From Harris’s “Oscar Wilde and His Confessions” I quote Wilde’s most striking defensive statement at his trial:
“The ‘love’ that dare not speak its name in this century is such a great affection of an older for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very base of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michael Angelo and Shakespeare—a deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect, and dictates great works of art like those of Shakespeare and Michael Angelo and those two letters of mine [evidence against him], such as they are, and which is in this century misunderstood—so misunderstood that, on account of it, I am placed where I am now [in the prisoner’s dock]. It is beautiful; it is fine; it is the noblest form of affection. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope, and glamor of life. That it should be so the world does not understand. It mocks at it and sometimes puts one into the pillory for it.”
Subsequently his confidant, Harris, asked in private: “There is another point against you which you have not touched on yet: Gill asked you what you had in common with those serving men and stable boys? You have not explained that.”
“Difficult to explain, Frank, isn’t it, without the truth?” ... “How weary I am of the whole thing, of the shame and the struggling and the hatred. To see those people coming into the box one after the other to witness against me makes me sick.... Oh, it’s terrible. I feel inclined to stretch out my hands and cry to them, ‘Do what you will with me, in God’s name, only do it quickly; cannot you see that I am worn out? If hatred gives you pleasure, indulge it.’”
In other conversations with Harris, Wilde justified his penchant, as narrated in the biography, as follows:
“There is no general rule of health; it is all personal, individual.... I only demand that freedom which I willingly concede to others. No one condemns another for preferring green to gold. Why should any taste be ostracised? Liking and disliking are not under our control. I want to choose the nourishment which suits my body and my soul.”
“Each man ought to do what he likes, to develop as he will.... They punished me because I did not share their tastes. What an absurdity it all was! How dared they punish me for what is good in my eyes?...”
“What you call vice, Frank, is not vice.... It has been made a crime in recent times.... They all damn the sins they have no mind to, and that’s their morality.... Why, even Bentham refused to put what you call a vice in his penal code, and you yourself admitted that it should not be punished as a crime; for it carries no temptation with it. It may be a malady; but, if so, it appears only to attack the highest natures.... The wit of man can find no argument which justifies its punishment.... You admit you don’t share the prejudice; you don’t feel the horror, the instinctive loathing. Why? Because you are educated, Frank, because you know that the passion Socrates felt was not a low passion, because you know that Caesar’s weakness, let us say, or the weakness of Michael Angelo, or of Shakespeare, is not despicable. If the desire is not a characteristic of the highest humanity, at least it is consistent with it.... Suppose I like a food that is poison to other people, and yet quickens me; how dare they punish me for eating of it?... It is all ignorant prejudice, Frank; the world is slowly growing more tolerant and one day men will be ashamed of their barbarous treatment of me, as they are now ashamed of the torturing of the Middle Ages.”
Harris constitutes himself an apologist for his friend. He outlines a conversation in which he defended Wilde during the time of the latter’s imprisonment. After demolishing the argument of a leading English journalist that “any one living a clean life is worth more than a writer of love songs or the maker of clever comedies”—Mr. John Smith worth more than Shakespeare [who was a rake and very likely a psychical hermaphrodite], Harris “pointed out that Wilde’s offence was pathological and not criminal and would not be punished in a properly constituted state.” Harris is quoted further:
“You admit that we punish crime to prevent it spreading; wipe this sin off the statute book and you would not increase the sinners by one: then why punish them?”