face of Oscar's record Sir Ruggles Brise did
not think that the sentence would be easily lessened. I was
thunder-struck. But then no rules to me are sacrosanct; indeed, they are
only tolerable because of the exceptions. I had such a high opinion of
Ruggles Brise--his kindness and sense of fair play--that I ventured to
show him my whole mind on the matter.
"Oscar Wilde," I said to him, "is just about to face life again: he is
more than half reconciled to his wife; he has begun a book, is
shouldering the burden. A little encouragement now and I believe he will
do better things than he has ever done. I am convinced that he has far
bigger things in him than we have seen yet. But he is extraordinarily
sensitive and extraordinarily vain. The danger is that he may be
frightened and blighted by the harshness and hatred of the world. He may
shrink into himself and do nothing if the wind be not tempered a little
for him. A hint of encouragement now, the feeling that men like yourself
think him worthful and deserving of special kindly treatment, and I feel
certain he will do great things. I really believe it is in your hands to
save a man of extraordinary talent, and get the best out of him, if you
care to do it."
"Of course I care to do it," he cried. "You cannot doubt that, and I see
exactly what you mean; but it will not be easy."
"Won't you see what can be done?" I persisted. "Put your mind to
discover how it should be done, how the Home Secretary may be induced to
remit the last few months of Wilde's sentence."
After a little while he replied:
"You must believe that the authorities are quite willing to help in any
good work, more than willing, and I am sure I speak for the Home
Secretary as well as for myself; but it is for you to give us some
reason for acting--a reason that could be avowed and defended."
I did not at first catch his drift; so I persevered:
"You admit that the reason exists, that it would be a good thing to
favour Wilde, then why not do it?"
"We live," he said, "under parliamentary rule. Suppose the question were
asked in the House, and I think it very likely in the present state of
public opinion that the question would be asked: what should we answer?
It would not be an avowable reason that we hoped Wilde would write new
plays and books, would it? That reason ought to be sufficient, I grant
you; but, you see yourself, it would not be so regarded."
"You are right, I suppose," I had to admit. "But if I got you a petition
from men of letters, asking you to release Wilde for his health's sake:
would that do?"
Sir Ruggles Brise jumped at the suggestion.
"Certainly," he exclaimed, "if some men of letters, men of position,
wrote asking that Wilde's sentence should be diminished by three or
four months on account of his health, I think it would have the best
effect."
"I will see Meredith at once," I said, "and some others. How many names
should I get?"
"If you have Meredith," he replied, "you don't need many others. A dozen
would do, or fewer if you find a dozen too many."
"I don't think I shall meet with any difficulty," I replied, "but I will
let you know."
"You will find it harder than you think," he concluded, "but if you get
one or two great names the rest may follow. In any case one or two good
names will make it easier for you."
Naturally I thanked him for his kindness and went away absolutely
content. I had never set myself a task which seemed simpler. Meredith
could not be more merciless than a Royal Commission. I returned to my
office in _The Saturday Review_ and got the Royal Commission report on
this sentence of two years' imprisonment with hard labour. The
Commission recommended that it should be wiped off the Statute Book as
too severe. I drafted a little petition as colourless as possible:
"In view of the fact that the punishment of two years' imprisonment with
hard labour has been condemned by a Royal Commission as too severe, and
inasmuch as Mr. Wilde has been distinguished by his work in letters and
is now, we hear, suffering in health, we, your petitioners, pray--and
so forth and so on."
I got this printed, and then sat down to write to Meredith asking when I
could see him on the matter. I wanted his signature first to be printed
underneath the petition, and then issue it. To my astonishment Meredith
did not answer at once, and when I pressed him and set forth the facts
he wrote to me that he could not do what I wished. I wrote again,
begging him to let me see him on the matter. For the first time in my
life he refused to see me: he wrote to me to say that nothing I could
urge would move him, and it would therefore only be painful to both of
us to find ourselves in conflict.
Nothing ever surprised me more than this attitude of Meredith's. I knew
his poetry pretty well, and knew how severe he was on every sensual
weakness perhaps because it was his own pitfall. I knew too what a
fighter he was at heart and how he loved the virile virtues; but I
thought I knew the man, knew his tender kindliness of heart, the founts
of pity in him, and I felt certain I could count on him for any office
of human charity or generosity. But no, he was impenetrable, hard. He
told me long afterwards that he had rather a low opinion of Wilde's
capacities, instinctive, deep-rooted contempt, too, for the showman in
him, and an absolute abhorrence of his vice.
"That vile, sensual self-indulgence puts back the hands of the clock,"
he said, "and should not be forgiven."
For the life of me I could never forgive Meredith; never afterwards was
he of any importance to me. He had always been to me a standard bearer
in the eternal conflict, a leader in the Liberation War of Humanity, and
here I found him pitiless to another who had been wounded on the same
side in the great struggle: it seemed to me appalling. True, Wilde had
not been wounded in fighting for us; true, he had fallen out and come to
grief, as a drunkard might. But after all he had been fighting on the
right side: had been a quickening intellectual influence: it was
dreadful to pass him on the wayside and allow him callously to bleed to
death. It was revoltingly cruel! The foremost Englishman of his time
unable even to understand Christ's example, much less reach his height!
This refusal of Meredith's not only hurt me, but almost destroyed my
hope, though it did not alter my purpose. I wanted a figurehead for my
petition, and the figurehead I had chosen I could not get. I began to
wonder and doubt. I next approached a very different man, the late
Professor Churton Collins, a great friend of mine, who, in spite of an
almost pedantic rigour of mind and character, had in him at bottom a
curious spring of sympathy--a little pool of pure love for the poets and
writers whom he admired. I got him to dinner and asked him to sign the
petition; he refused, but on grounds other than those taken by Meredith.
"Of course Wilde ought to get out," he said, "the sentence was a savage
one and showed bitter prejudice; but I have children, and my own way to
make in the world, and if I did this I should be tarred with the Wilde
brush. I cannot afford to do it. If he were really a great man I hope I
should do it, but I don't agree with your estimate of him. I cannot
think I am called upon to bell the British cat in his defence: it has
many claws and all sharp."
As soon as he saw the position was unworthy of him, he shifted to new
ground.
"If you were justified in coming to me, I should do it; but I am no one;
why don't you go to Meredith, Swinburne or Hardy?"
I had to give up the Professor, as well as the poet. I knocked in turn
at a great many doors, but all in vain. No one wished to take the odium
on himself. One man, since become celebrated, said he had no position,
his name was not good enough for the purpose. Others left my letters
unanswered. Yet another sent a bare acknowledgment saying how sorry he
was, but that public opinion was against Mr. Wilde; with one accord
they all made excuses....
One day Professor Tyrrell of Trinity College, Dublin, happened to be in
my office, while I was setting forth the difference between men of
letters in France and England as exemplified by this conduct. In France
among authors there is a recognised "_esprit de corps_," which
constrains them to hold together. For instance when Zola was threatened
with prosecution for "Nana," a dozen men like Cherbuliez, Feuillet,
Dumas _fils_, who hated his work and regarded it as sensational, tawdry,
immoral even, took up the cudgels for him at once; declared that the
police were not judges of art, and should not interfere with a serious
workman. All these Frenchmen, though they disliked Zola's work, and
believed that his popularity was won by a low appeal, still admitted
that he was a force in letters, and stood by him resolutely in spite of
their own prepossessions and prejudices. But in England the feeling is
altogether more selfish. Everyone consults his own sordid self-interest
and is rather glad to see a social favourite come to grief: not a hand
is stretched out to help him. Suddenly, Tyrrell broke in upon my
exposition:
"I don't know whether my name is of any good to you," he said, "but I
agree with all you have said, and my name might be classed with that of
Churton Collins, though, of course, I've no right to speak for
literature," and without more ado he signed the petition, adding,
"Regius Professor of Greek at Trinity College, Dublin."
"When you next see Oscar," he continued, "please tell him that my wife
and I asked after him. We both hold him in grateful memory as a most
brilliant talker and writer, and a charming fellow to boot. Confusion
take all their English Puritanism."
Merely living in Ireland tends to make an Englishman more humane; but
one name was not enough, and Tyrrell's was the only one I could get. In
despair, and knowing that George Wyndham had had a great liking for
Oscar, and admiration for his high talent, I asked him to lunch at the
Savoy; laid the matter before him, and begged him to give me his name.
He refused, and in face of my astonishment he excused himself by saying
that, as soon as the rumour had reached him of Oscar's intimacy with
Bosie Douglas, he had asked Oscar whether there was any truth in the
scandalous report.
"You see," he went on, "Bosie is by way of being a relation of mine, and
so I had the right to ask. Oscar gave me his word of honour that there
was nothing but friendship between them. He lied to me, and that I can
never forgive."
A politician unable to forgive a lie--surely one can hear the mocking
laughter of the gods! I could say nothing to such paltry affected
nonsense. Politician-like Wyndham showed me how the wind of popular
feeling blew, and I recognised that my efforts were in vain.
There is no fellow-feeling among English men of letters; in fact they
hold together less than any other class and, by himself, none of them
wished to help a wounded member of the flock. I had to tell Sir Ruggles
Brise that I had failed.
I have been informed since that if I had begun by asking Thomas Hardy, I
might have succeeded. I knew Hardy; but never cared greatly for his
talent. I daresay if I had had nothing else to do I might have succeeded
in some half degree. But all these two years I was extremely busy and
anxious; the storm clouds in South Africa were growing steadily darker
and my attitude to South African affairs was exceedingly unpopular in
London. It seemed to me vitally important to prevent England from making
war on the Boers. I had to abandon the attempt to get Oscar's sentence
shortened, and comfort myself with Sir Ruggles Brise's assurance that he
would be treated with the greatest possible consideration.
Still, my advocacy had had a good effect.
Oscar himself has told us what the kindness shown to him in the last
six months of his prison life really did for him. He writes in _De
Profundis_ that for the first part of his sentence he could only wring
his hands in impotent despair and cry, "What an ending, what an
appalling ending!" But when the new spirit of kindness came to him, he
could say with sincerity: "What a beginning, what a wonderful
beginning!" He sums it all up in these words:
"Had I been released after eighteen months, as I hoped to be, I would
have left my prison loathing it and every official in it with a
bitterness of hatred that would have poisoned my life. I have had six
months more of imprisonment, but humanity has been in the prison with us
all the time, and now when I go out I shall always remember great
kindnesses that I have received here from almost everybody, and on the
day of my release I shall give many thanks to many people, and ask to be
remembered by them in turn."
This is the man whom Mr. Justice Wills addressed as insensible to any
high appeal.
Some time passed before I visited Oscar again. The change in him was
extraordinary. He was light-hearted, gay, and looked better than I had
ever seen him: clearly the austerity of prison life suited him. He met
me with a jest:
"It is you, Frank!" he cried as if astonished, "always original! You
come back to prison of your own free-will!"
He declared that the new governor--Major Nelson[3] was his name--had
been as kind as possible to him. He had not had a punishment for months,
and "Oh, Frank, the joy of reading when you like and writing as you
please--the delight of living again!" He was so infinitely improved that
his talk delighted me.
"What books have you?" I asked.
"I thought I should like the 'Oedipus Rex,'" he replied gravely; "but
I could not read it. It all seemed unreal to me. Then I thought of St.
Augustine, but he was worse still. The fathers of the Church were still
further away from me; they all found it so easy to repent and change
their lives: it does not seem to me easy. At last I got hold of Dante.
Dante was what I wanted. I read the 'Purgatorio' all through, forced
myself to read it in Italian to get the full savour and significance of
it. Dante, too, had been in the depths and drunk the bitter lees of
despair. I shall want a little library when I come out, a library of a
score of books. I wonder if you will help me to get it. I want Flaubert,
Stevenson, Baudelaire, Maeterlinck, Dumas _père_, Keats, Marlowe,
Chatterton, Anatole France, Théophile Gautier, Dante, Goethe,
Meredith's poems, and his 'Egoist,' the Song of Solomon, too, Job, and,
of course, the Gospels."
"I shall be delighted to get them for you," I said, "if you will send me
the list. By the by, I hear that you have been reconciled to your wife;
is that true? I should be glad to know it's true."
"I hope it will be all right," he said gravely, "she is very good and
kind. I suppose you have heard," he went on, "that my mother died since
I came here, and that leaves a great gap in my life.... I always had the
greatest admiration and love for my mother. She was a great woman,
Frank, a perfect idealist. My father got into trouble once in Dublin,
perhaps you have heard about it?"
"Oh, yes," I said, "I have read the case." (It is narrated in the first
chapter of this book.)
"Well, Frank, she stood up in court and bore witness for him with
perfect serenity, with perfect trust and without a shadow of common
womanly jealousy. She could not believe that the man she loved could be
unworthy, and her conviction was so complete that it communicated itself
to the jury: her trust was so noble that they became infected by it, and
brought him in guiltless.[4] Extraordinary, was it not? She was quite
sure too of the verdict. It is only noble souls who have that assurance
and serenity....
[Illustration: "Speranza": Lady Wilde as a Young Woman]
"When my father was dying it was the same thing. I always see her
sitting there by his bedside with a sort of dark veil over her head:
quite silent, quite calm. Nothing ever troubled her optimism. She
believed that only good can happen to us. When death came to the man she
loved, she accepted it with the same serenity and when my sister died
she bore it in the same high way. My sister was a wonderful creature, so
gay and high-spirited, 'embodied sunshine,' I used to call her.
"When we lost her, my mother simply took it that it was best for the
child. Women have infinitely more courage than men, don't you think? I
have never known anyone with such perfect faith as my mother. She was
one of the great figures of the world. What she must have suffered over
my sentence I don't dare to think: I'm sure she endured agonies. She had
great hopes of me. When she was told that she was going to die, and that
she could not see me, for I was not allowed to go to her,[5] she said,
'May the prison help him,' and turned her face to the wall.
"She felt about the prison as you do, Frank, and really I think you are
both right; it has helped me. There are things I see now that I never
saw before. I see what pity means. I thought a work of art should be
beautiful and joyous. But now I see that that ideal is insufficient,
even shallow; a work of art must be founded on pity; a book or poem
which has no pity in it, had better not be written....
"I shall be very lonely when I come out, and I can't stand loneliness
and solitude; it is intolerable to me, hateful, I have had too much of
it....
"You see, Frank, I am breaking with the past altogether. I am going to
write the history of it. I am going to tell how I was tempted and fell,
how I was pushed by the man I loved into that dreadful quarrel of his,
driven forward to the fight with his father and then left to suffer
alone....
"That is the story I am now going to tell. That is the book[6] of pity
and of love which I am writing now--a terrible book....
"I wonder would you publish it, Frank? I should like it to appear in
_The Saturday_."
"I'd be delighted to publish anything of yours," I replied, "and happier
still to publish something to show that you have at length chosen the
better part and are beginning a new life. I'd pay you, too, whatever the
work turns out to be worth to me; in any case much more than I pay
Bernard Shaw or anyone else." I said this to encourage him.
"I'm sure of that," he answered. "I'll send you the book as soon as I've
finished it. I think you'll like it"--and there for the moment the
matter ended.
At length I felt sure that all would be well with him. How could I help
feeling sure? His mind was richer and stronger than it had ever been;
and he had broken with all the dark past. I was overjoyed to believe
that he would yet do greater things than he had ever done, and this
belief and determination were in him too, as anyone can see on reading
what he wrote at this time in prison:
"There is before me so much to do that I would regard it as a terrible
tragedy if I died before I was allowed to complete at any rate a little
of it. I see new developments in art and life, each one of which is a
fresh mode of perfection. I long to live so that I can explore what is
no less than a new world to me. Do you want to know what this new world
is? I think you can guess what it is. It is the world in which I have
been living. Sorrow, then, and all that it teaches one, is my new
world....
"I used to live entirely for pleasure. I shunned suffering and sorrow of
every kind. I hated both...."
Through the prison bars Oscar had begun to see how mistaken he had been,
how much greater, and more salutary to the soul, suffering is than
pleasure.
"Out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child
or a star there is pain."
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Cfr. Appendix: "Criticisms by Robert Ross."
[4] I give Oscar's view of the trial just to show how his romantic
imagination turned disagreeable facts into pleasant fiction. Oscar could
only have heard of the trial, and perhaps his mother was his
informant--which adds to the interest of the story.
[5] Permission to visit a dying mother is accorded in France, even to
murderers. The English pretend to be more religious than the French; but
are assuredly less humane.
[6] "De Profundis." What Oscar called "the terrible part" of the
book--the indictment of Lord Alfred Douglas--has since been read out in
Court and will be found in the Appendix to this volume.