THE THIRD PERIOD
This beautiful thread of brightness in the dark warp and woof of Wilde's life at this moment must not be forgotten by those who would estimate his character. It is one of the few relieving lights in the blackness with which the third period opens. And yet, there is still something that can be said for Wilde at this time which certainly provides the student with another aspect of him. It is the way in which he met his fate and was prepared to endure his punishment, although it would have been simple for him to have avoided it. To avoid the consequences of what he had done, inasmuch as the ruin of his career is concerned, was, of course, impossible. That, indeed, was to be the heaviest part of his penalty. Yet, had he so chosen, imprisonment and the frightful agony of the two years need never have been his portion. A French critic writing of him in the Mercure de France takes an analytical view of this fact, which I do not think is the true one, though, nevertheless, it is interesting. He says: "Neither his own heedlessness nor the envious and hypocritical anger of his enemies, nor the snobbish cruelty of social reprobation were the true cause of his misfortunes. It was he himself who, after a time of horrible anguish, consented to his punishment, with a sort of supercilious disdain for the weakness of human will, and out of a certain regard and unhealthy curiosity for the sportfulness of fate. Here was a voluptuary seeking for torture and desiring pain after having wallowed in every sensual pleasure. Can such conduct have been due to aught else but sheer madness?"
That is all very well, but it does not bear the stamp of truth. It is an interesting point of view and nothing more. The conduct of Wilde when he at last came athwart the horror of his destiny, when he realised what all the world realised, that he must answer for his sins before the public justice of England, was not unheroic, nor without a fine and splendid dignity. At this time I would much prefer to say, and all the experiences of those around him confirm it, that Wilde knew that it was his duty to himself to endure what society was about to mete out to him. To say that he was a mere gloomy and jaded voluptuary who wished to taste the pleasures of the most horrible and sordid pain, is surely to talk something perilously like nonsense, though full of one of those minute psychological presumptions so dear to a certain type of Latin mind.
Let it be remembered that Oscar Wilde refused to betray his friends, and in the light of that fact, let us see whether his motive for remaining in England to "face the music," as his brother, William Wilde, expressed it, was not something high and worthy in the midst of this hideous wreck and bankruptcy of his fortune. A friend who was with him then, his biographer, and a man of position in English letters, said that when the subject of flight was discussed, he declared to Wilde that, in his opinion, it was the best thing he could do, not only in his own interests but in those of the public too. This self-sacrificing friend offered to take all the responsibility of the flight upon his own shoulders and to make all the arrangements for it being carried out.
It must be remembered that, at the time Wilde was out on bail, and it has since been proved, with as much certainty as anything of the sort can be proved, that he was not watched by the police, and that even between the periods of his first and second trials, if he had secretly left the country and sought a safe asylum on the Continent, everybody would have felt relieved and the public would have been spared a repetition of the horrors which had already filled the pages of the newspapers to repletion. After the collapse of the action Oscar Wilde brought against Lord Queensberry, he was allowed several hours before the warrant for his arrest was executed in order that he might leave the country. "But imitative of great men in their whims and fancies, he refused to imitate the base in acts which he deemed cowardly. I do not think he ever seriously considered the question of leaving the country, and this, in spite of the fact that the gentleman who was responsible for almost the whole of the bail, had said, 'it will practically ruin me if I lose all that money at the present moment, but if there is a chance, even after conviction, in God's name let him go.'"
Whatever Wilde's motive was for staying to "face the music," we cannot deny that it was fine. Either he felt that he must endure the punishment society was to give him because he had outraged the law of society, or else he was unwilling to ruin the disinterested and noble-minded man—a gentleman who had only the slightest acquaintance with him—who had furnished the amount of his bail.
Let these facts be written to his credit and considered when the readers of this memoir pass their judgment upon his character.
At the beginning of this third period public opinion which, but a short time ago, had simply meant a chorus of public adulation, except for a minority of people who either envied his successes or honestly reprobated his attitude towards art and life, was now terribly bitter, venomous, and full of spleen and hatred.
Society, however much society was disposed to deny the fact, had set up an idol in their midst. It was partly owing to the senseless and indiscriminate adulation of its idol that its foundations were undermined and that it fell with so resonant a crash. When it was down society assailed it with every ingenuity of reprobation and hatred that it knew how to voice and use.
Nothing was too bad to be said about the erstwhile favourite who, let it be remembered, was not yet adjudged guilty but who, if ever a man was, was denied the application of the prime principle of English criminal law, which says that every man accused is to be deemed innocent until guilt has been proved against him. People gloated over the downfall.
When Wilde was first arrested and placed in Holloway, and before he was admitted to bail, the more scurrilous portion of the press was full of sickening pictures, both in line and words, of the fallen creature's agony.
Contrasts were drawn by little pens dipped in venom, and the writer of this memoir has in his possession a curious and saddening collection of the screeds of those days, a collection which shows how innate the principle of cruelty is still in the human mind despite centuries of civilisation and the influence of the Cross, which forbids gladiators to slay each other in the arena but allows a more subtle and terrible form of savage sport than anything that Nero or Caligula ever saw or promulgated.
It is unnecessary to quote largely from the productions which disgraced the English press at this time. One single article will serve to prove the point. Let those who read it learn tolerance from this mock sympathy and cruel dwelling upon the tortures of one so recently high in public popularity and esteem, still presumably innocent by English law, and yet placed under the vulgar microscope of the morbid-minded and the lovers of sensation at any cost.
"Figuratively speaking but yesterday Oscar Wilde was the man of the hour, and to him, and him alone, we looked for our wit, our epigrams, and our learned and interesting plays. But what a change! To-day, Oscar Wilde, the wit, the epicure, is gone from his world, and is languishing in a dreary cell in Holloway Prison. In short, Mr Wilde, in a moment of weak-headedness, walked over the side of the mountain of fame and fell headlong from its height to the morass below, to lie there forgotten, neglected and abused.
"Yes, although I have little or no sympathy with Oscar Wilde I cannot but help feeling for him in his altered circumstances. He is a man who from his very infancy has been nursed in the lap of luxury, and has systematically lived on the fat of the land. Mr Wilde's residence in Tite Street was elegantly and luxuriously furnished. His rooms at the Cadogan Hotel were all that comfort could desire. His room, or rather cell, in Holloway Prison is altogether undesirable, is badly furnished, ill-lighted, and uncomfortable. Picture to yourself this change—yes, a change effected within twenty-four hours—and then you can imagine what the mental and physical sufferings of a man of the Oscar Wilde temperament must be. It is in this sense alone that my sympathy goes out towards him, and I feel as a man for another man who has been suddenly snatched from the lap of indolent, free livelihood and suddenly pitched foremost into the icelike crevasse of a British prison cell.
"I will now describe in as few words as I possibly can, but with absolute accuracy and detail, the cell in which Mr Wilde spends his time and the manner in which he lives. The cell in which Oscar is incarcerated is not an ordinary one—that is, it is not one that is used by any condemned or ordinary prisoner under remand. The cell is known in prison parlance as a 'special cell,' for the use of which a fee is payable to the authorities, and is the same one as was occupied by a certain well-known Duchess some few months back when she was committed by the Queen's Bench Judges for contempt of court. The prison authorities only supply the 'cell,' the prisoner himself has to find his own furniture, which he usually hires, by the advice of one of the warders, from a local firm who have a suite they keep for the use of this 'special cell' in Holloway. When Mr Wilde arrived at the prison last Saturday week afternoon this 'cell' was vacant. He promptly gave orders for the furniture to be brought in, and in an incredibly short space of time the cell was furnished, and the distinguished prisoner took possession of his apartment. I will first describe the room, and then take one typical day in the prison routine, which will clearly show the kind of life that Mr Wilde is compelled to live.
"Now to the cell. The room is situated at the far end of the east wing of the prison, and is entered from the long passage which runs from the head warder's rooms past the convict cells, and terminates at the door which protects Oscar from the common herd, and helps to make him secure. The door is an ordinary prison cell door, possessing spyholes and flaptrap, and large iron bars and locks. The cell itself is about 10 ft. broad, 12 ft. long, and 11 ft. high. The walls are not papered but whitewashed, and the light by which the room is supplied is obtained through an iron-barred window in the wall placed high up and well out of the prisoner's reach. A small fireplace is also fixed securely at the end of the room, but it is seldom lit, as the room is well heated by hot-water pipes. Now to the furniture in the room. Just on the right-hand side of the window is placed a table made of hard, white wood. No cloth covers it, but at the back is placed a looking-glass, whilst on the table itself is a water jug and a Bible. Near the table and almost under the window is an arm-chair, in which Oscar spends most of his time. But more of this anon. In the corner near the fireplace is placed a small camp bedstead, which is so small that it seems almost an impossibility that so massive a form as that of Oscar could recline with any ease upon so small a space. No feather bed is upon the iron supports, and the sleeper is compelled to repose upon hard—probably too hard—mattresses. The bed is supplied with sheets, blankets, and a cover quilt, made up of patches of all colours of the rainbow. This quilt is not pretty, and most considerably upsets the artistic being of a man like Wilde. A small table on the other side of the room, another chair, and a small metal washing stand, go to make up all the furniture the room possesses. No carpet is on the floor, but the boards are kept scrupulously clean. This I think briefly comprises a description of Mr Wilde's residential and sleeping compartment. Now to his daily routine and the life he is compelled to lead. He is awakened by a warder at six o'clock, and whether he likes it or not, is compelled to get up. After washing himself in cold water—hot is not permitted—and using ordinary common soap, Mr Wilde dresses himself, and to do him justice, he turns himself out very neat and span considering he has no valet to wait upon him. At seven o'clock one of the convicted prisoners enters Mr Wilde's cell, cleans up the room, makes the bed, and generally tidies up the place. For this service the prisoner receives 1s. per week, and it usually takes him quite half-an-hour per day to get through his work. Truly a munificent remuneration, but then prison regulations, whenever reasonable, are on the side of liberality. At half-past seven o'clock Wilde's breakfast, usually consisting of tea, ham and eggs, or a chop, toast and bread and butter, arrives from a well-known restaurant in Holloway. Of course Mr Wilde pays for the food, and, within reason, can eat and drink what he pleases.
"At nine o'clock Mr Wilde is compelled to leave his cell, and proceed to the exercising yard of the prison, and for one hour he is compelled to walk at regulation pace round a kind of tower erected in the centre of the yard. After exercise the distinguished prisoner returns to his cell, and the daily newspapers are brought to him, for which he also pays. Mr Wilde sits during the time he is in his cell in the chair by the window, and then reads his papers. He, however, has moments of very low-spiritedness, and becomes almost despondent in the moods. The sketch in this issue represents him seated in his favourite chair, with a paper in his hand, and, after an interview with his solicitor, Mr Wilde is very fond, when his active brain is working too deeply, to push back his hair from off his forehead and then leave the hand on the head, and, as if staring into vacancy, sit for hours in this position thinking deeply. But, to continue, at twelve o'clock Mr Wilde's lunch arrives from the restaurant, for which he pays. It consists of a cut off the joint, vegetables, cheese, and biscuits and water, or one glass of wine. After lunch he is again taken to the exercise ground for an hour, and then sent back to his cell. Still seated in his chair, he still reads his papers, and thinks out improbable problems. Sometimes one of his friends comes to see him. On these occasions he brightens up, but after the visits of his solicitor he is visibly very low-spirited and morose. At six o'clock Mr Wilde's dinner—for which he pays—arrives. It consists usually of soup, fish, joint, or game, cheese, and half-a-pint of any wine he chooses to select. The dinner finished, Mr Wilde sits again in his chair, and the agony he endures at not being allowed even a whiff at his favourite cigarette must to him be agony indeed. At eight o'clock a warder enters his room and places a lamp on the table to light the room. At nine o'clock the same warder again enters the room and gives Oscar five minutes to undress himself and get into bed. He complies willingly but with a sigh. When he is safely in bed the warder removes the lamp, bolts and locks the door, and leaves Oscar to sleep or remain awake thinking, just as he pleases. Oscar, however, does not sleep much. He is out of bed most of the night, and in unstockinged feet paces the room in apparently not too good a mood. Yes, poor Oscar, I do pity you."
The trial, at which the accused man was admitted by everyone to have comported himself with a dignity and resignation that had nothing of that levity and occasional pose which must be allowed to have characterised his attitude during the two former ordeals, came to a close. Wilde was sentenced to prison for two years' hard labour.
During the trial, of course, no comment was permissible, though there were not wanting some papers who committed contempt of court. When, however, the sentence had been pronounced and Wilde as a man with a place in society—I am using the word society here not in its limited but its economic sense—had ceased to exist, then the thunders of the important and influential journals were let loose.
The Daily Telegraph which, to do it justice, had never been sympathetic to Wilde in his days of prosperity and fame, came out with a most weighty and severe condemnation. The article, from which I am about to quote an extract, certainly represented the opinion of the country at the time—as The Daily Telegraph has nearly always represented the mass of opinion of the country at any given moment. To the sympathisers with Wilde this article will seem unnecessarily cruel and severe. But to those who have taken into account the best that has been written herein about him during this terrible third period, and who have realised that the writer simply states facts and does not desire to comment on them, the article will seem only a natural and dignified expression of a truth which was hardly controvertible.
"No sterner rebuke could well have been inflicted on some of the artistic tendencies of the time than the condemnation on Saturday of Oscar Wilde at the Central Criminal Court. We have not the slightest intention of reviewing once more all the sordid incidents of a case which has done enough, and more than enough, to shock the conscience and outrage the moral instincts of the community. The man has now suffered the penalties of his career, and may well be allowed to pass from that platform of publicity which he loved into that limbo of disrepute and forgetfulness which is his due. The grave of contemptuous oblivion may rest on his foolish ostentation, his empty paradoxes, his insufferable posturing, his incurable vanity. Nevertheless, when we remember that he enjoyed a certain popularity among some sections of society, and, above all, when we reflect that what was smiled at as insolent braggadocio was the cover for, or at all events ended in, flagrant immorality, it is well, perhaps, that the lesson of his life should not be passed over without some insistence on the terrible warning of his fate. Young men at the universities, clever sixth-form boys at public schools, silly women who lend an ear to any chatter which is petulant and vivacious, novelists who have sought to imitate the style of paradox and unreality, poets who have lisped the language of nerveless and effeminate libertinage—these are the persons who should ponder with themselves the doctrines and the career of the man who has now to undergo the righteous sentence of the law. We speak sometimes of a school of Decadents and Æsthetes in England, although it may well be doubted whether at any time its prominent members could not have been counted on the fingers of one hand; but, quite apart from any fixed organisation or body such as may or may not exist in Paris, there has lately shown itself in London a contemporary bias of thought, an affected manner of expression and style, and a few loudly vaunted ideas which have had a limited but evil influence on all the better tendencies of art and literature. Of these the prisoner of Saturday constituted himself a representative. He set an example, so far as in him lay, to the weaker and the younger brethren; and, just because he possessed considerable intellectual powers and unbounded assurance, his fugitive success served to dazzle and bewilder those who had neither experience nor knowledge of the principles which he travestied, or of that true temple of art of which he was so unworthy an acolyte. Let us hope that his removal will serve to clear the poisoned air, and make it cleaner and purer for all healthy and unvitiated lungs."
It was the duty of a great journal to say what it said. Yet, nevertheless, a certain wave of sorrow seemed to pass over the press generally, and hostile comment on the débâcle was not unmingled with regret for the unhappy man himself. The doctrines he was supposed to have preached to the world at large were sternly denied and thundered against. His own fate was, in the majority of cases, treated with a sorrowful regret.
Yet, nobody realised at all that in condemning what was supposed to be the teaching and doctrine of Oscar Wilde, they were condemning merely supposititious deduction from his manner of life, which could not be in the least substantiated by any single line he had ever written.
All through this first part of the book I have insisted upon the fact that the man's life and the man's work should not be regarded as identical. To-day, as I write, that attitude has taken complete possession of the public mind. As was said in the first few pages of the memoir, the whole of Europe is taking a sympathetic and intelligent interest in the supreme art of the genius who produced so many beautiful things. The public seems to have learned its lesson at last, but at the beginning of what I have called the third period it was unable to differentiate between the criminal, part of whose life was shameful, and the artist, all of whose works were pure, stimulating, and splendid. I quote but a few words from the printed comments upon Wilde's downfall. They are taken from the well-known society paper Truth, and the writer seems to strike only a note of wonder and amazement. The horrible fact of Wilde's conviction had startled England, had startled the writer, and a writer by no means unsympathetic in effect, into the following paragraphs:—
"For myself, I turned into the Lyceum for half-an-hour, just to listen, when the performance was actually stopped by the great shout of congratulation that welcomed the first entrance of 'Sir Henry.' Yet, through all these cheers I seemed to hear the dull rumble of the prison van in which Oscar Wilde made his last exit—to Holloway. While the great actor-manager stood in the plenitude of position bowing and bowing again, to countless friends and admirers, again there rose before my eyes the last ghastly scene at the Old Bailey—I heard the voice of the foreman in its low but steady answer, 'Guilty,' 'Guilty,' 'Guilty,' as count after count was rehearsed by the clerk. I heard again that last awful admonition from the judge. I remembered how there had flitted through my mind the recollection of a night at St James's, the cigarette, and the green carnation, as the prisoner, broken, beaten, tottering, tried to steady himself against the dock rail and asked in a strange, dry, ghostlike voice if he might address the judge. Then came the volley of hisses, the prison warders, the rapid break-up of the Court, the hurry into the blinding sunshine outside, where some half-score garishly dressed, loose women of the town danced on the pavement a kind of carmagnole of rejoicing at the verdict. 'He'll 'ave 'is 'air cut regglar now,' says one of them; and the others laughed stridently. I came away. I did not laugh, for the matter is much too serious for laughter.
"The more I think about the case of Oscar Wilde, my dear Dick, the more astounding does the whole thing seem to me. So far as the man himself is concerned, it would be charitable to assume that he is not quite sane. Without considering—for the moment—the moral aspect of the matter, here was a man who must have known that the commission of certain acts constituted in the eye of the Law a criminal offence. But no thought of wife or children, no regard, to put it selfishly, for his own brilliant prospects, could induce him to curb a depraved appetite which led him—a gentleman and a scholar—to consort with the vilest and most depraved scum of the town."
Although, as I have said, printed comment was in one way reserved and not ungenerous, the public and spoken comment on the case was utterly and totally cruel. Those readers who remember the period of which I am writing will bear me witness as to the universal chorus of hatred which rose and bubbled all over the country.
This was natural enough.
One cannot expect mob law to be tolerant or to understand the myriad issues and influences which go to make up any given event. The public was right from its own point of view in all it said. To give instances from personal recollection or the personal recollection of others of this terrible shout of condemnation and hatred would be too painful for writer and reader alike.
While in prison Oscar Wilde wrote his marvellous book "De Profundis." The reader will find that work very fully dealt with in its due place in this work. It is not, therefore, necessary to say very much about it in this first part of the volume which I have headed "Oscar Wilde: the Man." It may not be out of place, however, to say that grave doubts were thrown upon the truth of the statement that the book was written in prison. Upon its publication rumours were circulated that the author wrote "De Profundis" at his ease in Paris or in Naples, and finally the rumours crystallised in a letter which was sent to The St James's Gazette, the gist of which was as follows:—
"I have very strong doubts that it was written in prison, and the gentleman who asserts that he received the MSS. before the expiration of the sentence in Reading Gaol ought to procure a confirmatory testimony to a proceeding which is contrary to all prison discipline. If there is one thing more strictly carried out than another it is that a prisoner shall not be allowed to handle pen, ink, and paper, except when he writes the letter to his friends, which, until the Prison Act, 1899, was once every three months. Each prisoner can amuse himself with a slate and pencil, but not pen and ink. It is now, and was, absolutely forbidden by the prison authorities.
"As was seen in Adolf Beck's case, where nine petitions appear in the Commissioner's Report (Blue Book), a prisoner's liberty, fortune, reputation, and life may be at stake, but he must tell his story on two and a half sheets of foolscap. Not a scrap of paper is allowed over the regulation sheets. In a local prison Oscar Wilde could apply for the privilege of a special visit or a letter, and probably would receive it, but as the official visitors of prisoners are simply parts of a solemn farce, and there is no such stereotyped method as giving a prisoner the slightest relief in matters affecting the intellect, I have grave doubts that such facilities were given as supplying pen, ink and paper to write 'De Profundis.'
"If it was otherwise the following process would have had to be gone through, either an application to the official prison visitor (possibly Major Arthur Griffiths) for leave to have pen, ink and paper in his cell, which would be refused. By the influence of friends, or the statement of his solicitors that they required special instructions in reference to some evidence, his case, or his property, leave might be granted, but not for journalistic or literary purposes. Had Oscar Wilde's sentence been that of a 'first-class misdemeanant' he could have had those privileges, but I never heard that his sentence was mitigated in this respect.
"Or, he might have applied to the visiting magistrates. In either case there would be a record of such facilities, and the Governor of Reading Gaol, the chaplain, and other officials can satisfy the public as well as the Prison Commissioners. If the book was written in prison then it is clear the officials made a distinction between Oscar Wilde and other prisoners.
"There is some glamour about books written in prisons. The 'Pilgrim's Progress' is a prison book, but Bedford Gaol was a pretty easy dungeon. Under the old régime such men as William Corbett, Orator Hunt, and Richard Carlile, conducted their polemic warfare in prison. The last Chartist leader (the late Mr Ernest Jones) used to tell how he wrote the 'Painter of Florence' and other poems in a London gaol while confined for sedition. It was a common subject of conversation with his young disciples how, as ink was denied in Coldbath Street Prison, he made incisions in his arm and wrote his poetry in his own blood. We believed it then, but as we grew older that feeling of doubt made us sceptical. Thomas Cooper's prison rhyme, the 'Purgatory of Suicides,' and his novel, the 'Baron's Yule Feast,' were written during his two years' imprisonment in Stafford Gaol for preaching a 'universal strike' as a means of establishing a British Republic.
"As 'De Profundis' is likely to be a classic, is it not as well to have this question thrashed out at the beginning and not leave it to the twenty-first century?"
The editor of "De Profundis" replied in a short letter saying, in effect, that he was not concerned to add anything to his definite statement in the preface of the book, a course with which everyone will be in agreement. To answer a busybody throwing doubts upon the statement of an honourable gentleman is a mistake. The matter, however, went a little further and was eventually set finally at rest.
In The Daily Mirror a facsimile of a page of the manuscript written on prison paper was reproduced, and Mr Hamilton Fyfe accompanied the letterpress by informing the public that he had seen the whole of the manuscript of "De Profundis." It was written on blue foolscap paper with the prison stamp on the top. There were about 60,000 words, of which altogether not more than one-third were published in the English edition. The explanation of the fact that the prisoner was allowed to write in his cell is perfectly simple.
Oscar Wilde handed this roll of paper to Mr Robert Ross on the day of his release, and gave him absolute discretion as to printing it. He had written most of it during the last three months of his two years' sentence. It was during the last half-year of his term that Wilde was allowed the special privilege of writing as much as he pleased. His friends represented to the Home Office that a man who had been accustomed to use his brain so continually was in danger of having his mind injured by being unable to write for so long a time as two years.
Dr Nicholson, of Broadmoor, who was consulted on the point, said he thought this danger was quite a real one. So the necessary permission was given, and Wilde could write whatever he liked.
Later on the prison regulations were relaxed again. As a rule, prisoners are not allowed to take away with them what they have written in their cells. Strictly, the MS. of "De Profundis" ought to have remained among the archives of Reading Gaol.
The authorities realised, however, that to enforce this rule in Wilde's case would have been harsh and unreasonable, so when (in order to defeat the intentions of the late Lord Queensberry and his hired bullies) he was removed from Reading to Wandsworth Prison, on the evening before his release he took the MS. with him; and he had it under his arm when he left the gloomy place next morning a free man.
This statement, and the facsimile printed above, should make it impossible henceforward for anyone to suggest, as many have been suggesting quite recently, that there is any doubt about the whole of the book having been written by Oscar Wilde during the time he was in prison.
The development of Oscar Wilde during his incarceration has, of course, been summed up and stated for all time by himself in the marvellous pages of "De Profundis." Yet, there are various accounts of that time of agony which do but go to show what a really purifying and salutary influence even the awful torture he underwent had upon the unhappy man. By those who knew him in prison he is described as living a life which, in its simple resignation, its kindly gentleness, its sweetness of demeanour, was the life of a saint. No bitterness or harsh word ever escaped him. When opportunity occurred of doing some tiny and furtive kindness that kindness was always forthcoming. Those who rejoiced at the fact of Wilde's imprisonment may well pause now when the true story of it has filtered through various channels and is generally known. He himself told Monsieur André Gide a strange and pathetic story of those silent, unhappy hours.
He speaks of one of the Governors under whose rule he lay in durance, and says that this gentleman imposed needless suffering upon his unhappy charges, not because of any inherent cruelty or contravention of the rules for prison discipline, but because he was entirely lacking in imagination.
On one occasion, during the hour allowed for exercise, a prisoner who walked behind Wilde upon the circular pathway of the yard addressed him by name, and told him that he pitied him even more than he pitied himself, because his sufferings must be greater than his. Such a sudden word of sympathy from an unknown fellow-convict gave the poor poet an exquisite moment of pleasure and pain. He answered him appropriately with a word of thanks. But one of the warders had been a witness of the occasion, and the matter was reported to the Governor. Two convicts had been guilty of the outrage of exchanging a few words. The unknown convict was taken first before the Governor. It is a prison regulation that the punishment is not the same for the man who speaks first and the man who answers him. The first offender has to pay a double penalty. The Convict X., when before the Governor, stated that he was the culprit and that he had spoken first. When afterwards Wilde was taken before the martinet, he very naturally told him that he himself was the principal offender. The Governor stated that he was unable to understand the matter at all. He grew red and uneasy, and told Wilde that he had already given X. fifteen days' solitary confinement. He then stated that as Wilde had also confessed to be the principal offender he should award him fifteen days' solitary confinement also!
This touching incident shows both Wilde and the unknown convict in a noble light, but the gentle way in which Oscar told of the incident to the French journalist is even a greater tribute to the innate dignity of his character, so long obscured by the exigencies of his life, so beautifully laid bare when he had paid his debt to society.
There are other anecdotes extant which confirm the above. All go to show that the third period brought out the finest traits in Wilde's character. We have in this period another and most touching side of the complex temperament of this great genius, this extraordinary and unhappy man. Much will have to be said on this point when the criticism of "De Profundis" is reached.
Meanwhile, I close the "third period" with a sense that here, at anyrate, there is nothing to be said which is not wholly fragrant and redolent of sincerity.