One would say that it was not the sort of book which would become popular; nevertheless, more than twenty editions have been published in English, and it has been translated into French, German, Italian, and Russian.
It was inevitable that “De Profundis” should become the subject of controversy: Oscar Wilde’s sincerity has always been challenged; he was called affected. His answer to this charge is complete and conclusive: “The value of an idea has nothing whatever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it.”
For many years, indeed until quite recently, his name cast a blight over all his work. This was inevitable, but it was inevitable also that the work of such a genius should sooner or later be recognized.
Only a few years ago I heard a cultured lady say, “I never expected to hear his name mentioned in polite society again.” But the time is rapidly approaching when Oscar Wilde will come into his own, when he will be recognized as one of the greatest and most original writers of his time. When shall we English-speaking people learn that a man’s work is one thing and his life another?
It is much to be regretted that Wilde’s life did not end with “De Profundis”; but his misfortunes were to continue. After his release from prison he went to France, where he lived under the name of Sebastian Melmoth: but as Sherard, his biographer, says, “He hankered after respectability.” It was no longer the social distinction which the unthinking crave when they have all else: this great writer, he who had been for a brief moment the idol of cultured London, sought mere respectability, and sought it in vain.
Only when he was neglected and despised, miserable and broken in spirit, sincere feeling at last overcame the affectation which was his real nature and he wrote his one great poem, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol.” No longer could the “Saturday Review” “search in vain for the personal touch of thought and music”: the thought is there, very simple and direct and personal without a doubt: the music is no longer the modulated noise of his youth. The Ballad is an almost faultless work of art. What could be more impressive than the description of daybreak in prison:—
At last I saw the shadowed bars,
Like a lattice wrought in lead,
Move right across the whitewashed wall
That faced my three-plank bed,
And I knew that somewhere in the world
God’s dreadful dawn was red.
The life begun with such promise drew to a close: an outcast, deserted by his friends, the few who remained true to him he insulted and abused. He became dissipated, wandered from France to Italy and back again. In mercy it were well to draw the curtain. The end came in Paris with the close of the century he had done so much to adorn. He died on November 30, 1900, and was buried, by his faithful friend, Robert Ross, in a grave which was leased for a few years in Bagneux Cemetery.
The kindness of Robert Ross to Oscar Wilde is one of the most touching things in literary history. The time has not yet come to speak of it at length, but the facts are known and will not always be withheld. Owing largely to his efforts, a permanent resting-place was secured a few years ago in the most famous cemetery in France, the Père Lachaise. There, in an immense sarcophagus of granite, curiously carved, were placed the remains of him who wrote:—
“Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rock where I may hide, and sweet 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.”