'One evening we were walking as usual, one behind the other, during the hour's exercise, when suddenly behind me I heard my name called. It was the prisoner who followed me, and he said, "Oscar Wilde, I pity you, because you must suffer more than we do." Then I made a great effort not to be noticed (I thought I was going to faint), and I said without turning round, "No, my friend, we all suffer alike." And from that day I no longer had a desire to kill myself. We talked in that way for several days. I knew his name and what he had done. His name was P——; he was such a good fellow; oh! so good. But I had not yet learned to speak without moving my lips, and one evening,—"C.3.3." (C.3.3. was myself), "C.3.3. and A.4.8. step out of the ranks."
'Then we stood out, and the warder said, "You will both have to go before the Governor." And as pity had already entered into my heart, my only fear was for him; in fact I was even glad that I might suffer for his sake. But the Governor was quite terrible. He had P—— in first; he was going to question us separately, because you must know that the punishment is not the same for the one who speaks first, and for the one who answers; the punishment of the one who speaks first is double that of the other. As a rule the first has fifteen days' solitary confinement, and the second has eight days only. Then the Governor wanted to know which of us had spoken first, and naturally P——, good fellow that he was, said it was he. And afterwards when the Governor had me in to question me, I, of course, said it was I. Then the Governor got very red because he could not understand it. "But P—— also says that it was he who began it. I cannot understand it. I cannot understand it."
'Think of it, my dear fellow, he could not understand it. He became very much embarrassed and said, "But I have already given him fifteen days," and then he added, "Anyhow, if that is the case, I shall give you both fifteen days." Is not that extraordinary? That man had not a spark of imagination[5].'
Wilde was vastly amused at what he was saying, and laughed—he was happy telling stories. 'And, of course,' he continued, 'after the fifteen days we were much more anxious to speak to one another than before. You do not know how sweet that is, to feel that one is suffering for another. Gradually, as we did not go in the same order each day, I was able to talk to each of the others, to all of them, every one of them. I knew each one's name and each one's history, and when each was due to be released. And to each one I said, "When you get out of prison, the first thing you must do is to go to the Post Office, and there you will find a letter for you with some money." And so in that way I still know them, because I keep up my friendship with them. And there is something quite delightful in them. Would you believe it, already three of them have been to see me here? Is not that quite wonderful?'
'The successor of the harsh Governor was a very charming man—oh! remarkably so—and most considerate to me. You cannot imagine how much good it did me in prison that Salomé[6] was being played in Paris just at that time. In prison, it had been entirely forgotten that I was a literary person, but when they saw that my play was a success in Paris, they said to one another, "Well, but that is strange; he has talent, then." And from that moment they let me have all the books I wanted to read[7]. I thought, at first, that what would please me most would be Greek literature, so I asked for Sophocles, but I could not get a relish for it. Then I thought of the Fathers of the Church, but I found them equally uninteresting. And suddenly I thought of Dante. Oh! Dante. I read Dante every day, in Italian, and all through, but neither the Purgatorio nor the Paradiso seemed written for me. It was his Inferno above all that I read; how could I help liking it? Cannot you guess? Hell, we were in it—Hell, that was prison!'[8]
That same evening he told me a clever story about Judas, and of his proposed drama on Pharaoh. Next day he took me to a charming little house[9], about two hundred yards from the hotel, which he had rented and was beginning to furnish. It was there that he wanted to write his plays—his Pharoah first, and then one called Ahab and Jezebel (he pronounced it 'Isabelle'), which he related to me admirably.
The carriage which was to take me away was waiting, and Wilde got into it to accompany me part of the way. He began talking to me again about my book, and praised it, though with some slight reserve, I thought. At last the carriage stopped; he bade me good-bye, and was just going to get out, when he suddenly said, 'Listen, my dear friend, you must promise me one thing. Your Nourritures Terrestres is good, very good, but promise me you will never write a capital "I" again.' And as I seemed scarcely to understand what he meant, he finished up by saying, 'In Art, you see, there is no first person.'
[1] A literary friend who, a few years later, in collaboration, with another, translated Dorian Gray into French.
[2] 'No more beautiful life has any man lived, no more beautiful life could any man live than Oscar Wilde lived during the short period I knew him in prison. He wore upon his face an eternal smile; sunshine was on his face, sunshine of some sort must have been in his heart. People say he was not sincere: he was the very soul of sincerity when I knew him. If he did not continue that life after he left prison, then the forces of evil must have been too strong for him. But he tried, he honestly tried, and in prison he succeeded.'—From a Letter written to the Translator.
[3] An archaic French word from the Latin laetitia.