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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Trial of Oscar Wilde, by Anonymous
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Trial of Oscar Wilde
+       From the Shorthand Reports
+
+Author: Anonymous
+
+Release Date: February 18, 2012 [EBook #38916]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRIAL OF OSCAR WILDE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Trial of Oscar Wilde
+
+
+
+
+  Issued for Private Circulation Only and
+  Limited to 50 Copies on Japanese Vellum
+  and Five Hundred Copies on Handmade Paper
+  Numbered from One to Five Hundred and Fifty.
+
+  No 184
+
+
+
+
+  The Trial
+  of
+  Oscar Wilde
+
+  FROM THE SHORTHAND REPORTS
+
+
+  Then gently scan your brither man,
+  Still gentler, sister woman,
+  Though they may gang a' kennin' wrang,
+  To step aside is human.
+                    ROBT. BURNS.
+
+
+  PARIS
+  PRIVATELY PRINTED
+
+  1906
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+"_It is wrong for us during the greater part of the time to handle these
+questions with timidity and false shame, and to surround them with
+reticence and mystery. Matters relating to sexual life ought to be studied
+without the introduction of moral prepossessions or of preconceived ideas.
+False shame is as hateful as frivolity. It is a matter of pressing concern
+to rid ourself of the old prejudice that we "sully our pens" by touching
+upon facts of this class. It is necessary at all costs to put aside our
+moral, esthetic, or religious personality, to regard facts of this nature
+merely as natural phenomena, with impartiality and a certain elevation of
+mind._"
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+    _I blame equally as much those who take it upon themselves to praise
+    man, as those who make it their business to blame him, together with
+    others who think that he should be perpetually amused; and only those
+    can I approve who seek for truth with tear-filled eyes._
+
+    PASCAL.
+
+
+In "_De Profundis_," that harmonious and last expression of the perfect
+artist, Wilde seems, in a single page to have concentrated in guise of
+supreme confession, all the pain and passion that stirred and sobbed in
+his soul.
+
+"_This New Life, as through my love of Dante I like sometimes to call it,
+is of course no new life at all, but simply the continuance, by means of
+development, and evolution, of my former life. I remember when I was at
+Oxford saying to one of my friends as we were strolling round Magdalen's
+narrow bird-haunted walks one morning in the year before I took my degree,
+that I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the
+world, and that I was going out into the world with that passion in my
+soul. And so, indeed, I went out, and so I lived. My only mistake was that
+I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the
+sun-lit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and
+its gloom. Failure, disgrace, poverty, sorrow, despair, suffering, tears
+even, the broken words that come from lips in pain, remorse that makes one
+walk on thorns, conscience that condemns, self-abasement that punishes,
+the misery that puts ashes on its head, the anguish that chooses
+sack-cloth for its raiment and into its own drink puts gall:--all these
+were things of which I was afraid. And as I had determined to know nothing
+of them, I was forced to taste each of them in turn, to feed on them, to
+have for a season, indeed no other food at all._"
+
+Further on, he tells us that his dominant desire was to seek refuge in the
+deepest shade of the garden, for his mouth was full of the bitterness of
+the dead-sea fruit that he had tasted, adding that this tomb-like aroma
+was the befitting and necessary outcome of his preceding life of error.
+
+We are inclined to think he deceived himself.
+
+The day wherein he was at last compelled to face the horror of his
+tragical destiny his soul was tried beyond endurance. He strode
+deliberately, as he himself assures us, towards the gloomiest nook of the
+garden, inwardly trembling perhaps, but proud notwithstanding ... hoping
+against hope that the sun's rays would seek him out even there ... or in
+other words, that he would not cease to live that _Bios theoretikos_,
+which he held to be the greatest ideal.
+
+"_From the high tower of Thought we can look out at the world. Calm, and
+self-centred, and complete, the aesthetic critic contemplates life, and no
+arrow drawn at a venture can pierce between the joints of his harness._"
+
+We all know what arrows struck him, arrows that he himself had sharpened,
+and that Society had not forgotten to tip with poison.
+
+"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.... Could such conduct have been due to aught else but sheer
+madness?"
+
+The true debauchee has no such object. He seeks only for pleasure and
+discounts beforehand the conditions that Life dictates for the same; the
+conditions laid down containing no guarantee that the pleasure will be
+actually grasped except only in promise and anticipation. Later, too proud
+to acknowledge his cruel disappointment, he will gravely assure us that
+the bitterness left in the bottom of the goblet whose wine he has quaffed,
+has indeed the sweet taste that he sought after. Certain minds are
+satisfied with the fantasmagoria of their intelligence, whereas the
+voluptuary finds happiness only in the pleasure of realisation. In his
+heart he concocts for himself a prodigious mixture of sorrow and of joy,
+of suffering and of ecstacy, but the great world, wotting naught of this
+secret alchemy and judging only according to the facts which lie upon the
+surface, slices down to the same level, with the same stupid knife, the
+strange, beautiful flower, as well as the evil weed that grew apace.
+
+Remy de Gourmont said of the famous author, Paul Adam, that he was "a
+magnificent spectacle." Wilde may be pronounced a painful problem. He
+seems to escape literary criticism in order to fall under the keen
+scalping knife of the analytical moralist, by the paradoxical fact of his
+apparently imperious purpose to hew out and fashion forth his life as a
+work of art.
+
+"Save here and there, in _Intentions_ and in his poems, the _Poem of
+Reading Gaol_, nothing of his soul has he thrown into his books; he seemed
+to desire, one can almost postulate as a certainty, the stupendous tragedy
+that blasted his life. From the abyss where his flesh groaned in misery,
+his conscience hovered above him contemplating his woeful state whilst he
+thus became the spectator of his own death-throes."[1]
+
+That is the reason why he stirs us so deeply.
+
+Those who might be tempted to search in his work for an echo however
+feeble, of a new message to mankind, will be grievously disappointed. The
+technical cleverness of Wilde is undeniable, but the magnificent dress in
+which he has clothed it appears to us to have been borrowed. He has
+brought us neither remedy nor poison; he leads us nowhere, but at the same
+time we are conscious that he has been everywhere. No companion of ours is
+he, but all the companions we hold dear he has known. True he sat at the
+feet of the wise men of Greece in the Gardens of Academus, but the
+eurythmy of their gests fascinated him more than the soberness of their
+doctrines. Dante he followed in all his subterranean travels and
+peregrinations, but all that he has to relate to us after his frightful
+journeyings is merely an ecstatic description of the highly-wrought
+scenery that he had witnessed.
+
+"I packed all my genius, said he, into my life, I have put only my talent
+into my works." Unfaithful to the principle which he learnedly deduced in
+_Intentions_, viz: that the undivided soul of a writer should incorporate
+itself in his work, even as Shakespeare pushing aside the "_impulses that
+stirred so strongly within him that he had, as it were perforce, to suffer
+them to realize their energy, not on the lower plane of actual life, where
+they would have been trammelled and constrained and so made imperfect, but
+on that of the imaginative plane of art_," ... he came to confound the
+intensity of feeling with the calmness of beauty. Possessed of a mind of
+rare culture, he nevertheless only evoked, when he touched Art, harmonious
+vibrations perhaps, but vibrations which others, after all said and done,
+had already created before him. He succeeded in producing nothing more
+than a splendid and incomparable echo. The most that can be said is that
+the music he had in his soul he kept there, living all the time a crowded,
+ostentatious life, and distinguishing himself as a superlative
+conversationalist. Be this as it may, posterity cannot judge us according
+to those possibilities of our nature which were never developed. However
+numerous may be the testimonies in our favour, she cannot pronounce
+excepting on the works, or at least, the materials left by the workman. It
+is this which renders so precarious the actor's fleeting glory, as it
+likewise dissipates the golden halo that hovers over the brilliant Society
+_causeur_. Nothing remains of Mallarme excepting a few cunningly wrought
+verses, inferior to the clearer and more profound poems of his great
+master, Baudelaire. Of Wilde nothing will remain beyond his written works
+which are vastly inferior to his brilliant epigrammatic conversation.
+
+In our days, the master of repartee and the after-dinner speaker is
+fore-doomed to forgetfulness, for he always stands alone, and to gain
+applause has to talk down to and flatter lower-class audiences. No writer
+of blood-curdling melodramas, no weaver of newspaper novels is obliged to
+lower his talent so much as the professional wit. If the genius of
+Mallarme was obscured by the flatterers that surrounded him, how much more
+was Wilde's talent overclouded by the would-be witty, shoddy-elegant, and
+cheaply-poetical society hangers-on, who covered him with incense? One of
+his devoted literary courtezans, who has written a life of Wilde, which
+is nothing more than a rhapsodidal panegyric of his intimacy with the
+poet, tells us that the first attempts of the sparkling conversationalist
+were not at all successful in Paris drawing-rooms. In the house of Victor
+Hugo seeing he had to let the veteran sleep out his nap whilst others
+among the guests slumbered also, he made up his mind to astonish them. He
+succeeded, but at what a cost! Although he was a verse writer, most
+sincerely devoted to poetry and art, and one of the most emotional and
+sensitive and tender-hearted amongst modern wielders of the pen he
+succeeded only in gaining a reputation for artificiality.
+
+We all know his studied paradoxes, his five or six continually repeated
+tales, but we are tempted to forget the charming dreamer who was full of
+tenderness for everything in nature.
+
+"It is true that Mallarme has not written much, but all he has done is
+valuable. Some of his verses are most beautiful whilst Wilde seemed never
+to finish anything. The works of the English aesthete are very
+interesting, because they characterize his epoch; his pages are useful
+from a documentary point of view, but are not extraordinary from a
+literary standpoint. In the _Duchess of Padua_, he imitates Hugo and
+Sardou; the _Picture of Dorian Grey_ was inspired by Huysmans;
+_Intentions_ is a _vade-mecum_ of symbolism, and all the ideas contained
+therein are to be found in Mallarme and Villiers de l'Isle-Adam. As for
+Wilde's poetry, it closely follows the lines laid down by Swinburne. His
+most original composition is _Poems in Prose_. They give a correct idea of
+his home-chat, but not when he was at his best; that no doubt, is because
+the art of talking must always be inferior to any form of literary
+composition. Thoughts properly set forth in print after due correction
+must always be more charming than a finely sketched idea hurriedly
+enunciated when conversing with a few disciples. In ordinary table-talk we
+meet nothing more than ghosts of new-born ideas fore-doomed to perish. The
+jokes of a wit seldom survive the speaker. When we quote the epigrams of
+Wilde, it is as if we were exhibiting in a glass case, a collection of
+beautiful butterflies, whose wings have lost the brilliancy of their once
+gaudy colours. Lively talk pleases, because of the man who utters it, and
+we are impressed also by the gestures which accompany his frothy
+discourse. What remains of the sprightly quips and anecdotes of such
+celebrated _hommes d'esprit_, as Scholl, Becque, Barbey d'Aurevilly! Some
+stories of the XVIIIth. century have been transmitted to us by Chamfort,
+but only because he carefully remodelled them by the aid of his clever
+pen."[2]
+
+These opinions of Rebell questionable though they may be, show us plainly
+something of the charm and the weakness of Wilde.
+
+A perfect artist desiring to leave his mark on the temple-columns of Fame
+must not live among his fellow men ambitious to taste the bitterness and
+the sweetness alike of every caress of existence, but submit himself
+pitilessly to the thraldom of the writing desk. Some authors may produce
+masterpieces amidst the busy throng; but there are others who lose all
+power of creation unless they shut themselves up for a time and live
+severely by rote. When Wilde was dragging out a wretched life in the
+sordid room of a cheap, furnished hotel, where he eventually died, did he
+ever remember while reading Balzac by the flickering light of his one
+candle that the great master of French literature often sought solitude
+and wrestled for eighteen hours at a stretch with the demon of severe
+toil? Did he ever repeat the doleful wail of the Author of _La Comedie
+Humaine_ who was sometimes heard to exclaim in sad tones: "_I ought not
+to have done that.... I ought to have put black on white, black on
+white...._"
+
+Few experiments are really necessary for the literary creator who seeks to
+analyse the stuff of which Life is composed in order to dissolve for us
+all its elements and demonstrate its ever-present underlying essence. The
+romance writer must stand away from the crowd, if only for a time, and
+reflect deeply upon what he has seen and heard. The power of thought, to
+be free and fruitful, cannot flourish without the strength of ascetism. We
+must yield to that law which decrees that action may not be the
+twin-sister of dreams. Those who live a life of pleasure can only give us
+colourless falsehoods when they try to depict sincerity of feeling. The
+confessions of sensualists resemble volcanic ashes.
+
+Wilde himself gives us the key to his errors and his weakness:
+
+"_Human life is the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there is
+nothing else of any value. It is true that as one watches life in its
+curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one cannot wear over one's face a
+mask of glass nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and
+making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshappen
+dreams. There are poisons so subtle that to know their properties one has
+to sicken of them. There are maladies so strange that one has to pass
+through them if one seeks to understand their nature. And yet what a great
+reward one receives! How wonderful the whole world becomes to one! To note
+the curious, hard logic of passion and the emotional, coloured life of the
+intellect--to observe where they meet, and where they separate, at what
+point they are in unison and at what point they are in discord--there is a
+delight in that! What matter what the cost is? One can never pay too high
+a price for any sensation._"[3]
+
+The brain becomes dulled at this sport, which it would be illusory to call
+a study. He who uses his intellect to serve only his sensuality can
+produce nothing elaborate but what is artificial. Such is the dilemma of
+Wilde, whose collections of writings is like a painted stage-scene, mere
+garish canvas, behind which there is never anything substantial.
+
+"When I first saw Wilde, he had not yet been seared by the brand of
+general reprobation. Often I changed my opinion of him, but at first I
+felt the enthusiasm which young literary aspirants always feel for those
+who have made their mark; then the law-suit took place, followed by the
+dramatic thunderclap of a criminal prosecution; and my soul revolted as
+if some great iniquity had been consummated. Later on, it seemed to me
+that the man of fashion had swallowed up the literary god, his baggage
+seemed light, and his brilliant butterfly-life had perhaps been of more
+importance to him than the small pile of volumes bearing his name.
+
+"To-day, I seem clearly to understand what sort of a man he
+was--extraordinary beyond a doubt; but never has artificial sentiment been
+so cunningly mingled with seemingly natural simplicity and pulsating
+pleasure in one and the same man."[4]
+
+"_I must say to myself that I ruined myself and that nobody great or small
+can be ruined except by his own hand. I am quite ready to say so. I am
+trying to say so, though they may not think it at the present moment. This
+pitiless indictment I bring without pity against myself. Terrible as was
+what the world did to me, what I did to myself was far more terrible
+still._
+
+_I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my
+age. I had realised this for myself at the very dawn of my manhood, and
+had forced my age to realise it afterwards. Few men hold such a position
+in their own lifetime, and have it so acknowledged. It is usually
+discerned, if discerned at all, by the historian, or the critic, long
+after both the man and his age have passed away. With me it was different.
+I felt it myself, and made others feel it. Byron was a symbolic figure,
+but his relations were the passion of his age and its weariness of
+passion. Mine were to something more noble, more permanent, of more vital
+issue, of larger scope._
+
+_The gods had given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into
+long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself with being a_
+flaneur, _a dandy, a man of fashion. I surrounded myself with the smaller
+natures and the meaner minds. I became the spendthrift of my own genius,
+and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. Tired of being on the
+heights, I deliberately went to the depths in the search for new
+sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity
+became to me in the sphere of passion. Desire, at the end, was a malady,
+or a madness, or both. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took
+pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little
+action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore
+what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on
+the housetop. I ceased to be lord over myself. I was no longer the captain
+of my soul, and did not know it. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. I
+ended in horrible disgrace. There is only one thing for me now, absolute
+humility._"[5]
+
+This confession of irreparable defeat while being exceedingly dolorous, is
+unfortunately, rendered still further painful by other pages which
+contradict it, and almost tempt us to doubt its sincerity, in spite of the
+fact that Wilde was always sincere for those who knew how to read between
+the lines and enter into his spirit.
+
+"There is no doubt that he was truly a most extraordinary man, endowed
+with striking originality, but a man who at the same time took more than
+uncommon care to hide his gifts under a cloak bought in some conventional
+bazaar which made a point of keeping abreast with the fashions of the
+day."[6]
+
+What brought about his downfall was the mad idea that possessed him of the
+possibility of employing in the service of noble aspirations all, without
+exception, all the passions that moved and agitated his human soul.
+Everyone of us is, no doubt, peopled at times with mysterious spirits,
+ephemeral apparitions, which like the wild beasts that Christ long ago
+cast out of the Gadarene swine, tear themselves to pieces in internecine
+warfare. It is with such soldiers as these, who very seldom obey the
+superior orders of the higher intellect, or desert and rebel against us at
+the opportune moment, that we are called upon to withstand the onslaught
+of a thousand enemies. Wilde made the grand mistake of trying to
+understand them all. He believed that they were capable of adapting
+themselves to that powerful instinct which animated him, and which
+directed him, wherever he wandered or wherever he went, towards the spirit
+of Beauty. This error lasted long enough perhaps to convince him of the
+power that was born in him, but unfortunately, the revelation of his error
+came too late.
+
+My object in this preface is not to write the life of Wilde.
+
+I have only to do with the Writer, for the Man is yet too much alive and
+his wounds have scarcely ceased bleeding! In the presence of still living
+sorrow, crimson-tinged, respect commands us to stand bareheaded; before
+the scarred face of woe the voice is dumb; we should, above all, endeavour
+rather to ignore the accidents that thrust themselves into a life and try
+to discover the great, calm soul, beautiful in its melancholy, which
+though pained and suffering, has never ceased to be nobly inspired. To
+prove that this was true in the case of Wilde, we may have recourse to
+some of those who knew him well and who form a great "cloud of witnesses,"
+testifying to the veracity of the things we have laid down.
+
+Mr. Arthur Symons, a keen and large-minded critic, a friend of Wilde's,
+and an elegant and forcible writer to boot, in his recent volume:
+"_Studies in Prose and Verse_," characterizes Wilde as a "poet of
+attitudes," and we cannot do better than quote a few lines from the fine
+article which he consecrated to our author:
+
+"_When the "Ballad of Reading Gaol" was published, he said, it seemed to
+some people that such a return to, or so startling a first acquaintance
+with, real things, was precisely what was most required to bring into
+relation, both with life and art an extraordinary talent so little in
+relation with matters of common experience, so fantastically alone in a
+region of intellectual abstractions. In this poem, where a style formed on
+other lines seems startled at finding itself used for such new purposes,
+we see a great spectacular intellect, to which, at last, pity and terror
+have come in their own person, and no longer as puppets in a play. In its
+sight, human life has always been something acted on the stage; a comedy
+in which it is the wise man's part to sit aside and laugh, but in which he
+may also disdainfully take part, as in a carnival, under any mask. The
+unbiassed, scornful intellect, to which humanity has never been a burden,
+comes now to be unable to sit aside and laugh, and it has worn and looked
+behind so many masks that there is nothing left desirable in illusion.
+Having seen, as the artist sees, further than morality, but with so
+partial an eyesight as to have overlooked it on the way, it has come at
+length to discover morality in the only way left possible, for itself.
+And, like most of those who, having "thought themselves weary," have made
+the adventure of putting thought into action, it has had to discover it
+sorrowfully, at its own incalculable expense. And now, having become so
+newly acquainted with what is pitiful, and what seems most unjust, in the
+arrangement of human affairs, it has gone, not unnaturally, to an extreme,
+and taken, on the one hand, humanitarianism, on the other realism, at more
+than their just valuation, in matters of art. It is that odd instinct of
+the intellect, the necessity of carrying things to their furthest point of
+development, to be more logical than either life or art, two very wayward
+and illogical things, in which conclusions do not always follow from
+premises._
+
+_His intellect was dramatic, and the whole man was not so much a
+personality as an attitude...._
+
+_And it was precisely in his attitudes that he was most sincere. They
+represented his intentions; they stood for the better, unrealised part of
+himself. Thus his attitude, towards life and towards art, was untouched by
+his conduct; his perfectly just and essentially dignified assertion of the
+artist's place in the world of thought and the place of beauty in the
+material world being in nowise invalidated by his own failure to create
+pure beauty or to become a quite honest artist. A talent so vividly at
+work as to be almost genius was incessantly urging him into action, mental
+action._
+
+_Realising as he did, that it is possible to be very watchfully cognisant
+of that "quality of our moments as they pass," and so shape them after
+one's own ideal much more continuously and consciously than most people
+have ever thought of trying to do, he made for himself many souls, souls
+of intricate pattern and elaborate colour, webbed into infinite tiny
+cells, each the home of a strange perfume, perhaps a poison. "Every soul
+had its own secret, and was secluded from the soul which had gone before
+it or was to come after it. And this showman of souls was not always aware
+that he was juggling with real things, for to him they were no more than
+the coloured glass balls which the juggler keeps in the air, catching them
+one after another. For the most part the souls were content to be
+playthings; now and again they took a malicious revenge, and became so
+real that even the juggler was aware of it. But when they became too real
+he had to go on throwing them into the air and catching them, even though
+the skill of the game had lost its interest for him. But as he never lost
+his self-possession, his audience, the world, did not see the
+difference._"[7]
+
+Thus not wishing to live for himself, Wilde was surprised into living
+mainly for others, and his ever-present desire to astonish was one of the
+prime causes that led to his overthrow. Yet, in spite of this, what riches
+of the mind, one easily divines him to possess, if for a moment we peer
+beyond the mobile curtain of his paradoxes. Those who listened to him,
+this modern St. Chrysostom, on whose lips there was ever an ambiguous
+smile, could not fail to see that he spoke to himself, was occupied in
+translating that which was passing in his mind, trying in a sense, to
+ravish his auditors and plunge them even into greater, though only
+ephemeral, ravishment, whilst ushering them into an absolutely unreal and
+immaterial kingdom of capricious fantasy, and they will remember that he
+was sometimes astonishingly profound and grave, and always charming,
+paradoxical, and eloquent. His mind constantly dwelt upon the questions of
+Art and Aesthetics. In _Intentions_ he laid down serious problems, which
+in themselves bore every appearance of contradiction, and which any
+attempt to resolve would, at the outset, appear puerile and ambitious.
+
+For instance:--Is lying a fundamental principle of Art, that is to say, of
+every art?
+
+Is it possible for there to be perfect concordance between a finely
+ordered and pure life, and the worship of Beauty; or, are we to consider
+such a consummation as utterly impossible and chimerical?
+
+Must there be a permanent and necessary divorce between Ethics and
+Aesthetics?
+
+Ought we, beneath the flowery mask of a borrowed smile, allow ourselves to
+be carried away by all the waves of instinct?
+
+The art of Criticism, is it superior to Art? The Interpreter can he be
+superior to the creator? Must we modify the profound axiom, "to understand
+is to equal," not by reducing it to that other axiom, more profound
+perhaps, "to understand is to achieve," but by modifying it with that,
+which, at the first glance looks at least passingly strange "to understand
+is to surpass?"
+
+Such are the questions which Wilde postulated in _Intentions_ and worked
+out with great audacity, but with no higher object than to win admiration,
+and all this with the indifferent suppleness of a conjuror of words.
+
+_Intentions_ is a study of artificial genius, culture, and instinct, and,
+for this reason, it forms a most curious production. In itself it can
+hardly be termed a magistral work, inasmuch as all the theories enunciated
+in it are, at least, twenty years old, and appear to us to-day quite worn
+out and decrepit. As much may be said, also, for the theories put forward
+by our young, contemporaneous artists who undertake to discuss all things
+in Heaven and Earth, and whose vapourings on Life, Nature, Social Art and
+other things--especially other things--are no more guaranteed against
+mortality than the doctrines above specified. Let them remember, in
+reading Wilde's work, that their Aesthetical doctrines will soon become as
+antiquated, and that it is no bid for lasting fame to write flashy novels,
+pretty verses, high-flown or realistic dramas, pessimistic or optimistic
+plays, imbued with Schopenhaurian and Nitzschien principles, since the
+crying need of the time is for sincere work. All the doctrines ever
+invented are mere tittle-tattle, only fit to amuse brainless ladies
+wanting in beauty, or minds stricken with positive sterility.
+
+It is not inexact that in _Intentions_ one meets with a profound truth
+now and again, but the dressing of it is so paradoxical that we run a risk
+of misinterpreting all that may animate it of genuine fitness and
+sincerity.
+
+Wilde may truly be denominated the last representative of that English art
+of the XIXth. century, which beginning with Shelley, continuing with the
+Pre-Raphaelites and culminating with the American painter, Whistler,
+endeavours purposely to set forth an ideal and elegant expression of the
+world.
+
+The mistake of these men lies in the belief that Art was made for Life;
+whereas it is, as a matter of fact, quite the contrary. Life has no other
+value, except as subject-matter, for poet and painter. These are excentric
+theories, certainly, but then, what on earth, does it matter about
+theories? Do not they serve the great artist to make his genius more
+puissant, and enable him to concentrate all his forces in the same
+direction by uniting instead of scattering them? With, or in spite of his
+theories, Shelley wrote his poems and Whistler painted his pictures; if
+their aesthetic basis was bad, one, at least, cannot pretend that it was
+dangerous, since it enabled them to accomplish their masterpieces. Wilde,
+unfortunately, was an aesthete before he was a poet, and produced his works
+somewhat in the spirit of bravado. He had been told that he could not
+create aught of good: the reply, triumphant and crushing was, the _Picture
+of Dorian Grey_. He is a literary problem; and in considering him, we are
+struck with the unwarranted corruption, by his acquaintances, of a fine
+artistic sensibility.
+
+The fashionable drawing-rooms of the West-End brought about his downfall,
+or rather, and it amounts to the same thing: his frank and undisguised
+desire to please and to dazzle them proved his undoing. Possibly the same
+misfortune would have overtaken Merimee, had it not been for his lofty and
+vigorous intelligence; as it was, he lost more than once, most precious
+time in composing "_Chambres bleues_," when he was undoubtedly capable of
+producing another "_Colomba_," and other variations of "_Vases
+etrusques_."
+
+With all this, let us be thoroughly just; _Intentions_ is far from
+containing anything but mere paradoxes. Those that we find there are at
+any rate of very diverse kinds. Some are pure verbal amusements, and may
+be thrust aside after the moment's attention that they snatched from our
+surprise. Others belong to a nobler family of ideas and awaken in us the
+lasting and fecund astonishment of the paradox which is born sound and
+healthy, because it concerns a new truth. Into the mental landscape,
+these paradoxes introduce that sudden change of perspective, which forces
+the mind to rise or to descend, and thus causes us to discover other
+horizons. What a grievous error would it be on our part not to feel
+something of that immense and exhaustive love of beauty which haunted the
+soul of Wilde until the bitter end? However artificial his work may appear
+at the first glance, there is still sufficient left of the man which was
+incomparable. We instinctively feel that he belonged to the chosen race of
+those upon whom the "spirit of the hour" had laid his magic wand, and who
+give forth at the cunning touch of the Magician some of the finest notes
+of which our stunted human nature is capable. Men thus endowed, enjoy the
+rare privilege of being unable to proffer a single word, without our
+perceiving however confusedly, the splendid harmony of an almost universal
+accompaniment of ideas. The choir, their eyes fixed upon the eyes of the
+master-musician, follows his inspired gestures with jealous care, and
+seeks to interpret his every nod and movement.
+
+None but an artist could have written the admirable pages on Shakespeare,
+Greek Art, and other elevated themes that are to be found in the works of
+Oscar Wilde.
+
+More than an artist was he, who noted down the suggestive thought: that
+the humility of the matter of a work of art is an element of culture. If
+therefore, we hear him exclaim that "thought is a sickness," we must bear
+in mind that this is simply an analysis of the phrase: "_We live in a
+period whose reading is too vast to allow it to become wise, and which
+thinks too much to be beautiful._"
+
+Our eyes can no longer penetrate the esoteric meaning of the statues of
+the olden times, beautiful with glorified animality, and which have alas,
+become for us little more than the tongue-tied offspring of the inspiring
+god Pan, dead beyond all hope of rebirth. Our brains have become stupified
+through the heaviness of the flesh, and this, perhaps, because we have
+treated the flesh as a slave.
+
+"_The worship of the senses, wrote Wilde, has often, and with much
+justice, been decried; men feeling a natural instinct of terror about
+passions and sensations that seem stronger than themselves, and that they
+are conscious of sharing with the less highly-organised forms of
+existence. But it is probable the true nature of the senses has never been
+understood, and that they have remained savage and animal merely because
+the world has sought to starve them into submission or to kill them by
+pain, instead of aiming at making them elements of a new spirituality, of
+which a fine instinct for beauty will be the dominant characteristic._"[8]
+
+In these lines, we may perhaps find the key of a certain metamorphosis in
+the poet's life, before Circe, that terrible sorceress, had passed his
+way.
+
+                    "_Who knows not Circe,
+  The daughter of the Sun, whose charmed cup
+  Whoever tasted lost his upright shape,
+  And downward fell into a grovelling swine?_"
+                            (_Milton: Comus, 50-53._)
+
+The infant King of Rome, we are told, looking out from a window of the
+Louvre one day, at the muddy street where young children were
+playing,--sad in the midst of a perfumed and divinely flattering
+court,--cried out: "I too, would like to roll myself in that beautiful
+mud." We are inclined to think from a sentimental outlook, that Wilde also
+had the same morbid desire; but, he was worth better things; and there
+were times in his life when serene aspirations moved his heart before he
+sat down to the festive board of Sin.
+
+He had a pronounced tendency towards the _discipulat_; used to question
+youths about their studies and their mind, showing as much interest in
+them as a spiritual confessor, inebriating himself with their enthusiasm,
+and surrounding himself more and more with a medley of different friends.
+A vigorous pagan, ardent, intoxicated with souvenirs of Antiquity,
+heart-sick of his worldly successes, he dreamed perhaps of living over
+again:
+
+  _Ces heroeiques jours ou les jeunes pensees
+  Allaient chercher leur miel aux levres d'un Platon._
+
+But this _artificiel de l'art_ was, although he wotted it not, a man who
+rioted in the good things of life. He sought to inculcate in himself a
+quiet spirit which believes itself invulnerable.
+
+"_And when we reach the true culture that is our aim, we attain to that
+perfection of which the saints have dreamed, the perfection of those to
+whom sin is impossible, not because they make the renunciations of the
+ascetic, but because they can do everything they wish without hurt to the
+soul, and can wish for nothing that can do the soul harm, the soul being
+an entity so divine that it is able to transform into elements of a richer
+experience, or a finer susceptibility, or a newer mode of thoughts, acts
+or passions that with the common would be commonplace, or with the
+uneducated ignoble, or with the shameful vile._"[9]
+
+This passage shows us a state of things very far removed from the old
+dream of antiquity.
+
+He forgot, alas! the puritanism and sublime discourses of Diotime, which
+have been so finely pictured for us by Plato, to wallow in the orgies of
+the Island of Capria.
+
+Before that Criminal Court, where he vainly struggled so as "not to appear
+naked before men," we hear him proclaim what he had himself desired and
+perhaps attained.
+
+What interpretation, asked the judge, can you give us of the verse:
+
+  _I am the Love which dares not tell its name_
+
+"The Love referred to," replied Wilde, "is that which exists between a man
+of mature years and a young man; the love of David and of Jonathan. It is
+the same love that Plato made the basis of his philosophy; it is that love
+which is sung in the Sonnets of Shakespeare and of Michael-Angelo; it is a
+profound spiritual affection, as pure as it is perfect. It is beautiful,
+pure and noble; it is intellectual, the love of a man possessing full
+experience of life, and of a young man full of all the joy and all the
+hope of the future."
+
+There in that struggle in the midst of thick darkness, this must have
+been the cry of his tormented soul, a breath of pure air as he passed, a
+perfumed memory ... then there came a few arrow flights badly winged which
+only wounded his own heart.
+
+He defended himself in an indifferent way according to some people,
+although it must be admitted that he gave the answers that were necessary
+and becoming, and, in some cases, compelled his judges, who were no better
+than the mouth-pieces of the crowd, to confess the hatred that the worship
+of beauty had inspired.
+
+"However strange may have been his attitude, that attitude could not have
+been indifferent to anyone. Those who have been fortunate enough to laugh
+at the portrait that Rene Boylesve has drawn of the aesthete in his fine
+novel "Le Parfum des Iles Borromees," would find it difficult to make a
+mock of the man who accepted with superb disinterestedness, the torture
+that he knew beforehand the judges would inevitably inflict upon him.
+
+Although he may not have been a great poet, although the pretext of his
+equivocal mode of living was taken to condemn him, we cannot lose sight of
+the art and of the literary craftsman that were condemned at the same time
+with him."[10]
+
+_We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its
+periodical fits of morality. In general, elopements, divorces, and family
+quarrels, pass with little notice. We read the scandal, talk about it for
+a day, and forget it. But once in six or seven years our virtue becomes
+outrageous. We cannot suffer the laws of religion and decency to be
+violated. We must make a stand against vice. We must teach libertines that
+the English people appreciate the importance of domestic ties. Accordingly
+some unfortunate man, in no respect more depraved than hundreds whose
+offences have been treated with lenity, is singled out as an expiatory
+sacrifice. If he has children, they are to be taken from him. If he has a
+profession, he is to be driven from it. He is cut by the higher orders,
+and hissed by the lower. He is, in truth, a sort of whipping-boy, by whose
+vicarious agonies all the other transgressors of the same class are, it is
+supposed, sufficiently chastised._[11]
+
+This bitter denunciation of English mock-modesty by the brilliant Essayist
+rests upon thoroughly justifiable grounds. Once again in the dolorous
+history of humanity, the grotesque farce was enacted of chasing forth the
+scapegoat into the wilderness to bear away the sins of the people. But, in
+this instance, the unhappy creature was not only laden with the sins of
+the tribe; a heavier burden still had been added to all the others: the
+fearful burden of the mad, unreasoned hatred of the sinners. Indeed he,
+whose share in the general load of sin was the greatest, sought to add
+more hatred than all the others to the great fardel under which the victim
+staggered, and believing himself so much the more innocent that the
+abjection of the unfortunate wretch was complete, would have been glad had
+it been in his power to help even the public hangman in the execution of
+his nefarious task. We have observed that through some diabolical strain
+in human nature, the evil joy which creates scandal and gives rise to a
+man's downfall, increases in intensity if the victim happens to be a man
+of superior rank and talent.
+
+  _On voit briller au fond des prunelles haineuses,
+  L'orgueil mysterieux de souiller la Beaute._
+
+How great must have been the delighted intoxication of numberless weak
+minds when they were impelled, in the midst of a silence that braver and
+clearer spirits dared not break, to screech out vociferations against Art
+and Thought, denouncing these as the accomplices of the momentary
+aberrations of him who erstwhile worshipped at their shrine. Here in
+France at least, men knew better how to restrain themselves, and there
+were even a few courageous wielders of talented pens who did not hesitate
+to use their abilities in favour of their Anglo-Saxon colleague. Hugues
+Rebell published in the _Mercure de France_ that _Defense d'Oscar Wilde_,
+the calm and tempered logic of which is still fresh to many minds. A
+number of writers and artists even held a meeting of protestation; but, of
+course, all this had not the slightest effect on the judicial position of
+Wilde. It was generally felt that the ferocious outcry raised against the
+unhappy man "who had been found out" was because that man was a poet, and
+not so much because he had gone counter to the manners of his time.
+Amongst all the mingled shouting and laughter, the arguments for and the
+arguments against, the voice of one man was heard stentorian and clear
+above all the rest, that voice belonged to Octave Mirbeau, a puissant
+master of the French tongue, and a brilliant writer and dramatist. The
+following lines of suppressed anger and large-minded charity emanated from
+his pen:
+
+"_A great deal has been heard about the paradoxes of Oscar Wilde upon Art,
+Beauty, Conscience and Life! Paradoxes they were, it is true, and we know
+that some laid themselves open to the charge of exaggeration, and vaulted
+over the threshold of the Forbidden. But after all, what is a paradox if
+not, for the most part of the time, the exaltation of an idea in a
+striking and superior form? As soon as an idea overleaps the low-level of
+ordinary popular understanding, having ceased to drag behind it the
+ignoble stumps gathered in the swamps of middle-class morality, and seeks
+with strong, steadfast wing, to attain the lofty heights of Philosophy,
+Literature or Art, we at once stigmatize it as a paradox, because, unable
+ourselves to follow it into those regions which are inaccessible to us,
+through the weakness of our organs, and we make haste to scotch it and put
+it under ban by flinging after it curse-laden cries of blame and
+contempt._
+
+_And yet, strange as it may seem, progress cannot be made save by way of
+paradox, whilst much vaunted common sense--the prized virtue of the
+imbecile--perpetuates the humdrum routine of daily life. The truth is, we
+refuse to allow anyone to come and outrage our intellectual sluggishness,
+or our morality, ready-made like second-hand clothes in a dealer's shop,
+or the stupid security of our sheepish preconceptions._
+
+_Looked at squarely, that was the veritable crime in the minds of those
+who sat in judgment on Oscar Wilde._
+
+_They could not forgive him for being a thinker, and a man of superior
+intellect--and for that self-same reason eminently dangerous to other men.
+Wilde is young and has a future before him, and he has proved by the
+strong and charming works which he has already given us that he can still
+do much more in the cause of Beauty and Art. Must we not then admit that
+it is an abominable thing to risk the killing of something far above all
+laws, and all morality: the spirit of beauty, for the sake of repressing
+acts which are not really punishable_ per se.
+
+_For laws change and morality becomes transformed with the transformations
+of time, with the changeing of latitude and longitude, but beauty remains
+immaculate, and sheds her light far over the centuries that she alone can
+rescue from obscurity._"
+
+With these magnificent words of one of the great masters of French prose,
+we would gladly terminate the present study; but it remains for us to cite
+the following from the pen of our lately deceased friend, Hugues Rebell,
+who possessed not only acumen and erudition, but employed a brilliant
+style and ready wit in the expression of his thoughts:
+
+"Will a day ever come, wrote he, when the deeds of men will be no more
+judged in the name of religion and morality, but from the point of view of
+their social importance? When the misdemeanours of a man of wit and of
+genius, or a clever, elegant man of fashion, shall no longer be judged by
+the same law as that which condemns a stolid navvy or a dockyard hand? Far
+from believing in our much belauded progress, I am inclined alas, to think
+that we are really far behind our forefathers in tolerance, and above all
+in the ideas that govern our idea of social equality. The downfall of the
+sentiment of hierarchy seriously compromises the existence of some of the
+best men amongst us. It is not crime merely which is tracked and hounded
+down, but all that strays aside for a moment from every-day habits and
+customs. So-and-so, because he is not like other people inspires aversion,
+even horror on the part of those who take off their hats most respectfully
+to the successful swindler; and whilst the Police complacently allow the
+perpetration in our great cities of robberies and murders, they make a
+raid on the unfortunate bookseller who happens to have stowed away
+carefully in his back-shop, a few illustrations where the high deeds and
+gestures of Venus are too faithfully reproduced. These paltry persecutions
+would only serve to bring a smile to our lips were it not that everyone is
+more or less exposed to their arbitrary measures. Men are far less free
+to-day than they formerly were, because they are too much dominated by a
+large number of ignorant and groundless prejudices. Ferocious gaolers
+fetter and imprison their minds for their greater overthrow; no longer do
+they believe in God, whilst giving implicit faith to vain Science which,
+making small account of the great diversity of character and temperament
+amongst human beings, holds up for unique example, a healthy and virtuous
+individual who never had any real existence except in the imagination of
+fools; and whilst no longer following any of the old religions, they
+submit themselves with equanimity to the condemnation of so-called Human
+Justice, which more often than not is radically venal, and impresses them
+far more than did in olden times, the ex-communicating _bulls_ of Popes
+who had usurped the authority of God."
+
+As for the sentence of hard labour passed upon Wilde, a description would
+fail to convey to the inexperienced reader a full idea of its barbarous
+severity. Sir Edward Clarke, the counsel for the defense, gave
+substantially the following reply to the representative of a Paris
+newspaper:
+
+"My opinion is that Oscar Wilde will work out his sentence. He has
+received the heaviest punishment that it was possible to inflict upon him.
+You cannot possibly form any notion of the extreme severity of "hard
+labour" which is implacable in its _regime_ of absorbing and exigent
+regularity.
+
+"Oscar Wilde, who wore his hair long like the esthete he was, was obliged
+to undergo the indignity of having it cut close, and wearing the
+sack-cloth suit bearing the broad-arrow mark of the convict. Thrust into a
+small narrow cell with only a bed, or rather a wooden plank in guise of a
+bed, for all his furniture,--a bed without a matress, and with a bolster
+made of wood, this talented man was made to pass the long weary months of
+his martyrdom.
+
+"The "labour" given him to do was absolutely ridiculous for a man of his
+bent; first of all for a certain number of hours, he had to sit on a stool
+in his cell and disentangle and reduce to small quantities ship-rope of
+enormous size used for docking ocean liners, the only instruments allowed
+him to effect the work being a nail and his own fingers. The result of
+this painful and atrocious penitence was to tear and disfigure his hands
+beyond all hope.
+
+"After that he was conducted into a court where he had to displace a
+certain number of cannon-balls, carrying them from one place to another
+and arranging them in symmetrical piles. No sooner was this edifying
+labour terminated, than he had himself to undo it all and carry back the
+cannon-balls one by one to the place from whence he had first taken them.
+
+"Then finally, he was made to work the tread-mill which is a harder task
+than those even that we have endeavoured faintly to describe. Imagine if
+you can, an enormous wheel in the interior of which exist cunningly
+arranged winding steps. Wilde, mounting on one of the steps, would
+immediately set the wheel in motion by the movement of his feet; then the
+steps follow each other under the feet in rapid and regular evolution,
+thus forcing the legs to a precipitous action which becomes laborious,
+enervating, and even maddening after a few minutes. But this enervating
+fatigue and suffering the convict is obliged to overcome, whilst
+continuing to move his legs for all they are worth, if he would escape
+being knocked down, caught up and thrown over, by the revolving movement
+of the wheel. This fantastical exercise lasts a quarter of an hour, and
+the wretch obliged to indulge in it, is allowed five minutes rest before
+the silly game recommences.
+
+"The convict is always kept apart and not allowed to speak even to his
+gaoler except at certain moments. All correspondence and reading is
+forbidden, save for the Bible and Prayer book placed at the head of the
+wooden plank, which serves him for a bed; and relatives are not admitted
+to see him excepting at the end of the year.
+
+"His food consists of meat and black bread, and of course only water is
+allowed. The meal-times take place at fixed hours, for naturally he has to
+follow a regular _regime_, in order to accomplish the hard labours that
+are incumbent upon him.
+
+"Many of the convicts have been known to say, on coming out of prison,
+that they would have far more preferred to pass ten years in penal
+servitude than work out two years of hard labour. The moral suffering men
+like Oscar Wilde are forced to undergo is probably superior even to their
+physical distress, and I can only repeat that this labour is the severest
+which the laws of England impose."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Wilde endured this martyrdom to the bitter end, the only favour allowed
+him being permission, towards the end of the time, to read a few books and
+to write. He read Dante in his entirety, dwelling longer over the poet's
+description of Hell than anything else, because here he recognized himself
+"at home."
+
+Before the doors of the gaol had been bolted on him, he wrote with a pen
+that had been dipped in colourless ink, letters of tears, sobs and pains,
+which were issued to the world only after the unhappy man had winged his
+flight for another planet. Those letters bear every mark of the deepest
+sincerity. They are not so much literature as the wail of a broken heart,
+which had attached itself to the only human affection he believed was
+still faithful to him. It is impossible to treat lightly the passionate
+anguish which refrains from expressing itself with the same intensity as
+the sorrows it had suffered, stricken with infinite sadness at the utter
+shipwreck of all hope and the cowardice of the human nature that had
+brought him to such low estate.
+
+That he should have conjured up the happy times he had seen decked out in
+all the charming graces of youth, and which smiled back his visage from
+the limpid mirror of his marvellously artistic intelligence, is only
+perfectly natural; and this evocation of happier times took on a new and
+horribly strange beauty, just as the feeblest ray of light stealing
+through prison walls gains in puissance from the sheer opacity of
+enveloping darkness.
+
+I will not stop here to enquire whether he found later the consolation he
+so much desired, a haven of peace in the friendship of the aristocratic
+adolescent, who had unwittingly caused him to become cast-a-way. It is
+highly probable that the bitter words which Andre Gide heard him utter,
+referred to that unfortunate intimacy: "No, he does not understand me; he
+can no longer understand me. I repeat to him in each letter; we can no
+more follow together the same path; you have yours, and it is certainly
+beautiful; and I have mine. His path is the path of Alcibiade, whilst mine
+henceforth must be that of St. Francis of Assisi."
+
+His last most important work in prose: _De Profundis_, which reveals him
+to us under an entirely different aspect, although, practically always the
+same man, shows that he is still engrossed with the perpetual love of
+attitudinizing, dreaming perhaps, that in spite of his sorrow and
+repentance, he will be able to take up again and sing, although in an
+humbler tone, the pagan hymn that had been strangled in his throat. In
+this connection, we cannot help thinking of the gesture of the great
+Talma, who whilst he lay a-dying, although he knew it not, took the
+pendant skin of his thin neck, between his fingers, and said to those who
+stood around: "Here is something which would suit finely to make up a
+visage for an old Tiberius."
+
+It seems to us that the chief characteristic of Wilde's book is not so
+much its admirable accent as its subtle irony, through which there seems
+to thrill the reply of Destiny to the haughty resolutions that he had
+undertaken. It is as though Death itself rose up from each page to sneer
+and chuckle at the master-singer; and few things are more bitter on the
+part of this poet--who had with his own hands ensepulchred himself as a
+willing holocaust to the deceitful gods of factitious Art,--than the
+constant appeals that he makes to Nature. The song no longer rings with
+the old regal note; there is none of the trepidating joy of a Whitman, or
+the yielding sweetness of an Emerson; our ear detects only the melopoeia
+of a heart which had been wounded in its innermost recess.
+
+"_I tremble with pleasure when I think that on the very day of my leaving
+prison both the laburnum and the lilac will be blooming in the gardens,
+and that I shall see the wind stir into restless beauty the swaying gold
+of the one, and make the other toss the pale purple of its plumes so that
+all the air shall be Arabia for me._"[12]
+
+These are the words of a convalescent; of a man newly risen from a bed of
+sickness anticipating a richer and fuller life, unknowing that the
+uplifted hand of Death suspended just above him, was destined to strike
+him down at brief delay.
+
+In the darkness of his prison cell, he dreams of the mysterious herbs that
+he will find in the realms of Nature; of the balms that he shall ferret
+out amongst the plants of the earth, and which will bring peace for his
+anguish, and deep-seated joy for the suffering that racked his brain.
+
+"_But Nature, whose sweet rains fall on the unjust and just alike, will
+have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret 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._"[13]
+
+In presence of this beautiful passage, it is painful to remember how his
+hopes were fated to be shattered by the cruellest of disappointments, and
+how he was doomed to die in the grey desolation of a poverty-haunted room.
+
+Before drawing this notice to a close, it were not unfitting to recall
+another name, borne by a Poet of wayward genius, who likewise wandered
+astray in a forest of more than Dantean darkness, because the right way he
+had for ever lost from view. That Poet was a poet of France, and the voice
+of his glory and the echo of the songs he chanted resounded with that
+proud and melodious note of genius which can never weary human ears.
+Although this poet led a life which can be compared only to the life of
+Oscar Wilde, he belonged to an order of mentality which differs too
+greatly in its essential features to allow the accidents of the career of
+the two men being used as a basis for comparing them closely together on
+the intellectual plane.
+
+Verlaine belonged to that race of poets who distinguish themselves by
+their perfect spontaneity; he was a veritable poet of instinct, and had
+heard voices which no other mortal had heard before him on earth. In place
+of the metallic verses of his predecessors, the verses that for the most
+part are spoken by linguistic artists, he created a sort of ethereal
+music, a song so sweet and so penetrating that it haunts us eternally like
+the low, passionate, whisperings of a lover's voice. He gave us more than
+royal largesse of a wonderful and delicious soul, that had no part or lot
+in time, a music that was created for his soul alone; and we have
+willingly forgotten many a haughtier voice for the bewitching strains that
+this baptised faun played for us with such artless joy on his forest-grown
+reed.
+
+The English poet was more complex and perhaps less sheerly human; and
+even his errors have no other origin than the perpetual effort to astonish
+us; whilst above all, that which staggers us most and stirs us so
+profoundly is that these self-same errors, which had come into life under
+such innocent conditions, became terribly real in virtue of that imperious
+law which compels certain minds to render their dreams incarnate.
+
+As for his work, however finely polished, however exquisite it may be and
+undoubtedly is, we have to confess that it has no power to move our souls
+into high passion and lofty endeavour; although it might easily have
+sufficed to conquer celebrity for more than one ambitious literary
+craftsman. But we feel, with regard to Wilde, that we had a legitimate
+right to insist on the accomplishment of far greater things, a more
+sincere and genuine output, and are so much more dissatisfied because we
+clearly see the great discord between the man who palpitated with intense
+life, and the esthetic dandy whose cleverness overreached itself when he
+tried to work out that life on admittedly artificial lines.
+
+This extraordinary divorce between intelligence and will-power was that
+which gave rise to the striking drama of Wilde's career; albeit the word
+drama looks strange and out of place, if applied only to the
+sorrow-filled period that crowned with thorns the latter end of his
+brilliant existence, if it be used for no other reason than to
+particularize the great catastrophe that took place in the sight of all
+the world. The fact is, the man's entire life was one perpetual drama.
+Throughout the whole course of his existence, he persistently sought after
+and that with impunity, all sorts of excitants that could at last no
+longer be disguised under the name of experiences--and no doubt, others
+more terrible still that fall under no human laws, would have come finally
+to swell the ranks of their forerunners--and then, had the hand of Destiny
+not arrested him in his course, he would have wound up by descending so
+low that the artistic life of his soul would have been forever
+extinguished.
+
+That, when all is said and done, would have been the veritable, the
+irremediable tragedy.
+
+Fortunately, royal intellects such as these, can never utterly die, and
+therein consists their greatest chastisement. Spasmodic movements agitate
+them, revealing beneath their mendacious laughter the secret agony of
+their souls; and we are suddenly called upon to witness the heart-rending
+spectacle of the slow death-agony of a haughty, talented poet, a Petronius
+self-poisoned through fear of Caesar or a Wilde whom a vicious and
+over-wrought Public had only half assassinated, raising his poor, glazed
+eyes towards the marvellous Light of Truth, whose glorious vision, we know
+by the sure voice that comes "from the depths," he had caught at last....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Oscar Wilde had desired to live a pagan's free and untramelled life in
+Twentieth-century England, forgetful of the enormous fact that no longer
+may we live pagan-wise, for the shadow of the Cross has shed a steadily
+increasing gloom over the conditions that enlivened the joyous existence
+of olden times.
+
+C. G.
+
+
+
+
+The Trial of Oscar Wilde.
+
+
+"In all men's hearts a slumbering swine lies low", says the French poet;
+so come ye, whose porcine instincts have never been awakened, or if
+rampant successfully hidden, and hurl the biggest, sharpest stones you can
+lay your hands on at your wretched, degraded, humiliated brother, _who has
+been found out_.
+
+
+
+
+The Trial of Oscar Wilde
+
+
+The life and death of Oscar Wilde, poet, playwright, _poseur_ and convict,
+can only fittingly be summarised as a tragedy. Every misspent life is a
+tragedy more or less; but how much more tragic appear the elements of
+despair and disaster when the victim to his own vices is a man of genius
+exercising a considerable influence upon the thought and culture of his
+day, and possessing every advantage which birth, education, talent and
+station can bestow? Oscar Wilde was more than a clever and original
+thinker. He was the inventor of a certain literary style, and, though his
+methods, showy and eccentric as they were, lent themselves readily to
+imitation, none of his followers could approach their "Master" in the
+particular mode which he had made his own. There can be two opinions as
+to the merits of his plays. There can be only one judgment as to their
+daring and audacious originality. Of the ordinary and the commonplace
+Wilde had a horror, which with him was almost a religion. He was
+unmercifully chaffed throughout America when he appeared in public in a
+light green suit adorned with a large sunflower; but he did not don this
+outrageous costume because he preferred such startling clothing. He
+adopted the dress in order to be original and assumed it because no other
+living man was likely to be so garbed. He was consumed, in fact, with
+overpowering vanity. He was possessed of a veritable demon of self-esteem.
+He ate strange foods, and drank unusual liquors in order to be unlike any
+of his contemporaries. His eccentricities of dress continued to the end.
+On the first night of one of his plays--it was a brilliant triumph--he was
+called upon by an enthusiastic audience for the customary speech. He was
+much exercised in his mind as to what he could say that would be
+unconventional and sensational. No mere platitudes or banalities for the
+author of "Lady Windermere's Fan," who made a god of the spirit of Epigram
+and almost canonized the art of Repartee. He said, "Ladies and Gentlemen:
+I am glad you like my play. I like it very much myself too," which, if
+candid, was hardly the remark of a modest and retiring author. The leopard
+cannot change his spots and neither can the lion his skin. Even in his
+beautiful book, "De Profundis"--surely the most extraordinary volume of
+recent years--the man's character is writ so plainly that he who runs may
+read. Man of letters, man of fashion, man of hideous vices, Oscar Wilde
+remained to the last moment of his murdered life, a self-conscious
+egotist. "Gentlemen," he gasped on his death-bed, hearing the doctors
+express misgivings as to their fees, "it would appear that I am dying
+beyond my means!" It was a brilliant sally and one can picture the
+startled faces of the medical attendants. A genius lay a-dying and a
+genius he remained till the breath of life departed.
+
+Genius we know to be closely allied to insanity and it were charitable to
+describe this man as mad, besides approaching very nearly to the truth.
+Something was out of gear in that finely attuned mind. Some thorn there
+was among the intellectual roses which made him what he was. He pined for
+strange passions, new sensations. His was the temperament of the Roman
+sybarite. He often sighed for a return of the days when vice was deified.
+He spoke of the glories of the Devastation, the awful woman and the
+Alexandrian school at which little girls and young boys were instructed in
+all the most secret and unthinkable forms of vice. Modern women satisfied
+him not. Perverted passions consumed the fire of his being. He had had
+children of his wife, but sexual intercourse between him and that most
+unfortunate lady was more honoured in the breach than in the observance.
+They had their several rooms. On many occasions Wilde actually brought the
+companions of his abominable rites and sinful joys to his own home, and
+indulged in his frightful propensities beneath the roof of the house which
+sheltered his own sons and their most unhappy mother. Could the man
+capable of this atrocity possess a normal mind? Can Oscar Wilde, who
+committed moral suicide and made of himself a social pariah, be regarded
+as a sane man? London society is not so strict nor straight-laced that it
+will not forgive much laxity in its devoted votaries. Rumour had been busy
+with the name of Oscar Wilde for a long time before the whole awful truth
+became known. He was seen, constantly, at theatres and restaurants with
+persons in no way fit to be his associates and these persons were not
+girls or women. He paraded his shameful friendships and flaunted his
+villainous companions in society's face. People began to look askance at
+the famous wit. Doors began to be closed to him. He was ostracised by all
+but the most Bohemian coteries. But even those who were still proud to
+rank him among their friends did not know how far he had wilfully drawn
+himself into the web of disgrace. Much that seemed strange and
+unaccountable was attributed to his well-known love of pose. Men shrugged
+their shoulders and declared that "Wilde meant no harm. It was his
+vainglorious way of showing his contempt for the opinion of the world. Men
+of such parts could not be judged by ordinary standards. Intellectually
+Wilde was fit to mix with the immortals. If he preferred the society of
+miserable, beardless, stunted youths destitute alike of decency or
+honour--it was no affair of theirs," and so on _ad nauseam_. Meanwhile,
+heedless of the warnings of friends and the sneers of foes, Wilde went his
+own way--to destruction.
+
+He was addicted to the vice and crime of sodomy long before he formed a
+"friendship" which was destined to involve him in irretrievable ruin. In
+London, he met a younger son of the eccentric Marquis of Queensbury, Lord
+Alfred Douglas by name. This youth was being educated at Cambridge. He
+was of peculiar temperament and talented in a strong, frothy style. He was
+good-looking in an effeminate, lady-like way. He wrote verse. His poems
+not being of a manner which could be acceptable to a self-respecting
+publication, his efforts appeared in an eccentric and erratic magazine
+which was called "The Chameleon." In this precious serial appeared a
+"poem" from the pen of Lord Alfred dedicated to his father in these filial
+words: "To the Man I Hate."
+
+Oscar Wilde at once developed an extraordinary and dangerous interest in
+this immature literary egg. A being of his own stamp, after his own heart,
+was Lord Alfred Douglas. The love of women delighted him not. The
+possession of a young girl's person had no charm for him. He yearned for
+higher flights in the realms of love! He sought unnatural affection.
+Wilde, experienced in all the symptoms of a disordered sexual fancy,
+contrived to exercise a remarkable and sinister influence over this youth.
+Again and again and again did his father implore Lord Alfred Douglas to
+separate himself from the tempter. Lord Queensberry threatened, persuaded,
+bribed, urged, cajoled: all to no purpose. Wilde and his son were
+constantly together. The nature of their friendship became the talk of the
+town. It was proclaimed from the housetops. The Marquis, determined to
+rescue him if it were humanly possible, horsewhipped his son in a public
+thoroughfare and was threatened with a summons for assault. On one
+occasion--it was the opening night of one of the Wilde plays--he sent the
+author a bouquet of choice--vegetables! Three or four times he wrote to
+him begging him to cancel his friendship with Lord Alfred. Once he called
+at the house in Tite Street and there was a terrible scene. The Marquis
+fumed; Wilde laughed. He assured his Lordship that only at his son's own
+request would he break off the association which existed between them. The
+Marquis, driven to desperation, called Wilde a disgusting name. The
+latter, with a show of wrath, ordered the peer from his door and he was
+obliged to leave.
+
+At all costs and hazards, at the risk of any pain and grief to himself,
+Lord Queensberry was determined to break off the disgraceful _liaison_. He
+stopped his son's allowance, but Wilde had, at that time, plenty of money
+and his purse was his friend's. At last the father went to the length of
+leaving an insulting message for Oscar Wilde at that gentleman's club. He
+called there and asked for Wilde. The clerk at the enquiry office stated
+that Mr. Wilde was not on the premises. The Marquis then produced a card
+and wrote upon it in pencil these words, "Oscar Wilde is a Bugger." This
+elegant missive he directed to be handed to the author when he should next
+appear at the club.
+
+From this card--Lord Queensberry's last resource--grew the whole great
+case, which amazed and horrified the world in 1895. Oscar Wilde was
+compelled, however reluctantly, to take the matter up. Had he remained
+quiescent under such a public affront, his career in England would have
+been at an end. He bowed to the inevitable and a libel action was
+prepared.
+
+One is often compelled to wonder if he foresaw the outcome. One asks
+oneself if he realized what defeat in this case would portend. The stakes
+were desperately high. He risked, in a Court of Law, his reputation, his
+position, his career and even his freedom. Did he know what the end to it
+all would be?
+
+Whatever Wilde's fears and expectations were, his opponent did not
+under-estimate the importance of the issue. If he could not induce a jury
+of twelve of his fellow-countrymen to believe that the plaintiff was what
+he had termed him, he, the Marquis of Queensberry, would be himself
+disgraced. Furthermore, there would, in the event of failure, be heavy
+damages to pay and the poor man was not over rich. Wilde had many and
+powerful friends. For reasons which it is not necessary to enlarge upon,
+Lord Queensberry was not liked or respected by his own order. The ultimate
+knowledge that he was a father striving to save a loved son from infamy
+changed all that, and his Lordship met with nothing but sympathy from the
+general public in the latter stages of the great case.
+
+Sir Edward Clarke was retained for the plaintiff. It is needless to refer
+to the high estimation in which this legal and political luminary is held
+by all classes of society. From first to last he devoted himself to the
+lost cause of Oscar Wilde with a whole-hearted devotion which was beyond
+praise. The upshot of the libel action must have pained and disgusted him;
+yet he refused to abandon his client, and, in the two criminal trials,
+defended him with a splendid loyalty and with the marked ability that
+might be expected from such a counsel. The acute, energetic, silver-spoken
+Mr. Carson led on the other side. It is not necessary to make more than
+passing mention of the conspicuous skill with which the able lawyer
+conducted the case for the defendant. Even the gifted plaintiff himself
+cut a sorry figure when opposed to Mr. Carson.
+
+Extraordinary interest was displayed in the action; and the courts were
+besieged on each day that the trial lasted. Remarkable revelations were
+expected and they were indeed forthcoming. Enormous pains had been taken
+to provide a strong defence and it was quite clear almost after the first
+day that Wilde's case would infallibly break down. He made some
+astonishing admissions in the witness-box and even disgusted many of his
+friends by the flippancy and affected unconcern of his replies to
+questions of the most damaging nature. He, apparently, saw nothing
+indecorous in facts which must shock any other than the most depraved. He
+saw nothing disgusting in friendships of a kind to which only one
+construction could be put. He gave expensive dinners to ex-barmen and the
+like: ignorant, brutish young fools--because they amused him! He presented
+youths of questionable moral character with silver cigarette-cases because
+their society was pleasant! He took young men to share his bedroom at
+hotels and saw nothing remarkable in such proceedings. He gave sums of
+thirty pounds to ill-bred youths--accomplished blackmailers--because they
+were hard-up and he felt they did not deserve poverty! He assisted other
+young men of a character equally undesirable, to go to America and
+received letters from them in which they addressed him as "Dear Oscar,"
+and sent him their love. In short, his own statements damned him. Out of
+his own mouth--and he posing all the time--was he convicted. The case
+could have but one ending. Sir Edward Clarke--pained, surprised,
+shocked--consented to a verdict for the Marquis of Queensberry and the
+great libel case was at an end. The defendant left the court proudly
+erect, conscious that he had been the means of saving his son and of
+eradicating from society a canker which had been rotting it unnoticed,
+except by a few, for a very long time. Oscar Wilde left the court a ruined
+and despised man. People--there were one or two left who were loyal to
+him--turned aside from him with loathing. He had nodded to six or seven
+friends in court on the last day of the trial and turned ashen pale when
+he observed their averted looks. All was over for him. The little
+supper-parties with a few choice wits; the glorious intoxication of
+first-night applause; the orgies in the infamous dens of his boon
+companions--all these were no more for him. Oscar Wilde, _bon vivant_, man
+of letters, arbiter of literary fashion, stood at the bar of public
+opinion, a wretch guilty of crimes against which the body recoils and the
+mind revolts. Oh! what a falling-off was there!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If any reader would care to know the impression made upon the opinion of
+the London world by the revelations of this lawsuit, let him turn to the
+"Daily Telegraph" of the morning following the dramatic result of the
+trial. In that great newspaper appeared a leading article in reference to
+Oscar Wilde, the terms of which, though deserved, were most scathing,
+denunciatory, and bitter. Yet a general feeling of relief permeated the
+regret which was universally expressed at so terrible a termination of a
+distinguished career. Society was at no pains to hide its relief that the
+Augean stable has been cleansed and that a terrible scandal had been
+exorcised from its midst.
+
+It now becomes a necessary, albeit painful task, to describe the
+happenings incidental or subsequent to the Wilde & Queensberry
+proceedings. It was certain that matters could not be allowed to rest as
+they were. A jury in a public court had convinced themselves that Lord
+Queensberry's allegations were strictly true and the duty of the Public
+Prosecutor was truly clear. The law is not, or should not be, a respector
+of persons, and Oscar Wilde, genius though he were, was not less amenable
+to the law than would be any ignorant boor suspected of similar crimes.
+The machinery of legal process was set in action and the arrest of Wilde
+followed as a matter of course.
+
+A prominent name in the libel action against Lord Queensberry had been
+that of one Alfred Taylor. This individual, besides being himself guilty
+of the most infamous practices, had, it would appear, for long acted as a
+sort of precursor for the Apostle of Culture and his capture took place at
+nearly the same time as that of his principal. The latter was arrested at
+a certain quiet and fashionable hotel whither he had gone with one or two
+yet loyal friends after the trial for libel. His arrest was not
+unexpected, of course; but it created a tremendous sensation and vast
+crowds collected at Bow Street Police Station and in the vicinity during
+the preliminary examinations before the Magistrate. The prisoner Wilde
+bore himself with some show of fortitude, but it was clear that the iron
+had already entered into his soul and his old air of jaunty indifference
+to the opinion of the world had plainly given way to a mental anxiety
+which could not altogether be hidden, though it could be controlled. On
+one occasion as, fur-coated, silk-hatted, he entered the dock, he nodded
+familiarly to the late Sir Augustus Harris, but that magnate of the
+theatrical world deliberately turned his back upon the playwriting
+celebrity. The evidence from first to last was followed with the most
+intense interest and the end of it was that Oscar Wilde was fully
+committed for trial.
+
+The case came on at the Old Bailey during the month of April, 1895, and it
+was seen that the interest had in no wise abated. Mr. Justice Charles
+presided and he was accompanied by the customary retinue of Corporation
+dignitaries. The court was crowded in every part and hundreds of people
+were unsuccessful in efforts to obtain admission. A reporter for a Sunday
+newspaper wrote: "Wilde's personal appearance has changed little since his
+committal from Bow Street. He wears the same clothes and continues to
+carry the same hat. He looks haggard and worn, and his long hair that was
+so carefully arranged when last he was in the court, though not then in
+the dock, is now dishevelled. Taylor, on the other hand, still neatly
+dressed, appears not to have suffered from his enforced confinement. But
+he no longer attempts to regard the proceedings with that indifference
+which he affected when first before the magistrate."
+
+As soon as Wilde and his confederate took their places in the dock, each
+held a whispered consultation with his counsel and the Clerk of Arraigns
+then read over the indictments. Both prisoners pleaded "Not guilty,"
+Taylor speaking in a loud and confident tone. Wilde spoke quietly, looked
+very grave and gave attentive heed to the formal opening proceedings.
+
+Mr. C. F. Gill led for the prosecution and he rose amidst a breathless
+silence, to outline the main facts of the case. After begging the jury to
+dismiss from their minds anything that they might have heard or read in
+regard to the affair, and to abandon all prejudice on either side, he
+described at some length the circumstances which led up to the present
+prosecution. He spoke of the arrest and committal of the Marquis of
+Queensberry on a charge of criminal libel and of the collapse of the case
+for the prosecution when the case was heard at the Old Bailey. He alluded
+to the subsequent inevitable arrest of Wilde and Taylor and of the
+committal of both prisoners to take their trial at the present Sessions.
+
+Wilde, he said, was well-known as a dramatic author and generally, as a
+literary man of unusual attainments. He had resided, until his arrest, at
+a house in Tite Street, Chelsea, where his wife lived with the children of
+the marriage. Taylor had had numerous addresses, but for the time covered
+by these charges, had dwelt in Little College Street, and afterwards in
+Chapel Street. Although Wilde had a house in Tite Street, he had at
+different times occupied rooms in St. James's Place, the Savoy Hotel and
+the Albermarle Hotel. It would be shown that Wilde and Taylor were in
+league for certain purposes and Mr. Gill then explained the specific
+allegations against the prisoners. Wilde, he asserted, had not hesitated,
+soon after his first introduction to Taylor, to explain to him to what
+purpose he wished to put their acquaintance. Taylor was familiar with a
+number of young men who were in the habit of giving their bodies, or
+selling them, to other men for the purpose of sodomy. It appeared that
+there was a number of youths engaged in this abominable traffic and that
+one and all of them were known to Taylor, who went about and sought out
+for them men of means who were willing to pay heavily for the indulgence
+of their favorite vice. Mr. Gill endeavoured to show that Taylor himself
+was given to sodomy and that he had himself indulged in these filthy
+practices with the same youths as he agreed to procure for Wilde. The
+visits of the latter to Taylor's rooms were touched upon and the
+circumstances attending these visits were laid bare. On nearly every
+occasion when Wilde called, a young man was present with whom he committed
+the act of sodomy. The names of various young men connected with these
+facts were mentioned in turn and the case of the two Parkers was given as
+a sample of many others on which the learned counsel preferred to dwell
+with less minuteness.
+
+When Taylor gave up his rooms in Little College Street and took up his
+abode in Chapel Street, he left behind him a number of compromising
+papers, which would be produced in evidence against the prisoners; and he
+should submit in due course that there was abundant corroboration of the
+statements of the youths involved. Mr. Gill pointed out the peculiarities
+in the case of Frederick Atkins. This youth had accompanied the prisoner
+Wilde to Paris, and there could be no doubt whatever that the latter had
+in the most systematic way endeavoured to influence this young man's mind
+towards vicious courses and had endeavoured to mould him to his own
+depraved will. The relations which had existed between the prisoner and
+another lad, one Alfred Wood, were also fully described and the learned
+counsel made special allusion to the remarkable manner in which Wilde had
+lavished money upon Wood prior to the departure of that youth for America.
+
+Mr. Gill referred to yet another of Wilde's youthful familiars--namely:
+Sidney Mavor--in regard to whom, he said, the jury must form their own
+conclusions after they had heard the evidence. Among other things to which
+he would ask them to direct careful attention was a letter written in
+pencil by Taylor, the prisoner, to this youth. The communication ran:
+"Dear Sid, I cannot wait any longer. Come at once and see Oscar at Tite
+Street. I am, Yours ever, Alfred Taylor." The use of the christian name of
+Wilde in so familiar a way suggested the nature of the acquaintance which
+existed between Mavor and Wilde, who was old enough to be his father. In
+conclusion, Mr. Gill asked the jury to give the case, painful as it must
+necessarily be, their most earnest and careful consideration.
+
+Both Wilde and Taylor paid keen attention to the opening statement. They
+exchanged no word together and it was observed that Wilde kept as far
+apart from his companion in the dock, as he possibly could.
+
+The first witness called was Charles Parker. He proved to be a rather
+smartly-attired youth, fresh-coloured, and of course, clean-shaven. He was
+very pale and appeared uneasy. He stated that he had first met Taylor at
+the St. James' Restaurant. The latter had got into conversation with him
+and the young fellows with him, and had insisted on "standing" drinks.
+Conversation of a certain nature passed between them. Taylor called
+attention to the prostitutes who frequent Piccadilly Circus and remarked:
+"I can't understand sensible men wasting their money on painted trash like
+that. Many do, though. But there are a few who know better. Now, you could
+get money in a certain way easily enough, if you cared to." The witness
+had formerly been a valet and he was at this time out of employment. He
+understood to what Taylor alluded and made a coarse reply.
+
+Mr. GILL.--"I am obliged to ask you what it was you actually said."
+
+WITNESS.--"I do not like to say."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"You were less squeamish at the time, I daresay. I ask you for
+the words."
+
+WITNESS.--"I said that if any old gentleman with money took a fancy to
+me, I was agreeable. I was terribly hard up."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"What did Taylor say?"
+
+WITNESS.--"He laughed and said that men far cleverer, richer and better
+than I preferred things of that kind."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"Did Taylor mention the prisoner Wilde?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Not at that time. He arranged to meet me again and I
+consented."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"Where did you first meet Wilde?"
+
+WITNESS.--"At the Solferino Restaurant."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"Tell me what transpired."
+
+WITNESS.--"Taylor said he could introduce me to a man who was good for
+plenty of money. Wilde came in later and I was formally introduced. Dinner
+was served for four in a private room."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"Who made the fourth?"
+
+WITNESS.--"My brother, William Parker. I had promised Taylor that he
+should accompany me."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"What happened during dinner?"
+
+WITNESS.--"There was plenty of champagne and brandy and coffee. We all
+partook of it."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"Of what nature was the conversation?"
+
+WITNESS.--"General, at first. Nothing was then said as to the purposes for
+which we had come together."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"And then?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Wilde invited me to go to his rooms at the Savoy Hotel. Only he
+and I went, leaving my brother and Taylor behind. Wilde and I went in a
+cab. At the Savoy we went to his--Wilde's--sitting-room."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"More drink was offered you there?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes; we had liqueurs."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"Let us know what occurred."
+
+WITNESS.--"He committed the act of sodomy upon me."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"With your consent?"
+
+The witness did not reply. Further examined, he said that Wilde on that
+occasion had given him two pounds and asked him to call upon him again a
+week later. He did so, the same thing occurred and Wilde then gave him
+three pounds. The witness next described a visit to Little College Street,
+to Taylor's rooms. Wilde used to call there and the same thing occurred as
+at the Savoy. For a fortnight or three weeks the witness lodged in
+Park-Walk, close to Taylor's house. There too he was visited by Wilde. The
+witness gave a detailed account of the disgusting proceedings there. He
+said, "I was asked by Wilde to imagine that I was a woman and that he was
+my lover. I had to keep up this illusion. I used to sit on his knees and
+he used to play with my privates as a man might amuse himself with a
+girl." Wilde insisted in this filthy make-believe being kept up. Wilde
+gave him a silver cigarette case and a gold ring, both of which articles
+he pawned. The prisoner said, "I don't suppose boys are different to girls
+in acquiring presents from them who are fond of them." He remembered Wilde
+having rooms at St. James's Place and the witness visited him there.
+
+Mr. GILL.--"Where else have you been with Wilde?"
+
+WITNESS.--"To Kettner's Restaurant."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"What happened there?"
+
+WITNESS.--"We dined there. We always had a lot of wine. Wilde would talk
+of poetry and art during dinner, and of the old Roman days."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"On one occasion you proceeded from Kettner's to Wilde's
+house?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes. We went to Tite Street. It was very late at night. Wilde
+let himself and me in with a latchkey. I remained the night, sleeping with
+the prisoner, and he himself let me out in the early morning before anyone
+was about."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"Where else have you visited this man?"
+
+WITNESS.--"At the Albemarle Hotel. The same thing happened then."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"Where did your last interview take place?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I last saw Wilde in Trafalgar Square about nine months ago. He
+was in a hansom and saw me. He alighted from the hansom."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"What did he say?"
+
+WITNESS.--"He said, 'Well, you are looking as pretty as ever.' He did not
+ask me to go anywhere with him then."
+
+The witness went on to say that during the period of his acquaintance with
+Wilde, he frequently saw Taylor, and the latter quite understood and was
+aware of the motive of the acquaintance. At the Little College Street
+rooms he had frequently seen Wood, Atkins and Scaife, and he knew that
+these youths were "in the same line, at the same game," as himself. In the
+August previous to this trial he was at a certain house in Fitzroy
+Square. Orgies of the most disgraceful kind used to happen there. The
+police made a raid upon the premises and he and the Taylors were arrested.
+From that time he had ceased all relationship with the latter. Since that
+event he had enlisted, and while away in the country he was seen by
+someone representing Lord Queensberry and made a statement. The evidence
+of this witness created a great sensation in court, and it was increased
+when Sir Edward Clarke rose to cross-examine. This began after the
+adjournment.
+
+Sir EDWARD CLARKE.--"When were you seen in the country in reference to
+this case?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Towards the end of March."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Who saw you?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Mr. Russell."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Was there no examination before that?"
+
+WITNESS.--"No."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Did you state at Bow Street that you received L30 not to say
+anything about a certain case?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Now, I do not ask you to give me the name of the gentleman
+from whom this money was extorted, but I ask you to give me the name of
+the agents."
+
+WITNESS.--"Wood & Allen."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Where were you living then?"
+
+WITNESS.--"In Cranford Street."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"When did the incident occur in consequence of which you
+received that L30?"
+
+WITNESS.--"About two weeks before."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Where?"
+
+WITNESS.--"At Camera Square."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"I'll leave that question. You say positively that Mr. Wilde
+committed sodomy with you at the Savoy?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"But you have been in the habit of accusing other gentlemen
+of the same offence?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Never, unless it has been done."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"I submit that you blackmail gentlemen?"
+
+WITNESS.--"No, Sir, I have accepted money, but it has been offered to me
+to pay me for the offence. I have been solicited. I have never suggested
+this offence to gentlemen."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Was the door locked during the time you describe?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I do not think so. It was late and the prisoner told the waiter
+not to come up again."
+
+The next witness was William Parker. This youth corroborated his brother's
+evidence. He said he was present at the dinner with Taylor and Wilde
+described by the last witness. Wilde paid all his attention to
+his--witness's--brother. He, Wilde, often fed his brother off his own fork
+or out of his own spoon. His brother accepted a preserved cherry from
+Wilde's own mouth--he took it into his and this trick was repeated three
+or four times. His brother went off with the prisoner to his rooms at the
+Savoy and the witness remained behind with Taylor, who said, "Your brother
+is lucky. Oscar does not care what he pays if he fancies a chap."
+
+Ellen Grant was the landlady of the house in Little College Street at
+which Taylor lodged. She gave evidence as to the visits of various lords
+and stated that Wilde was a fairly frequent caller. He would remain for
+hours and one of the lads was generally closeted with him. Once she tried
+the door and found it locked. She heard whispering and laughing and her
+suspicions were aroused though she did not like to take steps in the
+matter.
+
+Lucy Rumsby, who let a room to Charles Parker at Chelsea, gave rather
+similar evidence, but Wilde does not appear to have called there more than
+once and that occasion it was to take out Parker, who went away with him.
+
+Sophia Gray, Taylor's landlady in Chapel Street, also gave evidence. She
+amused the court by the emphatic and outspoken way in which she explained
+that she had no idea of the nature of what was going on. Several young men
+were constantly calling upon Taylor and were alone with him for a long
+time, but he used to say that they were clerks for whom he hoped to find
+employment. The prisoner Wilde was a frequent visitor.
+
+But all this latter evidence paled as regards sinister significance beside
+that furnished by a young man named Alfred Wood. This young wretch
+admitted to acts of the grossest indecency with Oscar Wilde. He said,
+"Wilde saw his influence to induce me to consent. He made me nearly drunk.
+He used to put his hand inside my trousers beneath the table at dinner and
+compel me to do the same to him. Afterwards, I used to lie on a sofa with
+him. It was a long time, however, before I would allow him to actually do
+the act of sodomy. He gave me money to go to America."
+
+Sir Edward Clarke submitted this self-disgraced witness to a very vigorous
+cross-examination.
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"What have you been doing since your return from America?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Well, I have not done much."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Have you done anything?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I have had no regular employment."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"I thought not."
+
+WITNESS.--"I could not get anything to do."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"As a matter of fact, you have had no respectable work for
+over three years?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Well, no."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Did not you, in conjunction with Allen, succeed in getting
+L300 from a gentleman?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes; but he was guilty with Allen."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"How much did you receive?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I advised Allen how to proceed. He gave me L130."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Who else got any of this money?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Parker. Charles Parker got some and also Wood."
+
+Thos. Price was the next witness. This man was a waiter at a private hotel
+in St. James's and he testified to Wilde's visits there and to the number
+of young men, "of quite inferior station," who called to see him. Then
+came Frank Atkins, whose evidence is given in full.
+
+Mr. AVORY.--"How old are you?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I am 20 years old."
+
+Mr. AVORY.--"What is your business?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I have been a billiard-marker."
+
+Mr. AVORY.--"You are doing nothing now?"
+
+WITNESS.--"No."
+
+Mr. AVORY.--"Who introduced you to Wilde?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I was introduced to him by Schwabe in November, 1892."
+
+Mr. AVORY.--"Have you met Lord Alfred Douglas?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I have. I dined with him and Wilde on several occasions. They
+pressed me to go to Paris."
+
+Mr. AVORY.--"You went with them?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Mr. AVORY.--"You told Wilde on one occasion while in Paris that you had
+spent the previous night with a woman?"
+
+WITNESS.--"No. I had arranged to meet a girl at the Moulin Rouge, and
+Wilde told me not to go. However, I did go, but the woman was not there."
+
+Mr. AVORY.--"You returned to London with Wilde?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Mr. AVORY.--"Did he give you money?"
+
+WITNESS.--"He gave me a cigarette-case."
+
+Mr. AVORY.--"You were then the best of friends?"
+
+WITNESS.--"He called me Fred and I addressed him as Oscar. We liked each
+other, but there was no harm in it."
+
+Mr. AVORY.--"Did you visit Wilde on your return?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes, at Tite Street. Wilde also called upon me at Osnaburgh
+Street. On the latter occasion one of the Parkers was present."
+
+Mr. AVORY.--"You know most of these youths. Do you know Sidney Mavor?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Only by sight."
+
+Sir EDWARD CLARKE.--"Were you ill at Osnaburgh Street?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes, I had small-pox and was removed to the hospital ship.
+Before I went I wrote to Parker asking him to write to Wilde and request
+him to come and see me, and he did so."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"You are sure you returned from Paris with Mr. Wilde?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Did any impropriety ever take place between you and Wilde?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Never."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Have you ever lived with a man named Burton?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"What was he?"
+
+WITNESS.--"A bookmaker."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Have you and this Burton been engaged in the business of
+blackmailing?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I have a professional name. I have sometimes called myself
+Denny."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Has this man Burton, to your knowledge, obtained money from
+gentlemen by accusing them or threatening to accuse them of certain
+offences?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Not to my knowledge."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Not in respect to a certain Birmingham gentleman?"
+
+WITNESS.--"No."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"That being your answer, I must particularize. On June 9th,
+1891, did you and Burton obtain a large sum of money from a Birmingham
+gentleman?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Certainly not."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Then I ask you if in June, '91, Burton did not take rooms
+for you in Tatchbrook Street?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes; and he lived with me there."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"You were in the habit of taking men home with you then?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Not for the purposes of blackmail."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Well, for indecent purposes."
+
+WITNESS.--"No."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Give me the names of two or three of the people whom you
+have taken home to that address?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I cannot. I forget them."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Now I am going to ask you a direct question, and I ask you
+to be careful in your reply. Were you and Burton ever taken to Rochester
+Road Police Station?"
+
+WITNESS.--"No."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Well, was Burton?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I think not--at least, he was not, to my knowledge."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Did the Birmingham gentleman give to Burton a cheque for
+L200 drawn in the name of S. Denis or Denny, your own name?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Not to my knowledge."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"About two years ago, did you and someone else go to the
+Victoria Hotel with two American gentlemen?"
+
+WITNESS.--"No, I did not. Never."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"I think you did. Be careful in your replies. Did Burton
+extort money from these gentlemen?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I have never been there at all."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Have you ever been to Anderton's Hotel and stayed a night
+with a gentleman, whom you threatened the next morning with exposure?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I have not."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"When did you go abroad with Burton?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I think in February, 1892."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"When did you last go with him abroad?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Last spring."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"How long were you away?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Oh! about a month."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Where did you stay?"
+
+WITNESS.--"We went to Nice and stayed at Gaze's Hotel."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"You were having a holiday?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Which you continued with business in your usual way?"
+
+The witness did not reply.
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"What were you and Burton doing at Nice?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Simply enjoying ourselves."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"During this visit of enjoyment you and Burton fell out, I
+think."
+
+WITNESS.--"Oh, dear, no!"
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Yet you separated from this Burton after that visit?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I gave up being a bookmaker's clerk."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"What name did Burton use in the ring?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Watson was his betting name."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Did you blackmail a gentleman at Nice?"
+
+WITNESS.--"No."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Are you sure there was no quarrel between you and Burton at
+Nice?"
+
+WITNESS.--"There may have been a little one, but I don't remember anything
+of the kind."
+
+Mr. Grain then put some questions to the Witness.
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"Did you go to Scarbro' about a year ago?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"Did Burton go with you?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"What was your business there?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I was engaged professionally. I sang at the Aquarium there."
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"Did you get acquainted while there with a foreign gentleman,
+a Count?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Not acquainted."
+
+At this moment Mr. Grain wrote a name on a piece of paper and handed it up
+to the witness, who read it.
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"Do you know that gentleman?"
+
+WITNESS.--"No, I heard his name mentioned at Scarborough."
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"Then you never spoke to him?"
+
+WITNESS.--"No."
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"Was not a large sum--about L500--paid to you or Burton by
+that gentleman about this time last year?"
+
+WITNESS.--"No."
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"Had you any engagement at the Scarborough Aquarium?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"How much did you receive a week?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I was paid four pounds ten shillings."
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"How long were you there?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Three weeks."
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"Have you ever lived in Buckingham Palace Road?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I have."
+
+Mr. Grain wrote at this stage on another slip of paper and it was handed
+up to the witness-box.
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"Look at that piece of paper. Do you know the name written
+there?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I never saw it before."
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"When were you living in Buckingham Palace Road?"
+
+WITNESS.--"In 1892."
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"Do you remember being introduced to an elderly man in the
+City?"
+
+WITNESS.--"No."
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"Did you take him to your room, permit him to commit sodomy
+with and upon you, rob him of his pocket-book and threaten him with
+exposure if he complained?"
+
+WITNESS.--"No."
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"Did you threaten to extort money from him because he had
+agreed to accompany you home for a foul purpose?"
+
+WITNESS.--"No."
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"Did you ever stay at a place in the suburbs on the South
+Western Railway with Burton?"
+
+WITNESS.--"No."
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"What other addresses have you had in London during the last
+three years?"
+
+WITNESS.--"None but those I have told you."
+
+This concluded the evidence of this witness for the time being.
+
+Mary Applegate, employed as a housekeeper at Osnaburgh Street, said Atkins
+used to lodge there and left about a month ago. Wilde visited him at this
+house on two occasions that she was cognisant of. She stated that one of
+the housemaids came to her and complained of the state of the sheets of
+the bed in which Atkins slept after Wilde's first visit. The sheets were
+stained in a peculiar way. It may be explained here, in order to make the
+witness's evidence understood, that the sodomistic act has much the same
+effect as an enema inserted up the rectum. There is an almost immediate
+discharge, though not, of course, to the extent produced by the enema
+operation.
+
+The next witness called was Sidney Mavor, a smooth-faced young fellow with
+dark hair and eyes. He stated that he was now in partnership with a friend
+in the City. He first made the acquaintance of the prisoner Taylor at the
+Gaiety Theatre in 1892. He afterwards visited him at Little College
+Street. Taylor was very civil and friendly and introduced him to different
+people. The witness did not think at that time that Taylor had any
+ulterior designs. One day, however, Taylor said to him, "I know a man, in
+an influential position, who could be of great use to you, Mavor. He likes
+young men when they're modest and nice in manners and appearance. I'll
+introduce you." It was arranged that they should dine at Kettner's
+Restaurant the next evening. He called for Taylor, who said, "I am glad
+you've made yourself pretty. Mr. Wilde likes nice, clean boys." That was
+the first time Wilde's name was mentioned. Arrived at the restaurant, they
+were shown into a private room. A man named Schwabe and Wilde and another
+gentleman came in later. He believed the other gentleman to be Lord
+Alfred Douglas. The conversation at dinner was, the witness thought,
+peculiar, but he knew Wilde was a Bohemian and he did not think the talk
+strange. He was placed next to Wilde, who used occasionally to pull his
+ear or chuck him under the chin, but he did nothing that was actually
+objectionable. He, Wilde, said to Taylor, "Our little lad has pleasing
+manners; we must see more of him." Wilde took his address and the witness
+soon after received a silver cigarette-case inscribed "Sidney, from O. W.
+October 1892." "It was," said the innocent-looking witness, "quite a
+surprise to me!" In the same month he received a letter making an
+appointment at the Albemarle Hotel and he went there and saw Wilde. The
+witness explained that after he saw Mr. Russell, the solicitor, on March
+30th, he did not visit Taylor, nor did he receive a letter from Taylor.
+
+Sir EDWARD CLARKE.--"With regard to a certain dinner at which you were
+present. Was the gentleman who gave the dinner of some social position?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"Taylor sent or gave you some cheques, I believe?"
+
+WITNESS.--"He did."
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"Were they in payment of money you had advanced to him,
+merely?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Mr. C. F. GILL.--"The gentleman--'of position'--who gave the dinner was
+quite a young man, was he not?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"Was Taylor, and Wilde also, present?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"In fact, it was their first meeting, was it not?"
+
+WITNESS.--"So I understand."
+
+Mavor being dismissed from the box, Edward Shelley was the next witness.
+He gave his age as twenty-one and said that in 1891 he was employed by a
+firm of publishers in Vigo Street. At that time Wilde's books were being
+published by that firm. Wilde was in the habit of coming to the firm's
+place of business and he seemed to take note of the witness and generally
+stopped and spoke to him for a few moments. As Wilde was leaving Vigo
+Street one day he invited him to dine with him at the Albemarle Hotel. The
+witness kept the appointment--he was proud of the invitation--and they
+dined together in a public room. Wilde was very kind and attentive,
+pressed witness to drink, said he could get him on and finally invited him
+to go with him to Brighton, Cromer, and Paris. The witness did not go.
+Wilde made him a present of a set of his writings, including the notorious
+and objectionable "Dorian Gray." Wilde wrote something in the books. "To
+one I like well," or something to that effect, but the witness removed the
+pages bearing the inscription. He only did that after the decision in the
+Queenberry case. He was ashamed of the inscriptions and felt that they
+were open to misconception. His father objected to his friendship with
+Wilde. At first the witness thought that the latter was a kind of
+philanthropist, fond of youth and eager to be of assistance to young men
+of any promise. Certain speeches and actions on the part of Wilde caused
+him to alter this opinion. Pressed as to the nature of the actions he
+complained of, he said that Wilde once kissed him and put his arms round
+him. The witness objected vigorously, according to his own statement, and
+Wilde later said he was sorry and that he had drank too much wine. About
+two years ago--in 1893--he wrote a certain letter to Wilde.
+
+Sir EDWARD CLARKE.--"On what subject?"
+
+WITNESS.--"It was to break off the acquaintance."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"How did the letter begin?"
+
+WITNESS.--"It began 'Sir'."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Give me the gist of it."
+
+WITNESS.--"I believe I said I have suffered more from my acquaintance with
+you than you are ever likely to know of. I further said that he was an
+immoral man, and that I would never, if I could help it, see him again."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Did you ever see him again after that?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I did."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Why did you go and dine with Mr. Wilde a second time?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I suppose I was a young fool. I tried to think the best of
+him."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"You seem to have put the worst possible construction on his
+liking for you. Did your friendly relations with Mr. Wilde remain unbroken
+until the time you wrote that letter in March, 1893?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Have you seen Mr. Wilde since then?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"After that letter?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Where did you see him?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I went to see him in Tite Street."
+
+Sir EDWARD CLARKE then proceeded to question the witness with regard to
+letters which he had written to Wilde both before and after the visits to
+the Albemarle Hotel, and in the course of his replies the witness said
+that he formed the opinion that "Wilde was really sorry for what he had
+done."
+
+Sir EDWARD CLARKE.--"What do you mean by 'what he had done'?"
+
+WITNESS.--"His improper behaviour with young men."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Yet you say he never practised any actual improprieties upon
+you?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Because he saw that I would never allow anything of the kind.
+He did not disguise from me what he wanted, or what his usual customs with
+young men were."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Yet you wrote him grateful letters breathing apparent
+friendship?"
+
+WITNESS.--"For the reason I have given."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Well, we'll leave that question. Now, tell me, why did you
+leave the Vigo Street firm of publishers?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Because it got to be known that I was friendly with Oscar
+Wilde."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Did you leave the firm of your own accord?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Why?"
+
+WITNESS.--"People employed there--my fellow-clerks--chaffed me about my
+acquaintance with Wilde."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"In what way?"
+
+WITNESS.--"They implied scandalous things. They called me 'Mrs. Wilde' and
+'Miss Oscar.'"
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"So you left?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I resolved to put an end to an intolerable position."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"You were in bad odour at home too, I think?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes, a little."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"I put it to you that your father requested you to leave his
+house?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes. He strongly objected to my friendship with Wilde."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"You were uneasy in your mind as to Wilde's object?"
+
+WITNESS.--"That is so."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"When did your mental balance, if I can put it so, recover
+itself?"
+
+WITNESS.--"About October or November last."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"And have you remained well ever since?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I think so."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Yet I find that in January of this year you were in serious
+trouble?"
+
+WITNESS.--"In what way?"
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"You were arrested for an assault upon your father?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes, I was."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Where were you taken?"
+
+WITNESS.--"To the Fulham Police Station."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"You were offered bail?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Did you send to Wilde and ask him to bail you out?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"What happened?"
+
+WITNESS.--"In an hour my father went to the station and I was liberated."
+
+This witness now being released, the previous witness, Atkins, was
+recalled and a very sensational incident arose. During the luncheon
+interval, Mr. Robert Humphreys, Wilde's solicitor, had been busy. Not
+satisfied with Atkins's replies to the questions put to him in
+cross-examination, he had searched the records at Scotland Yard and
+Rochester Road and made some startling discoveries. A folded document was
+handed up to the Judge. Mr. Justice Charles, who read it at once, assumed
+a severe expression. The document was understood to be a copy of a record
+from Rochester Road. Atkins, looking very sheepish and uncomfortable,
+re-entered the witness-box and the Court prepared itself for some
+startling disclosures.
+
+Sir EDWARD CLARKE.--"Now, I warn you to attend and to be very careful. I
+am going to ask you a question; think before you reply."
+
+The JUDGE.--"Just be careful now, Atkins."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"On June 10th, 1891, you were living at Tatchbrook Street?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"In Pimlico?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"James Burton was living there with you?"
+
+WITNESS.--"He was."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Were you both taken by two constables, 396 A & 500 A--you
+may have forgotten the officer's numbers--to Rochester Road Police
+Station and charged with demanding money from a gentleman with menaces.
+You had threatened to accuse him of a disgusting offence?"
+
+WITNESS.--(huskily)--"I was not charged with that."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Were you taken to the police station?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"You, and Burton?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"What were you charged with?"
+
+WITNESS.--"With striking a gentleman."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"In what place was it alleged this happened?"
+
+WITNESS.--"At the card-table."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"In your own room at Tatchbrook Street?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"What was the name of the gentleman?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I don't know."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"How long had you known him?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Only that night."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Where had you met him?"
+
+WITNESS.--"At the Alhambra."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Had you seen him before that time?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Not to speak to."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Meeting him at the Alhambra, did he accompany you to
+Tatchbrook Street?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes, to play cards."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Not to accuse him, when there, of attempting to indecently
+handle you?"
+
+WITNESS.--"No."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Was Burton there?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Anyone else?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I don't think so."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Was the gentleman sober?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Oh, yes."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"What room did you go into?"
+
+WITNESS.--"The sitting-room."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Who called the police?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I don't know."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"The landlady, perhaps?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I believe she did."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Did the landlady give you and Burton into custody?"
+
+WITNESS.--"No; nobody did."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Some person must have done. Who did?"
+
+WITNESS.--"All I can say is, I did not hear anybody."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"At any rate you were taken to Rochester Road, and the
+gentleman went with you?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Police Constable 396 A was here called into court and took up a position
+close to the witness-box. He gazed curiously at Atkins, who wriggled about
+and eyed him uneasily.
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Now I ask you in the presence of this officer, was the
+statement made at the police-station that you and the gentleman had been
+in bed together?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I don't think so."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Think before you speak; it will be better for you. Did not
+the landlady actually come into the room and see you and the gentleman
+naked on or in the bed together?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I don't remember that she did."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"You may as well tell me about it. You know. Was that
+statement made?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Well, yes it was."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"You had endeavoured to force money out of this gentleman?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I asked him for some money."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"At the police-station the gentleman refused to prosecute?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"So you and Burton were liberated?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"About two hours ago, Atkins, I asked you these very
+questions and you swore upon your oath that you had not been in custody at
+all, and had never been taken to Rochester Road Police Station. How came
+you to tell me those lies?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I did not remember it."
+
+Atkins looked somewhat crestfallen and abashed. Yet some of his former
+brazen impudence still gleamed upon his now scarlet face. He heaved a deep
+sigh of relief when told to leave the court by the judge, who pointed
+sternly to the doorway.
+
+Of all the creatures associated with Wilde in these affairs, this Atkins
+was the lowest and most contemptible. For some years he had been in the
+habit of blackmailing men whom he knew to be inclined to perverted sexual
+vices, and his was a well-known figure up West. He constantly frequented
+the promenades of the music-halls. He "made up" his eyes and lips, wore
+corsets and affected an effeminate air. He was an infallible judge of the
+class of man he wished to meet and rarely made a mistake. He would follow
+a likely subject about, stumble against him as though by accident and make
+an elaborate apology in mincing, female tones. Once in conversation with
+his "mark," he speedily contrived to make the latter aware that he did not
+object to certain proposals. He invariably permitted the beastly act
+before attempting blackmail, partly because it afforded him a stronger
+hold over his "victim" and partly because he rejoiced in the disgusting
+thing for its own sake. He was the butt of the ladies of the pavement
+round Piccadilly Circus, who used to shout after him, enquire
+sarcastically "if he had got off last night," and if his "toff hadn't
+bilked him." He would affect to laugh and pass the thing off with a joke;
+but, to his intimates, he assumed a great loathing for women of this
+class, whom he appeared to regard as dangerous obstacles to the exercise
+of his own foul trade. On several occasions he was assaulted by these
+women.
+
+To return to the Trial of Wilde and Taylor. As soon as the enquiry was
+resumed, Mr. Charles Mathews went down into the cells and had an
+interview with the prisoner Wilde, and on his return entered into serious
+consultation with his leader, Sir Edward Clarke. In the meanwhile, Taylor
+conversed with his counsel, Mr. Grain, across the rail of the dock. It was
+felt that an important announcement bearing on the conduct of the case was
+likely to be made. It came from Mr. Gill, representing the prosecution.
+
+As soon as Mr. Justice Charles had taken his seat, the prosecuting counsel
+rose and said that having considered the indictment, he had decided not to
+ask for a verdict in the two counts charging the prisoners with
+conspiracy. Subdued expressions of surprise were audible from the public
+gallery when Mr. Gill delivered himself of this dramatic announcement, and
+the sensation was strengthened a little later when Sir Edward Clarke
+informed the jury that both the prisoners desired to give evidence and
+would be called as witnesses. These matters having been determined upon,
+Sir Edward Clarke rose and proceeded to make some severe criticisms upon
+the conduct of the prosecution in what he referred to as the literary part
+of the case. Hidden meanings, he said, had been most unjustly "read" into
+the poetical and prose works of his client and it seemed that an
+endeavour, though a futile one, was to be made to convict Mr. Wilde
+because of a prurient construction which had been placed by his enemies
+upon certain of his works. He alluded particularly to "Dorian Gray," which
+was an allegory, pure and simple. According to the rather musty and
+far-fetched notions of the prosecution, it was an impure and simple
+allegory, but Wilde could not fairly be judged, he said, by the standards
+of other men, for he was a literary eccentric, though intellectually a
+giant, and he did not profess to be guided by the same sentiments as
+animated other and less highly-endowed men. He then called Mr. Wilde. The
+prisoner rose with seeming alacrity from his place in the dock, walked
+with a firm tread and dignified demeanour to the witness-box, and leaning
+across the rail in the same easy and not ungraceful attitude that he
+assumed when examined by Mr. Carson in the libel action, prepared to
+answer the questions addressed to him by his counsel. Wilde was first
+interrogated as to his previous career. In the year 1884, he had married a
+Miss Lloyd, and from that time to the present he had continued to live
+with his wife at 16, Tite Street, Chelsea. He also occupied rooms in St.
+James's Place, which were rented for the purposes of his literary labours,
+as it was quite impossible to secure quiet and mental repose at his own
+house, when his two young sons were at home. He had heard the evidence in
+this case against himself, and asserted that there was no shadow of a
+foundation for the charges of indecent behaviour alleged against himself.
+
+Mr. Gill then rose to cross-examine and the Court at once became on the
+_qui vive_. Wilde seemed perfectly calm and did not change his attitude,
+or tone of polite deprecation.
+
+Mr. GILL.--"You are acquainted with a publication entitled 'The
+Chameleon'?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Very well indeed."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"Contributors to that journal are friends of yours?"
+
+WITNESS.--"That is so."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"I believe that Lord Alfred Douglas was a frequent
+contributor?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Hardly that, I think. He wrote some verses occasionally for the
+'Chameleon,' and, indeed, for other papers."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"The poems in question were somewhat peculiar?"
+
+WITNESS.--"They certainly were not mere commonplaces like so much that is
+labelled poetry."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"The tone of them met with your critical approval?"
+
+WITNESS.--"It was not for me to approve or disapprove. I leave that to the
+Reviews."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"At the trial Queensberry and Wilde you described them as
+'beautiful poems'?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I said something tantamount to that. The verses were original
+in theme and construction, and I admired them."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"In one of the sonnets by Lord A. Douglas a peculiar use is
+made of the word 'shame'?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I have noticed the line you refer to."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"What significance would you attach to the use of that word in
+connection with the idea of the poem?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I can hardly take it upon myself to explain the thoughts of
+another man."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"You were remarkably friendly with the author? Perhaps he
+vouchsafed you an explanation?"
+
+WITNESS.--"On one occasion he did."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"I should like to hear it."
+
+WITNESS.--"Lord Alfred explained that the word 'shame' was used in the
+sense of modesty, _i. e._ to feel shame or not to feel shame."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"You can, perhaps, understand that such verses as these would
+not be acceptable to the reader with an ordinarily balanced mind?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I am not prepared to say. It appears to me to be a question of
+taste, temperament and individuality. I should say that one man's poetry
+is another man's poison!" (Loud laughter.)
+
+Mr. GILL.--"I daresay! There is another sonnet. What construction can be
+put on the line, 'I am the love that dare not speak its name'?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I think the writer's meaning is quite unambiguous. The love he
+alluded to was that between an elder and younger man, as between David and
+Jonathan; such love as Plato made the basis of his philosophy; such as was
+sung in the sonnets of Shakespeare and Michael Angelo; that deep spiritual
+affection that was as pure as it was perfect. It pervaded great works of
+art like those of Michael Angelo and Shakespeare. Such as 'passeth the
+love of woman.' It was beautiful, it was pure, it was noble, it was
+intellectual--this love of an elder man with his experience of life, and
+the younger with all the joy and hope of life before him."
+
+The witness made this speech with great emphasis and some signs of
+emotion, and there came from the gallery, at its conclusion, a medley of
+applause and hisses which his lordship at once ordered to be suppressed.
+
+Mr. GILL.--"I wish to call your attention to the style of your
+correspondence with Lord A. Douglas."
+
+WITNESS.--"I am ready. I am never ashamed of the style of any of my
+writings."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"You are fortunate--or shall I say shameless? I refer to
+passages in two letters in particular."
+
+WITNESS.--"Kindly quote them."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"In letter number one. You use this expression: 'Your slim gilt
+soul,' and you refer to Lord Alfred's "rose-leaf lips."
+
+WITNESS.--"The letter is really a sort of prose sonnet in answer to an
+acknowledgement of one I had received from Lord Alfred."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"Do you think that an ordinarily-constituted being would
+address such expressions to a younger man?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I am not, happily, I think, an ordinarily constituted being."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"It is agreeable to be able to agree with you, Mr. Wilde."
+(Laughter).
+
+WITNESS.--"There is, I assure you, nothing in either letter of which I
+need be ashamed."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"You have heard the evidence of the lad Charles Parker?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"Of Atkins?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"Of Shelley?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"And these witnesses have, you say, lied throughout?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Their evidence as to my association with them, as to the
+dinners taking place and the small presents I gave them, is mostly true.
+But there is not a particle of truth in that part of the evidence which
+alleged improper behaviour."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"Why did you take up with these youths?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I am a lover of youth." (Laughter).
+
+Mr. GILL.--"You exalt youth as a sort of God?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I like to study the young in everything. There is something
+fascinating in youthfulness."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"So you would prefer puppies to dogs, and kittens to cats?"
+(Laughter).
+
+WITNESS.--"I think so. I should enjoy, for instance, the society of a
+beardless, briefless, barrister quite as much as that of the most
+accomplished Q. C." (Loud laughter).
+
+Mr. GILL.--"I hope the former, whom I represent in large numbers, will
+appreciate the compliment." (More laughter). "These youths were much
+inferior to you in station?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I never enquired, nor did I care, what station they occupied. I
+found them, for the most part, bright and entertaining. I found their
+conversation a change. It acted as a kind of mental tonic."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"You saw nothing peculiar or suggestive in the arrangement of
+Taylor's rooms?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I cannot say that I did. They were Bohemian. That is all. I
+have seen stranger rooms."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"You never suspected the relations that might exist between
+Taylor and his young friends?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I had no need to suspect anything. Taylor's relations with his
+friends appeared to me to be quite normal."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"You have attended to the evidence of the witness Mavor?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I have."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"Is it true or false?"
+
+WITNESS.--"It is mainly true, but false inferences have been drawn from it
+as from most of the evidence. Truth may be found, I believe, at the bottom
+of a well. It is, apparently difficult to find it in a court of law."
+(Laughter.)
+
+Mr. GILL.--"Nevertheless we endeavour to extract it. Did the witness Mavor
+write you expressing a wish to break off the acquaintance?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I received a rather unaccountable and impertinent letter from
+him for which he afterwards expressed great regret."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"Why should he have written it if your conduct had altogether
+been blameless?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I do not profess to be able to explain the motives of most of
+the witnesses. Mavor may have been told some falsehood about me. His
+father was greatly incensed at his conduct at this time, and, I believe,
+attributed his son's erratic courses to his friendship with me. I do not
+think Mavor altogether to blame. Pressure was brought to bear upon him
+and he was not then quite right in his mind."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"You made handsome presents to these young fellows?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Pardon me, I differ. I gave two or three of them a
+cigarette-case. Boys of that class smoke a good deal of cigarettes. I have
+a weakness for presenting my acquitances with cigarette-cases."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"Rather an expensive habit if indulged in indiscriminately."
+
+WITNESS.--"Less extravagant than giving jewelled-garters to ladies."
+(Laughter).
+
+When a few more unimportant questions had been asked, Wilde left the
+witness-box, returning to the dock with the same air of what may be
+described as serious easiness. The impression created by his replies was
+not, upon the whole, favorable to his cause.
+
+His place was taken by the prisoner Taylor. He said that he was
+thirty-three years of age and was educated at Marlborough. When he was
+twenty-one he came into L45,000. In a few years he ran through this
+fortune, and at about the time he went to Chapel Street, he was made a
+bankrupt. The charges made against him of misconduct were entirely
+unfounded. He was asked point-blank if he had not been given to sodomy
+from his early youth, and if he had not been expelled from a public-school
+for being caught in a compromising situation with a small boy in the
+lavatory. Taylor was also asked if he had not actually obtained a living
+since his bankruptcy by procuring lads and young men for rich gentlemen
+whom he knew to be given to this vice. He was also asked if he had not
+extracted large sums of money from wealthy men by threatening to accuse
+them of immoralities. To all these plain questions he returned in direct
+answer, "No."
+
+After the luncheon interval, Sir Edward Clark rose to address the jury in
+defence of Oscar Wilde. He began by carefully analysing the evidence. He
+declared that the wretches who had come forward to admit their own
+disgrace were shameless creatures incapable of one manly thought or one
+manly action. They were, without exception, blackmailers. They lived by
+luring men to their rooms, generally, on the pretence that a beautiful
+girl would be provided for them on their arrival. Once in their clutches,
+these victims could only get away by paying a large sum of money unless
+they were prepared to face and deny the most disgraceful charges. Innocent
+men constantly paid rather than face the odium attached to the breath even
+of such scandals. They had, moreover, wives and children, daughters,
+maybe or a sister whose honour or name they were obliged to consider.
+Therefore they usually submitted to be fleeced and in this way, this
+wretched Wood and the abject Atkins had been able to go about the West-end
+well-fed and well-dressed. These youths had been introduced to Wilde. They
+were pleasant-spoken enough and outwardly decent in their language and
+conduct. Wilde was taken in by them and permitted himself to enjoy their
+society. He did not defend Wilde for this; he had unquestionably shown
+imprudence, but a man of his temperament could not be judged by the
+standards of the average individual. These youths had come forward to make
+these charges in a conspiracy to ruin his client.
+
+Was it likely, he asked, that a man of Wilde's cleverness would put
+himself so completely in the power of these harpies as he would be if
+guilty of only a tenth of the enormities they alleged against him? If
+Wilde practised these acts so openly and so flagrantly--if he allowed the
+facts to come to the knowledge of so many--then he was a fool who was not
+fit to be at large. If the evidence was to be credited, these acts of
+gross indecency which culminated in actual crime were done in so open a
+manner as to compel the attention of landladies and housemaids. He was
+not himself--and he thanked Heaven for it--versed in the acts of those who
+committed these crimes against nature. He did not know under what
+circumstances they could be practised. But he believed that this was a
+vice which, because of the horror and repulsion it excited, because of the
+fury it provoked against those guilty of it, was conducted with the utmost
+possible secrecy. He respectfully submitted that no jury could find a man
+guilty on the evidence of these tainted witnesses.
+
+Take the testimony, he said, of Atkins. This young man had denied that he
+had ever been charged at a police station with alleging blackmail. Yet he
+was able to prove that he had grossly perjured himself in this and other
+directions. That was a sample of the evidence and Atkins was a type of the
+witnesses.
+
+The only one of these youths who had ever attempted to get a decent living
+or who was not an experienced blackmailer was Mavor, and he had denied
+that Wilde had ever been guilty of any impropriety with him.
+
+The prosecution had sought to make capital out of two letters written by
+Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas. He pointed out a fact which was of
+considerable importance, namely, that Wilde had produced one of these
+letters himself. Was that the act of a man who had reason to fear the
+contents of a letter being known? Wilde never made any secret of visiting
+Taylor's rooms. He found there society which afforded him variety and
+change. Wilde made no secret of giving dinners to some of the witnesses.
+He thought that they were poorly off and that a good dinner at a
+restaurant did not often come their way. On only one occasion did he hire
+a private room. The dinners were perfectly open and above-board. Wilde was
+an extraordinary man and he had written letters which might seem
+high-flown, extravagant, exaggerated, absurd if they liked; but he was not
+afraid or ashamed to produce these letters. The witnesses Charles Parker,
+Alfred Wood and Atkins had been proved to have previously been guilty of
+blackmailing of this kind and upon their uncorroborated evidence surely
+the jury would not convict the prisoner on such terrible charges.
+
+"Fix your minds," concluded Sir Edward earnestly, "firmly on the tests
+that ought to be applied to the evidence as a whole before you can condemn
+a fellow-man to a charge like this. Remember all that this charge implied,
+of implacable ruin and inevitable disgrace. Then I trust that the result
+of your deliberations will be to gratify those thousand hopes that are
+waiting upon your verdict. I trust that verdict will clear from this
+fearful imputation one of the most accomplished and renowned
+men-of-letters of to-day."
+
+At the end of this peroration, there was some slight applause at the back
+of the court, but it was hushed almost at once. Wilde had paid great
+attention to the speech on his behalf and on one or two occasions had
+pressed his hands to his eyes as if expressing some not unnatural emotion.
+The speech concluded, however, he resumed his customary attitude and
+awaited with apparent firmness all that might befall.
+
+Mr. Grain then rose to address the jury on behalf of Taylor. He submitted
+that there was really no case against his client. An endeavour had been
+made to prove that Taylor was in the habit of introducing to Wilde youths
+whom he knew to be amenable to the practices of the latter and that he got
+paid for this degrading work. The attempt to establish this disgusting
+association between Taylor and Wilde had completely broken down. He was,
+it is true, acquainted with Parker, Wood and Atkins. He had seen them
+constantly in restaurants and music-halls, and they had at first forced
+themselves upon his notice and thus got acquainted with a man whom they
+designed for blackmail. All the resources of the Crown had been unable to
+produce any corroboration of the charges made by these witnesses. How had
+Taylor got his livelihood, it might be asked? He was perfectly prepared to
+answer the question. He had been living on an allowance made him by
+members of his late father's firm, a firm with which all there present
+were familiar. Was it in the least degree likely that such scenes as the
+witnesses described, with such apparent candour and such wealth of filthy
+detail, could have taken place in Taylor's own apartments? It was
+incredible that a man could thus risk almost certain discovery. In
+conclusion, he confidently looked for the acquittal of his client, who was
+guilty of nothing more than having made imprudent acquaintances and having
+trusted too much to the descriptions of themselves given by others.
+
+Mr. Gill then replied for the prosecution in a closely-reasoned and most
+able speech, which occupied two hours in delivery and which created an
+enormous impression in the crowded court. He commented at great length
+upon the evidence. He contended that in a case of this description
+corroboration was of comparatively minor importance, for it was not in the
+least likely that acts of the kind alleged would be practised before a
+third party who might afterwards swear to the fact. Therefore, when the
+witnesses described what had transpired when they and the prisoners were
+alone, he did not think that corroboration could possibly be given. There
+was not likely to be an eye-witness of the facts. But in respect to many
+things he declared the evidence was corroborated. Whatever the character
+of these youths might be, they had given evidence as to certain facts and
+no cross-examination, however adroit, however vigorous, had shaken their
+testimony, or caused them to waver about that which was evidently firmly
+implanted in their memories. A man might conceivably come forward and
+commit perjury. But these youths were accusing themselves, in accusing
+another, of shameful and infamous acts, and this they would hardly do if
+it were not the truth. Wilde had made presents to these youths and it was
+noticeable that the gifts were invariably made after he had been alone, at
+some rooms or other, with one or another of the lads. In the
+circumstances, even a silver cigarette-case was corroboration. His learned
+friend had protested against any evil construction being placed upon these
+gifts and these dinners; but, in the name of common-sense, what other
+construction was possible? When they heard of a man like Wilde,
+presumably of refined and cultured tastes, who might if he wished, enjoy
+the society of the best and most cultivated men and women in London,
+accompanying to Nice and other places on the Continent, uninformed,
+unintellectual and vulgar, ill-bred youths of the type of Charles Parker,
+then, in Heaven's name what were they to think? All those visits, all
+those dinners, all those gifts, were corroboration. They served to confirm
+the truth of the statements made by the youths who confessed to the
+commission of acts for which the things he had quoted were positive and
+actual payment.
+
+In the case of the witness Sidney Mavor, it was clear that Wilde had, in
+some way, continued to disgust this youth. Some acts of Wilde, either
+towards himself, or towards others, had offended him. Was not the letter
+which Mavor had addressed to the prisoner, desiring the cessation of their
+friendship, corrobation?
+
+(At this moment his Lordship interposed, and said that although the
+evidence of this witness was clearly of importance, he had denied that he
+had been guilty of impropriety, and he did not think the count in
+reference to Mavor could stand. After some discussion this count was
+struck out of the indictment).
+
+Before concluding Mr. Gill stated that he had withdrawn the conspiracy
+count to prevent any embarrassment to Sir Edward Clarke, who had
+complained that he was affected in his defence by the counts being joined.
+Mr. Gill said, in conclusion, that it was the duty of the jury to express
+their verdict without fear or favour. They owed a duty to Society, however
+sorry they might feel themselves at the moral downfall of an eminent man,
+to protect Society from such scandals by removing from its heart a sore
+which could not fail in time to corrupt and taint it all.
+
+Mr. Justice Charles then commenced his summing-up. His lordship at the
+outset said he thought Mr. Gill had taken a wise course in withdrawing the
+conspiracy counts and thus relieving them all of an embarrassing position.
+He did not see why the conspiracy counts need have been inserted at all,
+and he should direct the jury to return a verdict of acquittal on those
+charges as well as upon one other count against Taylor, to which he would
+further allude, and upon which no sufficient evidence had been given.
+
+He, the learned judge, asked the jury to apply their minds solely to the
+evidence which had been given. Any pre-conceived notion which they might
+have formed from reading about the case he urged them to dismiss from
+their minds, and to deal with the case as it had been presented to them by
+the witnesses.
+
+His Lordship went on to ask the jury not to attach too much importance to
+the uncorroborated evidence of accomplices in such cases as these. Had
+there been no corroboration in this case it would have been his duty to
+instruct the jury accordingly; but he was clearly of opinion that there
+was corroboration to all the witnesses; not, it is true, the conspiracy
+testimony of eye-witnesses, but corroboration of the narrative generally.
+
+Three of the witnesses, Chas. Parker, Wood and Atkins, were not only
+accomplices, but they had been properly described by Sir Edward Clarke as
+persons of bad character. Atkins, out of his own mouth, was convicted of
+having told the most gross and deliberate falsehoods. The jury knew how
+this matter came before them as the outcome of the trial of Lord
+Queensberry for alleged libel.
+
+The learned judge proceeded to outline the features of the Queensberry
+trial, commenting most upon what was called the literary part of Wilde's
+examination in that case. The judge said that he had not read "Dorian
+Gray", but extracts were read at the former trial and the present jury had
+a general idea of the story. He did not think they ought to base any
+unfavourable inference upon the fact that Wilde was the author of that
+work. It would not be fair to do so, for while it was true that there were
+many great writers, such for instance as Sir Walter Scott and Charles
+Dickens, who never penned an offensive line, there were other great
+authors whose pens dealt with subjects not so innocent.
+
+As for Wilde's aphorisms in the "Chameleon", some were amusing, some were
+cynical, and some were, if he might be allowed to say so, simple, but
+there was nothing _in per se_, to convict Wilde of indecent practices.
+However, the same paper contained a very indecent contribution; "The
+Priest and the Acolyte." Mr. Wilde had nothing to do with that. In the
+"Chameleon" also appeared two poems by Lord Alfred Douglas, one called "In
+Praise of Shame", and the other called "Two Loves." It was said that these
+sonnets had an immoral tendency and that Wilde approved them. He was
+examined at great length about these sonnets, and was also asked about the
+two letters written by him to Lord Alfred Douglas--letters that had been
+written before the publication of the above mentioned poems.
+
+In the previous case Mr. Carson had insisted that these letters were
+indecent. On the other hand, Wilde had told them that he was not ashamed
+of them, as they were intended in the nature of prose poems and breathed
+the pure love of one man for another, such a love as David had for
+Jonathan, and such as Plato described as the beginning of wisdom.
+
+He would next deal with the actual charges, and would first call their
+attention to the offence alleged to have been committed with Edward
+Shelley at the beginning of 1892. Shelley was undoubtedly in the position
+of an accomplice, but his evidence was corroborated. He was not, however,
+tainted with the offences with which Parker, Wood and Atkins were
+connected. He seemed to be a person of some education and a fondness for
+Literature. As to Shelley's visit to the Albemarle Hotel, the jury were
+the best judges of the demeanour of the witness. Wilde denied all the
+allegations of indecency though he admitted the other parts of the young
+man's story. His Lordship called attention to the letters written by
+Shelley to Wilde in 1892, 1893 and 1894. It was, he said, a very anxious
+part of the jury's task to account for the tone of these letters, and for
+Shelley's conduct generally. It became a question as to whether or no his
+mind was disordered. He felt bound to say that though there was evidence
+of great excitability, to talk of either Shelley or Mavor as an insane
+youth was an exaggeration, but it would be for the jury to draw their own
+conclusions.
+
+Passing to the case of Atkins, the judge drew attention to his meeting
+with Taylor in November 1892, to the dinner at the Cafe Florence, at which
+Wilde, Taylor, Atkins and Lord A. Douglas were present, and to the visit
+of Atkins to Paris in company with Wilde.
+
+After dwelling on the circumstances of that visit, his lordship referred
+to Wilde's two visits to Atkins in Osnaburgh Street in December 1893.
+Wilde explained the Paris visit by saying that Schwabe had arranged to
+take Atkins to Paris, but being unable to leave at the time appointed he
+asked Wilde to take charge of the youth, and he did so out of friendship
+for Schwabe. Wilde further denied that he was much in Atkins' company when
+in Paris. Atkins certainly was an unreliable witness and had obviously
+given an incorrect version of his relations with Burton. He told the
+grossest falsehoods with regard to their arrest, and was convicted out of
+his own mouth when recalled by Sir E. Clarke. It was for the jury to
+decide how much of Atkins's evidence they might safely believe.
+
+Then there were the events described as having occured at the Savoy Hotel
+in March 1892. He would ask the jury to be careful in the evidence of the
+chamber-maid, Jane Cotter, and the interpretation they put upon it. If her
+evidence and that of the Masseur Mijji, were true, then Wilde's evidence
+on that part of the case was untrue, and the jury must use their own
+discretion. He did not wish to enlarge upon this most unpleasant part of
+the whole unpleasant case, but it was necessary to remind the jury as
+discreetly as he could that the chamber-maid had objected to making the
+bed on several occasions after Wilde and Atkins had been in the bed-room
+alone together. There were, she had affirmed, indications on the sheets
+that conduct of the grossest kind had been indulged in. He thought it his
+duty to remind the jury that there might be an innocent explanation of
+these stains, though the evidence of Jane Cotter certainly afforded a kind
+of corroboration of these charges and of Atkins's own story. In reference
+to the case of Wood, he contrasted Wood's account with that of Wilde.
+
+It seemed that Lord Alfred Douglas had met Wood at Taylor's rooms. In
+response to a telegram from the former, Wood went to the Cafe Royal and
+there met Wilde for the first time, Wilde speaking first. On the other
+hand, Wilde represented that Wood spoke first. The jury might think that,
+in any case, the circumstances of that meeting were remarkable, especially
+when taken in conjunction with what followed. There was no doubt that Wood
+had fallen into evil courses and he and Allen had extracted the sum of
+L300 in blackmail. The interview between Wilde and Wood prior to the
+latter's departure for America was remarkable. A sum of money, said to be
+L30, was given by Wilde to Wood, and Wood returned some of Wilde's letters
+that had somehow come into his possession. Wood, however, kept back one
+letter which got into Allen's possession. Wood got L5 more on the
+following day, went to America, and while there wrote to Taylor a letter
+in which occured the passage. "Tell Oscar if he likes he can send me a
+draft for an Easter Egg." It would be for the jury to consider what would
+have been the inner meaning of these and other transactions.
+
+As to the prisoner Taylor, he had, on his own admission, led a life of
+idleness, and got through a fortune of L45,000. It was alleged that the
+prisoner had virtually turned his apartments into a bagnio or brothel, in
+which young men took the place of prostitutes, and that his character in
+this regard was well known to those who were secretly given to this
+particular vice. One of the offences imputed to Taylor had reference to
+Charles Parker, who had spoken of the peculiar arrangement of the rooms.
+There were two bedrooms in the inner room with folding doors between and
+the windows were heavily draped, so that no one from the opposite houses
+could possibly see what was going on inside. Heavy curtains, it was said,
+hung before all the doors, so that it could not be possible for an
+eave's-dropper to hear what was proceeding inside. There was a curiously
+shaped sofa in the sitting-room and the whole aspect of the room
+resembled, it was asserted, a fashionable resort for vice.
+
+Wilde was undoubtedly present at some of the tea parties given there, and
+did not profess to be surprised at what he saw there. It had been shown
+that both the Parkers went to these rooms, and further, that Charles
+Parker had received L30 of the blackmail extorted by Wood and Allen.
+
+Charles Parker's evidence was therefore doubly-tainted like that of Wood
+and Atkins, but his evidence was to some extent confirmed by that of his
+brother William. Some parts of Charles Parker's evidence were also
+corroborated by other witnesses, as for instance, by Marjorie Bancroft,
+who swore that she saw Wilde visit Charles Parker's rooms in Park Walk.
+
+It was admitted that this Parker visited Wilde at St. James' Place.
+Charles Parker had been arrested with Taylor in the Fitzroy Square raid
+and this went to show that they were in the habit of associating with
+those suspected of offences of the kind alleged. Both, however, were on
+that occasion discharged and Parker enlisted in the army. It was quite
+manifest that Charles Parker was of a low class of morality.
+
+That concluded the various charges made in this case and he had very
+little to add. Mavor's evidence had little or no value with reference to
+the issues now before the jury, except as showing how he became acquainted
+with Wilde and Taylor. So far as it went, Mavor's evidence was rather in
+favour of Wilde than otherwise and nothing indecent had been proved
+against that witness.
+
+In conclusion, his lordship submitted the case to the jury in the
+confident hope that they would do justice to themselves on the one hand,
+and to the two defendants on the other. The learned judge concluded by
+further directing the jury as to the issues, and asked them to form their
+opinions on the evidence, and to give the case their careful
+consideration.
+
+The judge left the following questions to the jury:--
+
+FIRST, whether Wilde committed certain offences with Shelley, Wood, with a
+person or persons unknown at the Savoy Hotel, or with Charles Parker?
+
+SECONDLY, whether Taylor procured the commission of those acts or any of
+them?
+
+THIRDLY, did Wilde or Taylor, or either of them attempt to get Atkins to
+commit certain offences with Wilde, and FOURTHLY, did Taylor commit
+certain acts with either Charles Parker or Wood?
+
+The Jury retired at 1.35, the summing-up of the judge having taken exactly
+three hours.
+
+At three o'clock a communication was brought from the jury, and conveyed
+by the Clerk of arraigns to the Judge, and shortly afterwards the jury had
+luncheon taken in to them.
+
+At 4.15 the judge sent for the Clerk of arraigns, Mr. Avory, who proceeded
+to his lordship's private room.
+
+Subsequently, Mr. Avory went to the jury, apparently with a communication
+from the judge and returned in a few minutes to the judge's private room.
+
+Shortly before five o'clock the usher brought a telegram from one of the
+jurors, and after it had been shown to the clerk of arraigns it was
+allowed to be despatched.
+
+Eventually the jury returned into court at a quarter past five o'clock.
+
+
+THE VERDICT
+
+THE JUDGE.--"I have received a communication from you to the effect that
+you are unable to arrive at an agreement. Now, is there anything you
+desire to ask me in reference to the case?"
+
+THE FOREMAN.--"I have put that question to my fellow-jurymen, my lord, and
+I do not think there is any doubt that we cannot agree upon three of the
+questions."
+
+THE JUDGE.--"I find from the entry which you have written against the
+various subdivisions of No. 1 that you cannot agree as to any of those
+subdivisions?"
+
+THE FOREMAN.--"That is so, my lord."
+
+THE JUDGE.--"Is there no prospect of an agreement if you retire to your
+room?"
+
+THE FOREMAN.--"I fear not."
+
+THE JUDGE.--"You have not been inconvenienced; I ordered what you
+required, and there is no prospect that, with a little more deliberation,
+you may come to an agreement as to some of them?"
+
+THE FOREMAN.--"My fellow-jurymen say there is no possibility."
+
+THE JUDGE.--"I am very unwilling to prejudice your deliberations, and I
+have no doubt that you have done your best to arrive at an agreement. On
+the other hand I would point out to you that the inconveniences of a new
+trial are very great. If you thought that by deliberating a reasonable
+time you could arrive at a conclusion upon any of the questions I have
+asked you, I would ask you to do so."
+
+THE FOREMAN.--"We considered the matter before coming into court and I do
+not think there is any chance of agreement. We have considered it again
+and again."
+
+THE JUDGE.--"If you tell me that, I do not think I am justified in
+detaining you any longer."
+
+Sir EDWARD CLARKE.--"I wish to ask, my lord, that a verdict may be given
+in the conspiracy counts."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"I wish to oppose that."
+
+THE JUDGE.--"I directed the acquittal of the prisoners on the conspiracy
+counts this morning. I thought that was the right course to adopt, and the
+same remark might be made with regard to the two counts in which Taylor
+was charged with improper conduct towards Wood and Parker. It was
+unfortunate that the real and material questions which had occupied the
+jury's attention for such a length of time were matters upon which the
+jury were unable to agree. Upon these matters and upon the counts which
+were concerned with them, I must discharge the jury."
+
+Sir EDWARD CLARKE.--"I wish to apply for bail, then for M. Wilde."
+
+Mr. HALL.--"And I make the same application on behalf of Taylor."
+
+THE JUDGE.--"I don't feel able to accede to the applications."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"I shall probably renew the application, my lord."
+
+THE JUDGE.--"That would be to a judge in chambers."
+
+Mr. GILL.--"The case will assuredly be tried again and probably it will go
+to the next Sessions."
+
+The two prisoners, who had listened to all this very attentively, were
+then conducted from the dock. Wilde had listened to the foreman of the
+jury's statement without any show of feeling.
+
+It was stated that the failure of the jury to agree upon a verdict was
+owing to three out of the twelve being unable upon the evidence placed
+before them to arrive at any other conclusion than that of "Not Guilty."
+
+The following day Mr. Baron Pollock decided that Oscar Wilde should be
+allowed out on bail in his own recognisances of L2,500 and two sureties of
+L1,250 each. Wilde was brought up at Bow Street next day and the sureties
+attended. After a further application, bail in his case was granted and he
+went out of prison, for the present a free man, but with NEMESIS, in the
+shape of the second trial, awaiting him!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The second trial of Oscar Wilde, with its dramatic finale, for no one
+thought much of its consequences to Alfred Taylor, came on in the third
+week of May at the Old Bailey.
+
+It was agreed to take the cases of the prisoners separately, Taylor's
+first. Sir Edward Clarke, who still represented Wilde, stated that he
+should make an application at the end of Taylor's trial that Wilde's case
+should stand over till the next sessions. His lordship said that
+application had better be postponed till the end of the first trial,
+significantly adding, "If there should be an acquittal, so much the better
+for the other prisoner." Meanwhile Wilde was to be released on bail.
+
+Sir Francis Lockwood, who now represented the prosecution, then went over
+all the details of the intimacy of the Parkers and Wood with Taylor and
+Wilde and called Charles Parker, who repeated his former evidence,
+including a very serious allegation against the prisoner. He stated in so
+many words that Taylor had kept him at his rooms for a whole week during
+which time they rarely went out, and had repeatedly committed sodomy with
+him. The witness unblushingly asserted that they slept together and that
+Taylor called him "Darling" and referred to him as "my little Wife." When
+he left Taylor's rooms the latter paid him some money, said he should
+never want for cash and that he would introduce him to men "prepared to
+pay for that kind of thing." Cross-examined; Charles Parker admitted that
+he had previously been guilty of this offence, but had determined never to
+submit to such treatment again. Taylor over-persuaded him. He was nearly
+drunk and incapable, the first time, of making a moral resistance.
+
+Alfred Wood also described his acquaintance with Taylor and his visits to
+what he termed the "snuggery" at Little College Street, but which quite as
+appropriately could have been designed by a name which would have the
+additional merit of strictly describing it and of rhyming with it at the
+same time! It was not at all clear, however, that Taylor was responsible,
+at least directly, for the introduction of Alfred Wood to Wilde as the
+indictment suggested. This was effected by a third person, whose name had
+not as yet been introduced into the case.
+
+Mrs. Grant, the landlady at 13 Little College Street, described Taylor's
+rooms. She was not aware, she said, that they were put to an improper use,
+but she had remarked to her husband the care taken that whatever went on
+there should be hidden from the eyes and ears of others. Young men used to
+come there and remain some time with Taylor, and Wilde was a frequent
+visitor. Taylor provided much of his own bed-linen and she noticed that
+the pillows had lace and were generally elaborate and costly.
+
+The prosecution next called a new witness, Emily Becca, chambermaid at
+the Savoy Hotel, who stated that she had complained to the management of
+the state in which she found the bed-linen and the utensils of the room.
+When pressed for particulars the witness hesitated, and after stating that
+she refused to make the bed or empty the "chamber," she said she handed in
+her notice but was prevailed upon to withdraw it. Then by a series of
+adroit questions Counsel obtained the particulars. The bed-linen was
+stained. The colour was brown. The towels were similarly discoloured. One
+of the pillows was marked with face-powder. There was excrement in one of
+the utensils in the bedroom. Wilde had handed her half a sovereign but
+when she saw the state of the room after he had gone she gave the coin to
+the management.
+
+Evidence with regard to Wilde's rooms at St. James' Place was given by
+Thomas Price, who was able to identify Taylor as one of the callers.
+
+Mrs. Gray--no relation, haply, to the notorious "Dorian"--of 3 Chapel
+Street, Chelsea, deposed that Taylor stayed at her house from August 1893
+to the end of that year. Formal and minor items of evidence concluded the
+case for the prosecution of Taylor, and Mr. Grain proceeded to open his
+defence by calling the prisoner into the witness-box. Mr. Grain examined
+him.
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"What is your age?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I am thirty-three."
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"You are the son of the late Henry Taylor, who was a
+manufacturer of an article of food in large demand?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I am."
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"You were at Marlborough School?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Till I was seventeen."
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"You inherited L45,000 I believe?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"And spent it?"
+
+WITNESS.--"It went."
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"Since then you have had no occupation?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I have lived upon an allowance made me."
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"Is there any truth in the evidence of Charles Parker that you
+misconducted yourself with him."
+
+WITNESS.--"Not the slightest."
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"What rooms had you at Little College Street?"
+
+WITNESS.--"One bedroom, but it was sub-divided and I believe there was
+generally a bed in each division."
+
+Mr. GRAIN.--"You had a good many visitors?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Oh, yes."
+
+Sir FRANK LOCKWOOD.--"Did Charles Mavor stay with you then?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes, about a week."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"When?"
+
+WITNESS.--"When I first went there, in 1892."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"What is his age?"
+
+WITNESS.--"He is now 26 or 27."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"Do you remember going through a form of marriage with Mavor?"
+
+WITNESS.--"No, never."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"Did you tell Parker you did?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Nothing of the kind."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"Did you not place a wedding-ring on his finger and go to bed
+with him that night as though he were your lawful wife?"
+
+WITNESS.--"It is all false. I deny it all."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"Did you ever sleep with Mavor?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I think I did the first night--after, he had a separate bed."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"Did you induce Mavor to attire himself as a woman?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Certainly I did not."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"But there were articles of women's dress at your rooms?"
+
+WITNESS.--"No. There was a fancy dress for a female, a theatrical
+costume."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"Was it made for a woman?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I think so."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"Perhaps you wore it?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I put it on once by way of a lark."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"On no other occasion?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I wore it once, too, at a fancy dress ball."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"I suggest that you often dressed as a woman?"
+
+WITNESS.--"No."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"You wore, and caused Mavor afterwards, to wear lace
+drawers--a woman's garment--with the dress?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I wore knicker-bockers and stockings when I wore it at the
+fancy dress ball."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"And a woman's wig, which afterwards did for Mavor?"
+
+WITNESS.--"No, the wig was made for me. I was going to a fancy-ball as
+'Dick Whittington'."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"Who introduced you to the Parkers?"
+
+WITNESS.--"A friend named Harrington at the St. James's Restaurant."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"You invited them to your rooms?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I did."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"Why?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I found them very nice."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"You were acquainted with a young fellow named Mason?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"He visited you?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Two or three times only, I think."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"Did you induce him to commit a filthy act with you?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Never."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"He has written you letters?"
+
+WITNESS.--"That's very likely."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"The Solicitor General proposes to read one."
+
+The letter was as follows:--
+
+    "Dear Alf,
+
+    Let me have some money as soon as you can. I would not ask you for it
+    if I could get any myself. You know the business is not so easy. There
+    is a lot of trouble attached to it.
+
+    Come home soon, dear, and let us go out together sometimes. Have very
+    little news. Going to a dinner on Monday and a theatre to-night.
+
+      With much love,
+        Yours always,
+          CHARLES."
+
+The SOLICITOR GENERAL.--(Severely) "I ask you, Taylor, for an explanation,
+for it requires one, of the use of the words "come home soon, dear", as
+between two men."
+
+TAYLOR.--(Laughing nervously) "I do not see anything in it."
+
+The SOLICITOR GENERAL.--"Nothing in it?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Well, I am not responsible for the expressions of another."
+
+The SOLICITOR GENERAL.--"You allowed yourself to be addressed in this
+strain?"
+
+WITNESS.--"It's the way you read it."
+
+The summing-up followed and after a consultation of three-quarters of an
+hour, the jury returned a verdict against Taylor on the indecency counts,
+not agreeing, however, as to the charges of procuration. Sentence was
+postponed, pending the result of the trial of Oscar Wilde, which began
+next day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Wilde had meanwhile been at large on bail. The one charge of "conspiring
+with Alfred Taylor to procure" had been dropped, and the indictment of
+misdemeanour alleged that the prisoner unlawfully committed various acts
+with Charles Parker, Alfred Wood, Edward Shelley, and certain persons
+unknown.
+
+The plea of "Not Guilty" was recorded.
+
+The case for the prosecution was opened by calling Edward Shelley, the
+young man who had been employed by the Vigo Street publishers. Shelley
+repeated the story of the beginning and the progress of his intimacy with
+Wilde. It began, he said, in 1891; in March 1893, they quarrelled. The
+witness had been subjected by the prisoner to attempts at improper
+conduct. Oscar had, to be plain, on several occasions, placed his hand on
+the private parts of the witness and sought to put his, witness's, hand in
+the same indelicate position as regards Wilde's own person. Witness
+resented these acts at the time; had told Wilde not to be 'a beast', and
+the latter expressed his sorrow. "But I am so fond of you, Edward," he had
+said.
+
+The Witness wrote Wilde that he would not see him again. He spoke in the
+letter of these and other acts of impropriety and made use of the
+expression, "I was entrapped." Witness explained to the court, "He knew I
+admired him very much and he took advantage of me--of my admiration
+and--well, I won't say innocence. I don't know what to call it."
+
+These are some of the letters which Shelley wrote to Wilde:
+
+    October 27, 1892.
+
+    Oscar: Will you be at home on Sunday evening next? I am most anxious
+    to see you. I would have called this evening, but I am suffering from
+    nervousness, the result of insomnia and am obliged to remain at home.
+
+    I have longed to see you all through the week. I have much to tell
+    you. Do not think me forgetful in not coming before, because I shall
+    never forget your kindness, and am conscious that I can never
+    sufficiently express my thankfulness.
+
+Another letter ran:
+
+    October 25, 1894.
+
+    Oscar: I want to go away and rest somewhere--I think in Cornwall for
+    two weeks. I am determined to live a truly Christian life, and I
+    accept poverty as part of my religion, but I must have health. I have
+    so much to do for my mother.
+
+Sir EDWARD CLARKE.--"Now, Mr. Shelley, do you mean to tell the jury that
+having in your mind, that this man had behaved disgracefully towards you,
+you wrote that letter of October 27, 1892?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes. Because after those few occurrences he treated me very
+well. He seemed really sorry for what he had done."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"He introduced you to his home?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes, to his wife. I dined with them and he seemed to take a
+real interest in me."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"You have met Lord Alfred Douglas?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes, at his rooms at the 'Varsity'."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"He was kind to you?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes. He gave me a suit of clothes while I was there."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"And you found two letters in one of the pockets?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"Who from?"
+
+WITNESS.--"From Mr. Wilde to Lord Alfred."
+
+Sir EDWARD.--"How did they begin?"
+
+WITNESS.--"One was addressed, "Dear Alfred", and the other to "Dear
+Bogie."
+
+SOLICITOR-GENERAL.--"When did you first meet Lord Alfred?"
+
+WITNESS.--"At Taylor's rooms in Little College Street."
+
+SOLICITOR-GENERAL.--"Then you visited him at the University?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes."
+
+The Solicitor-General then proceeded to ask the witness as to the terms
+upon which Wilde and Lord Alfred appeared to be; but this has been a
+prohibited topic from first to last and was now successfully objected to.
+
+Charles Parker was called and he repeated his evidence at great length,
+relating the most disgusting facts in a perfectly serene manner. He said
+that Wilde invariably began his "campaign"--before arriving at the final
+nameless act--with indecencies. He used to require the witness to do what
+is vulgarly known as "tossing him off", explained Parker quite unabashed,
+"and he would often do the same to me. He suggested two or three times
+that I should permit him to insert "it" in my mouth, but I never allowed
+that." He gave other details equally shocking.
+
+A few other witnesses were examined, and the rest of the day having been
+spent in the reading over of the evidence, Sir Edward Clarke submitted
+that in respect of certain counts of the indictment there was no evidence
+to go to the jury.
+
+The Solicitor-General submitted that there was ample evidence to go to the
+jury, who alone could decide as to whether or not it was worthy of belief.
+
+The Judge said he thought the point in respect to the Savoy Hotel incident
+was just on the line, but he thought that the wiser and safer course was
+to allow the count in respect of this matter to go to the jury. At the
+same time, he felt justified, if the occasion should arise, in reserving
+the point for the Court of Appeal. He was inclined to think it was a
+matter, the responsibility of deciding which, rested with the jury.
+
+Sir Edward Clarke submitted next that there was no corroboration of the
+evidence of this witness. The letters of Shelley pointed to the inference
+that the latter might have been the victim of delusions, and, judging from
+his conduct in the witness-box, he appeared to have a peculiar sort of
+exaltation in and for himself.
+
+The Solicitor-General maintained that Shelley's evidence was corroborated
+as far as it could possibly be. Of course, in a case of this kind there
+was an enormous difficulty in producing corroboration of eye-witnesses to
+the actual commission of the alleged act.
+
+The judge held that Shelley must be treated on the footing of an
+accomplice. He adhered, after a most careful consideration of the point,
+to his former view, that there was no corroboration of the nature required
+by the Act to warrant conviction, and therefore he felt justified in
+withdrawing that count from the jury.
+
+Sir Edward Clarke made the same submission in the case of Wood.
+
+The Solicitor General protested against any decision being given on these
+questions other than by a verdict of the jury. In his opinion the case of
+the man Wood could not be withheld from the jury. He submitted that there
+was every element of strong corroboration of Wood's story, having regard
+especially to the strange and suspicious circumstances under which Wilde
+and Wood became acquainted.
+
+Sir Edward Clarke quoted from the summing-up of Mr. Justice Charles on the
+last trial relative to the directions which he gave the jury in the law
+respecting the corroboration of the evidence of an accomplice.
+
+The judge was of opinion that the count affecting Wood ought to go to the
+jury, and he gave reasons why it ought not to be withheld.
+
+Sir Edward Clarke after a private passage of arms with the
+Solicitor-General in respect to the need for corroborative evidence, then
+began a brief, but able appeal to the jury on behalf of his client, after
+which Wilde entered the witness-box. He formally denied the allegations
+against him. Sir Frank Lockwood, in cross-examination: "Now, Mr. Wilde, I
+should like you to tell me where Lord A. Douglas is now?"
+
+WITNESS.--"He is in Paris, at the Hotel des Deux Mondes."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"How long has he been there?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Three weeks."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"Have you been in communication with him?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Certainly. These charges are founded on sand. Our friendship is
+founded on a rock. There has been no need to cancel our acquaintance."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"Was Lord Alfred in London at the time of the trial of the
+Marquis of Queensberry?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Yes, for about three weeks. He went abroad at my request before
+the first trial on these counts came on."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"May we take it that the two letters from you to him were
+samples of the kind you wrote him?"
+
+WITNESS.--"No. They were exceptional letters born of the two exceptional
+letters he sent to me. It is possible, I assure you, to express poetry in
+prose."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"I will read one of these prose-poem letters. Do you think
+this line is decent, addressed to a young man? "Your rose-red lips which
+are made for the music of song and the madness of kissing."
+
+WITNESS.--"It was like a sonnet of Shakespeare. It was a fantastic,
+extravagant way of writing to a young man. It does not seem to be a
+question of whether it is proper or not."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"I used the word decent."
+
+WITNESS.--"Decent, oh yes."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"Do you think you understand the word, Sir?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I do not see anything indecent in it, it was an attempt to
+address in beautiful phraseology a young man who had much culture and
+charm."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"How many times have you been in the College Street
+'snuggery' of the man Taylor?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I do not think more than five or six times."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"Who did you meet there?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Sidney Mavor and Schwabe--I cannot remember any others. I have
+not been there since I met Wood there."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"With regard to the Savoy Hotel Witnesses?"
+
+WITNESS.--"Their evidence is quite untrue."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"You deny that the bed-linen was marked in the way described?"
+
+WITNESS.--"I do not examine bed-linen when I arise. I am not a housemaid."
+
+Sir FRANK.--"Were the stains there, Sir?"
+
+WITNESS.--"If they were there, they were not caused in the way the
+Prosecution most filthily suggests."
+
+Sir Edward Clarke, after a slight "breeze" with the Solicitor-General as
+to the right to the last word to the jury, then addressed that devoted
+band of men for the third time, and asked for the acquittal of his client
+on all the counts.
+
+Sir Frank Lockwood also addressed the jury and the Court then adjoined.
+
+Next day the Solicitor-General, resuming his speech on behalf of the Crown
+dealt in details with the arguments of Sir E. Clarke in defence of Wilde,
+and commented in strong terms on observations that he made respecting the
+lofty situation of Wilde, with his literary accomplishments, for the
+purpose of influencing the judgment of the young. He said that the jury
+ought to discard absolutely any such appeal, to apply simply their
+common-sense to the testimony; and to form a conclusion on the evidence,
+which he submitted fully established the charges.
+
+He was commenting on another branch of the case, when Sir E. Clarke
+interposed on the ground that the learned Solicitor-General was alluding
+to incidents connected with another trial. The Solicitor-General
+maintained that he was strictly within his rights, and the Judge held that
+the latter was entitled to make the comments objected to. "My learned
+friend does not appear to have gained a great deal by his superfluity of
+interruption", remarked the Solicitor-General suavely, and the Court
+laughed loudly. The Judge said that this sort of thing was most offensive
+to him. It was painful enough to have to try such a case and keep the
+scales of justice evenly balanced without the Court being pestered with
+meaningless laughter and applause. If such conduct were repeated he would
+have the Court cleared.
+
+The Solicitor-General then criticised the answers given by Wilde to the
+charges, which explanations he submitted, were not worthy of belief. The
+jury could not fail to put the interpretation on the conduct of the
+accused that he was a guilty man and they ought to say so by their
+verdict.
+
+The Judge, in summing-up, referred to the difficulties of the case in some
+of its features. He regretted, that if the conspiracy counts were
+unnecessary, or could not be established, they should have been placed in
+the indictment. The jury must not surrender their own independent judgment
+in dealing with the facts and ought to discard everything which was not
+relevant to the issue before them, or did not assist their judgment.
+
+He did not desire to comment more than he could help about Lord Alfred
+Douglas or the Marquis of Queensberry, but the whole of this lamentable
+enquiry arose through the defendant's association with Lord A. Douglas.
+
+He did not think that the action of the Marquis of Queensberry in leaving
+the card at the defendant's club, whatever motives he had, was that of a
+gentleman. The jury were entitled to consider that these alleged acts
+happened some years ago. They ought to be the best judges as to the
+testimony of the witnesses and whether it was worthy of belief.
+
+The letters written by the accused to Lord A. Douglas were undoubtedly
+open to suspicion, and they had an important bearing on Wood's evidence.
+There was no corroboration of Wood as to the visit to Tite Street, and if
+his story had been true, he thought that some corroboration might have
+been obtained. Wood belonged to the vilest class of person which Society
+was pestered with, and the jury ought not to believe his story unless
+satisfactorily corroborated.
+
+Their decision must turn on the character of the first introduction of
+Wilde to Wood. Did they believe that Wilde was actuated by charitable
+motives or by improper motives?
+
+The foreman of the jury, interposing at this stage, asked whether a
+warrant had been issued for the arrest of Lord Alfred Douglas and if not,
+whether it was intended to issue one.
+
+The Judge said he could not tell, but he thought not. It was a matter they
+could not now discuss. The granting of a warrant depended not upon the
+inferences to be drawn from the letters referred to in the case, but on
+the production of evidence of specific acts. There was a disadvantage in
+speculating on this question. They must deal with the evidence before them
+and with that alone. The foreman said, "If we are to deduce from the
+letters it applies to Lord Alfred Douglas equally as to the defendant."
+
+THE JUDGE.--"In regard to the question as to the absence of Lord A.
+Douglas, I warn you not to be influenced by any consideration of the kind.
+All that they knew was that Lord A. Douglas went to Paris shortly after
+the last trial and had remained there since. He felt sure that if the
+circumstances justified it, the necessary proceedings could be taken."
+
+His lordship dealt with each of the charges, and the evidence in support
+of them, and he then, after thanking the jury for the patient manner in
+which they had attended to the case, left the issues in their hands.
+
+The jury retired to consider their verdict at half past three o'clock and
+at half past five they returned into Court.
+
+
+_THE VERDICT_
+
+Amidst breathless excitement, the Foreman, in answer to the usual formal
+questions, announced the verdict, "Guilty."
+
+Sir EDWARD CLARKE.--"I apply, my lord, for a postponement of sentence."
+
+The JUDGE.--"I must certainly refuse that request. I can only characterise
+the offences as the worst that have ever come under my notice. I have,
+however, no wish to add to the pain that must be felt by the defendants. I
+sentence both Wilde and Taylor to two years imprisonment with hard
+labour."
+
+The sentence was met with some cries of "shame", "a scandalous verdict",
+"unjust," by certain persons in Court. The two prisoners appeared dazed
+and Wilde especially seemed ready to faint as he was hurried out of sight
+to the cells.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus perished by his own act a man who might have made a lasting mark in
+British Literature and secured for himself no mean place in the annals of
+his time.
+
+He forfeited, in the pursuit of forbidden pleasures, if pleasures they
+can be called, all and everything that made life dear.
+
+He entered upon his incarceration bankrupt in reputation, in friends, in
+pocket, and had not even left to him the poor shreds of his own
+self-esteem.
+
+He went into gaol, knowing that if he emerged alive, the darkness would
+swallow him up and that his world--the spheres which had delighted to
+honour him--would know him no more.
+
+He had covered his name with infamy and sank his own celebrity in a slough
+of slime and filth.
+
+He would die to leave behind him what?--the name of a man who was
+absolutely governed by his own vices and to whom no act of immorality was
+too foul or horrible.
+
+Oscar Wilde emerged from prison in every way a broken man. The wonderful
+descriptive force of the _Ballad of Reading Gaol_; the perfect, torturing
+self-analysis of _De Profundis_ speak eloquently of powers unimpaired; but
+they were the swan-songs of a once great mind. All his abilities had fled.
+He seemed unable to concentrate his mind upon anything. He took up certain
+subjects, played with them, and wearied of them in a day. French authors
+did not ostracise the erratic English genius when he hid himself amongst
+them and they honestly endeavoured to find him employment. But his
+faculties had been blunted by the horrors of prison life. His epigrams had
+lost their edge. His aphorisms were trite and aimless. He abandoned every
+subject he took up, in despair. His mind died before his body. He suffered
+from a complete mental atrophy. A nightingale cannot sing in a cage. A
+genius cannot flourish in a prison. He died in two years and is now--the
+merest memory! Let us remember this of him: if he sinned much, he suffered
+much.
+
+Peace to his ashes!
+
+
+
+
+  HIS LAST BOOK
+  AND HIS LAST YEARS IN PARIS
+  _By_ "_A_"
+  (LORD ALFRED DOUGLAS?)
+
+
+The following three articles, two of them from the "St. James's Gazette"
+and one from the "Motorist", are marked with so much good sense and
+dissipate so many errors touching Oscar Wilde's last Years in Paris that
+the publisher deemed it a duty to reproduce them here as a permanent
+answer to the wild legends circulated about the subject of this book.
+
+
+
+
+OSCAR WILDE
+
+His last Book and his last Years
+
+
+_The publication of Oscar Wilde's last book, "De Profundis," has revived
+interest in the closing scenes of his life, and we to-day print the first
+of two articles dealing with his last years in Paris from a source which
+puts their authenticity beyond question._
+
+_The one question which inevitably suggested itself to the reader of "De
+Profundis," was, "What was the effect of his prison reflections on his
+subsequent life?" The book is full not only of frank admissions of the
+error of his ways, but of projects for his future activity. "I hope," he
+wrote, in reply to some criticisms on the relations of art and morals, "to
+live long enough to produce work of such a character that I shall be able
+at the end of my days to say, "Yes, that is just where the artistic life
+leads a man!" He mentions in particular two subjects on which he proposed
+to write, "Christ as the Precursor of the Romantic Movement in Life" and
+"The Artistic Life Considered in its Relation to Conduct." These
+resolutions were never carried out, for reasons some of which the writer
+of the following article indicates._
+
+_Oscar Wilde was released from prison in May, 1897. He records in his
+letters the joy of the thought that at that time "both the lilac and the
+laburnum will be blooming in the gardens." The closing sentences of the
+book may be recalled: "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 rocks where I may hide, and
+secret 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."_
+
+_He died in November, 1900, three years and a half after his release from
+Reading Gaol._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Monsieur Joseph Renaud, whose translation of Oscar Wilde's "Intentions"
+has just appeared in Paris, has given a good example of how history is
+made in his preface to that work. He recounts an obviously imaginary
+meeting between himself and Oscar Wilde in a bar on the Boulevard des
+Italiens. He concludes the episode, such as it is, with these words:
+"Nothing remained of him but his musical voice and his large blue
+childlike eyes." Oscar Wilde's eyes were curious--long, narrow, and green.
+Anything less childlike it would be hard to imagine. To the physiognomist
+they were his most remarkable feature, and redeemed his face from the
+heaviness that in other respects characterised it. So much for M. Joseph
+Renaud's powers of observation.
+
+The complacent unanimity with which the chroniclers of Oscar Wilde's last
+years in Paris have accepted and spread the "legend" of his life in that
+city is remarkable, and would be exasperating considering its utter
+falsity to anyone who was not aware of their incompetence to deal with the
+subject. Scarcely one of his self-constituted biographers had more than
+the very slightest acquaintance with him, and their records and
+impressions of him are chiefly made up of stale gossip and secondhand
+anecdotes. The stories of his supposed privations, his frequent inability
+to obtain a square meal, his lonely and tragic death in a sordid lodging,
+and his cheap funeral are all grotesquely false.
+
+True, Oscar Wilde, who for several years before his conviction had been
+making at least L5,000 a year, found it very hard to live on his rather
+precarious income after he came out of prison; he was often very "hard
+up," and often did not know where to turn for a coin, but I will
+undertake to prove to anyone whom it may concern that from the day he left
+prison till the day of his death his income averaged at least L400 a year.
+He had, moreover, far too many devoted friends in Paris ever to be in need
+of a meal provided he would take the trouble to walk a few hundred yards
+or take a cab to one of half a dozen houses. His death certainly was
+tragic--deaths are apt to be tragic--but he was surrounded by friends when
+he died, and his funeral was not cheap; I happen to have paid for it in
+conjunction with another friend of his, so I ought to know.
+
+He did not become a Roman Catholic before he died. He was, at the instance
+of a great friend of his, himself a devout Catholic, "received into the
+Church" a few hours before he died; but he had then been unconscious for
+many hours, and he died without ever having any idea of the liberty that
+had been taken with his unconscious body. Whether he would have approved
+or not of the step taken by his friend is a matter on which I should not
+like to express a too positive opinion, but it is certain that it would
+not do him any harm, and, apart from all questions of religion and
+sentiment, it facilitated the arrangements which had to be made for his
+interment in a Catholic country, in view of the fact that no member of
+his family took any steps to claim his body or arrange for his funeral.
+
+Having disposed of certain false impressions in regard to various facts of
+his life and death in Paris, I may turn to what are less easily controlled
+and examined theories as to that life. Without wishing to be paradoxical,
+or harshly destructive of the carefully cherished sentiment of poetic
+justice so dear to the British mind (and the French mind, too, for that
+matter), I give it as my firm opinion that Oscar Wilde was, on the whole,
+fairly happy during the last years of his life. He had an extraordinarily
+buoyant and happy temperament, a splendid sense of humour, and an
+unrivalled faculty for enjoyment of the present. Of course, he had his bad
+moments, moments of depression and sense of loss and defeat, but they were
+not of long duration. It was part of his pose to luxuriate a little in the
+details of his tragic circumstances. He harrowed the feelings of many of
+those whom he came across; words of woe poured from his lips; he painted
+an image of himself, destitute, abandoned, starving even (I have heard him
+use the word after a very good dinner at Paillard's); as he proceeded he
+was caught by the pathos of his own words, his beautiful voice trembled
+with emotion, his eyes swam with tears; and then, suddenly, by a swift,
+indescribably brilliant, whimsical touch, a swallow-wing flash on the
+waters of eloquence, the tone changed and rippled with laughter, bringing
+with it his audience, relieved, delighted, and bubbling into
+uncontrollable merriment.
+
+He never lost his marvellous gift of talking; after he came out of prison
+he talked better than before. Everyone who knew him really before and
+after his imprisonment is agreed about that. His conversation was richer,
+more human, and generally on a higher intellectual level. In French he
+talked as well as in English; to my own English ear his French used to
+seem rather laboured and his accent too marked, but I am assured by
+Frenchmen who heard him talk that such was not the effect produced on
+them.
+
+He explained to me his inability to write, by saying that when he sat down
+to write he always inevitably began to think of his past life, and that
+this made him miserable and upset his spirits. As long as he talked and
+sat in cafes and "watched life," as his phrase was, he was happy, and he
+had the luck to be a good sleeper, so that only the silence and
+self-communing necessary to literary work brought him visions of his
+terrible sufferings in the past and made his old wounds bleed again. My
+own theory as to his literary sterility at this period is that he was
+essentially an interpreter of life, and that his existence in Paris was
+too narrow and too limited to stir him to creation. At his best he
+reflected life in a magic mirror, but the little corner of life he saw in
+Paris was not worth reflecting. If he could have been provided with a
+brilliant "entourage" of sympathetic listeners as of old and taken through
+a gay season in London, he would have begun to write again. Curiously
+enough, society was the breath of life to him, and what he felt more than
+anything else in his "St. Helena" in Paris, as he often told me, was the
+absence of the smart and pretty women who in the old days sat at his feet!
+
+A.
+
+
+
+
+OSCAR WILDE'S
+
+LAST YEARS IN PARIS.--II
+
+
+The French possess the faculty, very rare in England, of differentiating
+between a man and his work. They are utterly incapable of judging literary
+work by the moral character of its author. I have never yet met a
+Frenchman who was able to comprehend the attitude of the English public
+towards Oscar Wilde after his release from prison. They were completely
+mystified by it. An eminent French man-of-letters said to me one day: "You
+have a man of genius, he commits crimes, you put him in prison, you
+destroy his whole life, you take away his fortune, you ruin his health,
+you kill his mother, his wife, and his brother (_sic_), you refuse to
+speak to him, you exile him from your country. That is very severe. In
+France we should never so treat a man of genius, but _enfin ca peut se
+comprendre_. But not content with that, you taboo his books and his plays,
+which before you enjoyed and admired, and _pour comble de tout_ you are
+very angry if he goes into a restaurant and orders himself some dinner.
+_Il faut pourtant qu'il mange ce pauvre homme!_" If I had been
+representing the British public in an official capacity I should have
+probably given expression to its views and furnished a sufficient repartee
+to my voluble French friend by replying: "_Je n'en vois pas la
+necessite_."
+
+Fortunately for Oscar Wilde, the French took another view of the attitude
+to adopt towards a man who has offended against society, and who has been
+punished for it. Never by a word or a hint did they show that they
+remembered that offence, which, in their view, had been atoned for and
+wiped out. Oscar Wilde remained for them always _un grand homme, un
+maitre_, a distinguished man, to be treated with deference and respect
+and, because he had suffered much, with sympathy. It says a great deal for
+the innate courtesy and chivalry of the French character that a man in
+Oscar Wilde's position, as well known by sight, as he once remarked to me,
+as the Eiffel Tower, should have been able to go freely about in theatres,
+restaurants, and cafes without encountering any kind of hostility or even
+impertinent curiosity.
+
+It was this benevolent attitude of Paris towards him that enabled him to
+live and, in a fashion, to enjoy life. His audience was sadly reduced and
+precarious, and except on some few occasions it was of inferior
+intellectual calibre; but still he had an audience, and an audience to him
+was everything. Nor was he altogether deprived of the society of men of
+his own class and value. Many of the most brilliant young writers in
+France were proud to sit at his feet and enjoy his brilliant conversation,
+chief among whom I may mention that accomplished critic and essayist,
+Monsieur Ernest Lajeunesse, who is the author of what is perhaps the best
+posthumous notice of him that has been published in France in that
+excellent magazine, the "Revue blanche"; among older men who kept up their
+friendship with him, Octave Mirbeau, Moreas, Paul Fort, Henri Bauer, and
+Jean Lorrain may be mentioned.
+
+In contrast to this attitude taken up towards him by so many distinguished
+and eminent men, I cannot refrain from recalling the attitude adopted by
+the general run of English-speaking residents in Paris. For the credit of
+my country I am glad to be able to put them down mostly as Americans, or
+at any rate so Americanised by the constant absorption of "American
+drinks" as to be indistinguishable from the genuine article. These
+gentlemen "guessed they didn't want Oscar Wilde to be sitting around" in
+the bars where they were in the habit of shedding the light of their
+presence, and from one of these establishments Oscar Wilde was requested
+by the proprietor to withdraw at the instance of one of our "American
+cousins" who is now serving a term of two years penal servitude for
+holding up and robbing a bank!
+
+Oscar Wilde, to do him justice, bore this sort of rebuff with astonishing
+good temper and sweetness. His sense of humour and his invincible
+self-esteem kept him from brooding over what to another man might have
+appeared intolerable, and he certainly possessed the philosophical
+temperament to a greater extent than any other man I have ever come
+across. Every now and then one or other of the very few faithful English
+friends left to him would turn up in Paris and take him to dinner at one
+of the best restaurants, and anyone who met him on one of these occasions
+would have found it difficult to believe that he had ever passed through
+such awful experiences. Whether he was expounding some theory, grave or
+fantastic, embroidering it the while with flashes of impromptu wit or
+deepening it with extraordinary and intimate learning (for, as Ernest
+Lajeunesse says, _he knew everything_), or whether he was "keeping the
+table in a roar" with his delightfully whimsical humour, summer-lightning
+that flashed and hurt no one, he was equally admirable. To have lived in
+his lifetime and not to have heard him talk is as though one had lived for
+years at Athens without going to look at the Parthenon.
+
+I wish I could remember one-hundredth part of the good things he said. He
+was extraordinarily quick in answer and repartee, and anyone who says that
+his wit was the result of preparation and midnight oil can never have
+heard him speak. I remember once at dinner a friend of his who had
+formerly been in the "Blues," pointing out that in the opening stanza of
+"The Ballad of Reading Jail" he had made a mistake in speaking of the
+"scarlet coat" of the man who was hanged; he was, as the dedication of the
+poem says, a private in the "Blues," and his coat would therefore
+naturally not be scarlet. The lines go--
+
+  He did not wear his scarlet coat,
+  For blood and wine are red.
+
+"Well, what could I do," said Oscar Wilde plaintively, "I couldn't very
+well say
+
+  He did not wear his azure coat,
+  For blood and wine are blue--
+
+could I?"
+
+The last time I saw him was about three months before he died. I took him
+to dinner at the Grand Cafe. He was then perfectly well and in the highest
+spirits. All through dinner he kept me delighted and amused. Only
+afterwards, just before I left him, he became rather depressed. He
+actually told me that he didn't think he was going to live long; he had a
+presentiment, he said. I tried to turn it off into a joke, but he was
+quite serious. "Somehow," he said, "I don't think I shall live to see the
+new century." Then a long pause. "If another century began, and I was
+still alive, it would be really more than the English could stand." And so
+I left him, never to see him alive again.
+
+Just before he died he came to, after a long period of unconsciousness and
+said to a faithful friend who sat by his bedside, "I have had a dreadful
+dream; I dreamt that I dined with the dead." "My dear Oscar," replied his
+friend, "I am sure you were the life and soul of the party." "Really, you
+are sometimes very witty," replied Oscar Wilde, and I believe those are
+his last recorded words. The jest was admirable and in his own _genre_; it
+was prompted by ready wit and kindness, and because of it Oscar Wilde went
+off into his last unconscious phase, which lasted for twelve hours, with
+a smile on his lips. I cherish a hope that it is also prophetic, Death
+would have no terrors for me if only I were sure of "dining with the
+dead."[14]
+
+
+
+
+"DE PROFUNDIS"
+
+_A Criticism by_ "_A_"
+
+(LORD ALFRED DOUGLAS?)
+
+
+    "The English are very fond of a man who admits he has been wrong."
+
+        (_The Ideal Husband_).
+
+
+
+
+"DE PROFUNDIS"
+
+_A Criticism by_
+
+Lord Alfred Douglas
+
+
+In a painful passage in this interesting posthumous book (it takes the
+form of a letter to an unnamed friend), Oscar Wilde relates how, on
+November the 13th, 1895, he stood for half an hour on the platform of
+Clapham Junction, handcuffed and in convict dress, surrounded by an amused
+and jeering mob. "For a year after that was done to me," he writes, "I
+wept every day at the same hour and for the same space of time." That was
+before he had discovered or thought he had discovered that his terrible
+experiences in prison, his degradation and shame were a part, and a
+necessary part, of his artistic life, a completion of his incomplete soul.
+After he had learnt humility in the bitterest school that "man's
+inhumanity to man" provides for unwilling scholars, after he had drained
+the cup of sorrow to the dregs, after his spirit was broken--he wrote this
+book in which he tried to persuade himself and others that he had learnt
+by suffering and despair what life and pleasure had never taught him.
+
+If Oscar Wilde's spirit, returning to this world in a malicious mood, had
+wished to devise a pleasant and insinuating trap for some of his old
+enemies of the press, he could scarcely have hit on a better one than this
+book. I am convinced it was written in passionate sincerity at the time,
+and yet it represents a mere mood and an unimportant one of the man who
+wrote it, a mood too which does not even last through the 150 pages of the
+book. "The English are very fond of a man who admits he has been wrong,"
+he makes one of his characters in "The Ideal Husband" say, and elsewhere
+in this book he compares the advantages of pedestals and pillories in
+their relation to the public's attitude towards himself. Well here he is
+in the pillory, and here also is Mr. Courtney in the "Daily Telegraph"
+getting quite fond of him for the very first time. Here is Oscar Wilde, "a
+genius," "incontestably one of the greatest dramatists of modern times" as
+he is now graciously allowed to be, turning up unexpectedly with an
+admission that he was in the wrong, and telling us that his life and his
+art would have been incomplete without his imprisonment, that he has
+learnt humility and found a new mode of expression in suffering. He is
+"purged by grief," "chastened by suffering," and everything, in short,
+that he should be, and Mr. Courtney is touched and pleased. What Mr.
+Courtney and others have failed to realise, and what Wilde himself did
+realise very soon after he wrote this interesting but rather pathetically
+ineffective book, is that the mood which produced it was no other than the
+first symptom of that mental and physical disease generated by suffering
+and confinement which culminated in the death of its gifted and
+unfortunate author a few years later. As long as the spirit of revolt was
+left in Oscar Wilde, so long was left the fire of creative genius. When
+the spirit of revolt died, the flame began to subside, and continued to
+subside gradually with spasmodic flickers till its ultimate extinction. "I
+have got to make everything that has happened good for me." He writes,
+"The plank bed, the loathsome food, the hard rope shredded into oakum till
+one's finger tips grow dull with pain, the menial offices with which each
+day begins, the harsh orders that routine seems to necessitate, the
+dreadful dress that makes sorrow grotesque to look at, the silence, the
+solitude, the shame--each and all these things I have to transform into a
+spiritual experience. There is not a single degradation of the body which
+I must not try and make into a spiritualising of the soul." But, alas!
+plank beds, loathsome food, menial offices, and oakum picking do not
+spiritualise the soul; at any rate, they did not spiritualise Oscar
+Wilde's soul. The only effect they had was to destroy his magnificent
+intellect, and even, as some passages in this book show to temporarily
+cloud his superb sense of humour. The return of freedom gave him back the
+sense of humour, and the wreck of his magnificent intellect served him so
+well to the end of his life that, although he had hopelessly lost the
+power of concentration necessary to the production of literary work, he
+remained to the day of his death the most brilliant and the most
+intellectual talker in Europe.
+
+It must not be supposed, however, that this book is not a remarkable book
+and one which is not worth careful reading. There are fine prose passages
+in it, and occasional felicities of phrase which recall the Oscar Wilde of
+"The House of Pomegranates" and the "Prose-Poems," and here and there
+rather unexpectedly comes an epigram like this for example: "There were
+Christians before Christ. For that we should be grateful. The unfortunate
+thing is that there have been none since." True, he spoils the epigram by
+adding, "I make one exception, St. Francis of Assisi." A concession to the
+tyranny of facts and the relative importance of sincerity to style, which
+is most uncharacteristic of the "old Oscar." Nevertheless, the trace of
+the master hand is still visible, and the book contains much that is
+profound and subtle on the philosophy of Christ as conceived by this
+modern evangelist of the gospel of Life and Literature. One does not
+travel further than the 33rd page of the book before finding glaring and
+startling inconsistencies in the mental attitude of the writer towards his
+fate, for whereas on page 18 in a rather rhetorical passage he speaks of
+the "eternal disgrace" he had brought on the "noble and honoured name"
+bequeathed him by his father and mother, on page 33 "Reason" tells him
+"that the laws under which he was convicted are wrong and unjust laws, and
+the system under which he has suffered a wrong and unjust system." But
+this is the spirit of revolt not quite crushed. He says that if he had
+been released a year sooner, as in fact he very nearly was, he would have
+left his prison full of rage and bitterness, and without the treasure of
+his new-found "Humility." I am unregenerate enough to wish that he had
+brought his rage and bitterness with him out of prison. True, he would
+never have written this book if he had come out of prison a year sooner,
+but he would almost certainly have written several more incomparable
+comedies, and we who reverenced him as a great artist in words, and
+mourned his downfall as an irreparable blow to English Literature would
+have been spared the rather painful experience of reading the posthumous
+praise now at last so lavishly given to what certainly cannot rank within
+measurable distance of his best work.
+
+A.
+
+From "_The Motorist and Traveller_" (March 1, 1905).
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF PRIVATELY ISSUED HISTORICAL, ARTISTIC,
+AND CLASSICAL WORKS IN ENGLISH
+
+
+Thais
+
+_Romance of the Byzantine Empire (Fourth Century)_
+
+From the French of ANATOLE FRANCE
+
+With Twenty Copper-plate Etchings by Martin van Maele
+
+PRICE 21_s._
+
+"THAIS" is a work of religious mysticism. The story of the Priest-hero who
+sought to stamp out the flames of nature is told with a delicacy and
+realism that will at once charm and command the reader's attention.
+Anatole France is one of the most brilliant literary men in the world, and
+stands foremost amongst giants like Daudet, Zola, and Maupassant.
+
+    The book before us is a historical novel based on the legend of the
+    conversion of the courtesan Thais of Alexandria by a monk of the
+    Thebaid. Thais may be described as first cousin to the Pelagia of
+    Charles Kingsley "Hypatia;" indeed, the two books, dealing as they do
+    with the same place and period, Alexandria in the fourth century,
+    offer points of resemblance, as well as of difference, many and
+    various, and sufficiently interesting to be commended to the notice of
+    students of comparative criticism. There is, however, a subtle and
+    profound moral lesson about the work of Mr. Anatole France which is
+    wanting in Kingsley's shallower and more commonplace conception of
+    human motive and passion. The keynote is struck in the warning which
+    an old schoolfellow of the monk Paphnutius addresses to him when he
+    learns of his intention to snatch Thais as a brand from the burning:
+    "Beware of offending Venus. She is a powerful goddess; she will be
+    angry with you if you take away her chief minister." The monk
+    disregards the warning of the man of the world, and perseveres with
+    his self-imposed task, and that so successfully that Thais forsakes
+    her life of pleasure, and ultimately expires in the odour of sanctity.
+    _Custodes, sed quis custodiet ipsos?_ Paphnutius has deceived himself,
+    and has failed to perceive that what he took for zeal for a lost soul
+    was in reality but human desire for a fair face. The monk, who has won
+    Heaven for the beautiful sinner, loses it himself for love of her, and
+    is left at the end, baffled and blaspheming, before the dead body of
+    the woman he has loved all the time without knowing that he loved her.
+
+    It is impossible for the reviewer to convey any adequate notion of the
+    subtle skill with which the author deals with a delicate but intensely
+    human theme. Alike as a piece of psychical analysis and as a picture
+    of the age, this book stands head and shoulders above any that we have
+    ever read about the period with which it deals. It is a work of rare
+    beauty, and, we may add, of profound moral truth, albeit not written
+    precisely _virginibus puerisque_.
+
+    It is emphatically the work of a great artist.--(From a Notice in
+    "_The Pall Mall Gazette_").
+
+
+The Well of Santa Clara
+
+This work is, from the deep interest of its contents, the beauty of its
+typography and paper, and the elegance and daring of the illustrations,
+one of the finest works in _edition de luxe_ yet offered to the collectors
+of rare books.
+
+Apart from the other stories, all of them written with that exquisite
+grace and ironical humour for which Anatole France is unmatched, "The
+Human Tragedy," forming half of the book, is alone worthy to rank amongst
+the master-efforts of literature. The dominant idea of "The Human Tragedy"
+is foreshadowed by the quotation from Euripedes: _All the life of man is
+full of pain, and there is no surcease of sorrow. If there be aught better
+elsewhere than this present life, it is hid, shrouded in the clouds of
+darkness._
+
+The English rendering of this work is, from its purity and strength of
+style, a veritable _tour de force_. The book will be prized and
+appreciated by scholars and lovers of the beautiful in art.
+
+New Grasset characters have been used for this work, limited to 500
+numbered copies on handmade paper; each page of text is contained in an
+artistic green border, and the work in its entirety constitutes a volume
+of rare excellence.
+
+Twenty-one clever COPPER-PLATE ENGRAVINGS (in the most finished style) by
+MARTIN VAN MAELE.
+
+
+The Well of Santa Clara
+
+_CONTENTS_
+
+
+                                                               Pages
+
+  Prologue.--The Reverend Father Adone Doni                        1
+
+     I. San Satiro                                                18
+
+    II. Messer Guido Cavalcanti                                   71
+
+   III. Lucifer                                                  102
+
+    IV. The Loaves of Black Bread                                116
+
+     V. The Merry-hearted Buffalmacco                            126
+           I. The Cockroaches                                    127
+          II. The Ascending up of Andria Tafin                   143
+         III. The Master                                         163
+          IV. The Painter                                        172
+
+    VI. The Lady of Verona                                       184
+
+   VII. The Human Tragedy
+           I. Fra Giovanni                                       193
+          II. The Lamp                                           206
+         III. The Seraphic Doctor                                210
+          IV. The Loaf on the Flat Stone                         214
+           V. The Table under the Fig-tree                       218
+          VI. The Temptation                                     223
+         VII. The Subtle Doctor                                  232
+        VIII. The Burning Coal                                   245
+          IX. The House of Innocence                             248
+           X. The Friends of Order                               260
+          XI. The Revolt of Gentleness                           271
+         XII. Words of Love                                      280
+        XIII. The Truth                                          288
+         XIV. Giovanni's Dream                                   304
+          XV. The Judgment                                       317
+         XVI. The Prince of this World                           326
+
+  VIII. The Mystic Blood                                         343
+
+    IX. A Sound Security                                         360
+
+     X. History of Dona Maria d'Avalos and the Duke d'Andria     379
+
+    XI. Bonaparte at San Miniato                                 405
+
+PRICE: ONE GUINEA.
+
+
+Oscar Wilde's Works.
+
+Poems in Prose:
+
+  The Artist
+  The Doer of Good
+  The Disciple
+  The Master
+  The House of Judgment, etc.
+
+  Limited Edition of Five Hundred Copies on superior
+  English vellum paper, and printed in Grasset characters in
+    red and black.                      Price 5s.
+
+  Fifty copies on Japanese paper.       Price 10s.
+
+
+OSCAR WILDE:
+
+What Never Dies
+
+(Ce qui ne meurt pas)
+
+One Volume small crown 8vo., bound in white parchment. Nearly 400 pages.
+
+Price 10s. 6d.
+
+Translated into English by 'Sebastian Melmoth' (OSCAR WILDE), from the
+French of BARBEY D'AUREVILLY. A strange and powerful romance of LOVE AND
+PASSION IN A COUNTRY HOUSE, similar to the plot unfolded in Guy de
+Maupassant's "Lady's Man," but told in even more lordly and brilliant
+language; the wonderful French of "Barbey" being rendered into yet more
+wonderful English by OSCAR WILDE.
+
+
+THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
+
+By Oscar Wilde
+
+Sole Authorized Version
+
+_Limited Edition of One Hundred Copies on Real Hand-made English paper,
+Price 15s._
+
+
+Translated from the Latin by Oscar Wilde
+
+The Satyricon of Petronius
+
+A Literal and Complete Translation with Notes and Introduction.
+
+Circular free for 2-1/2d.
+
+_Price_, L1. 11_s._ 6_d._
+
+_Fifteen Copies on Papier de Chine, Price_ L2. 2s.
+
+This Edition is not only the ... MOST COMPLETE AND BRILLIANT ever done
+into English, but it constitutes also a typographical _bijou_, being
+printed in a limited number on handmade paper in red and black throughout.
+
+
+Unknown Poems by Lord Byron
+
+DON LEON
+
+A Poem by the late Lord Byron
+
+Author of Childe Harold, Don Juan, etc.
+
+And forming part of the Private Journal of His Lordship, supposed to have
+been entirely destroyed by Thos. Moore.
+
+  "_Pardon, dear Tom, these thoughts on days gone by;
+  Me men revile and thou must justify.
+  Yet in my bosom apprehensions rise
+  (For brother poets have their jealousies),
+  Lest under false pretences thou shoudst turn
+  A faithless friend, and these confessions burn._"
+
+"DON JUAN" is generally spoken of as a composition remarkable for its
+daring gallantry; but here is a long connected poetical work by the same
+Author which far outdistances "Don Juan" both in audacity of conception
+and licence of language.
+
+These poems were issued _sub rosa_ in 1866, and owing to the fact that
+interested persons bought up immediately on its appearance and burnt the
+entire output, any stray copies that chanced to escape the general
+destruction, when they turn up nowadays, fetch from Five to Ten Guineas
+each.
+
+_The size of the book is small crown octavo, 134 pp., in artistic paper
+wrappers._
+
+This issue has been limited to Two Hundred and Fifty copies as follows:
+
+                                Price:
+
+  175 on Ordinary Vellum paper  10s.6d.
+
+  75 on French hand-made paper  L1.1s.
+
+Detailed circular on demand for 2d.
+
+
+Curious By-Paths of History
+
+Studies of Louis XIV; Richelieu; Mdlle de la Valliere; Madame de
+Pompadour; Sophie Arnould's Sickness; The True Charlotte Corday; A Savage
+"Hound;" In the Hands of the "Charcutiers;" Napoleon's Superstitions; The
+Affair of Madame Recamier and Queen Elizabeth of England, etc.
+
+Followed by a fascinating study of
+
+  FLAGELLATION IN FRANCE from a Medical and Historical Standpoint
+
+With special Foreword by the Editor, dealing with the Reviewers of a
+previous work, and sundry other cognate matters good to be known;
+particularly concerning the high-handed proceedings of British
+Philistinism, which here receives "a rap on the knuckles." A fine
+realistic Frontispiece after a design by DANIEL VIERGE, etched by F.
+MASSE.
+
+The whole (in Two Volumes), Price 21s.
+
+With this book is given away (undercover) a fine plate entitled _CONJUGAL
+CORRECTION_, reproduced in Aquatint by the Maison Goupil, of Paris, after
+the famous Oil Painting of Correggio.
+
+
+Fascinating Historical Studies by a French Physician.
+
+The Secret Cabinet of History
+
+Peeped into by a Doctor (Dr. Cabanes)
+
+Translated by W. C. COSTELLO, And preceded by a letter from the pen of
+M. VICTORIEN SARDOU (de l'Academie francaise).
+
+One stout Volume of 260 pages. Edition limited to 500 Copies, on fine
+quality Dutch (Van Gelder) azure paper, with wide margins and untrimmed
+edges, specially manufactured for this Edition; cloth bound.
+
+Price 12s. 6d.
+
+_The "get up" of the book will please all who like beautiful printing and
+choice paper._
+
+Although the bizarre character of some of the subjects may tempt us to
+imagine that it is all a fiction, torn from the "Arabian Nights," and
+placed in an Eighteenth Century setting, the references and authorities
+marshalled by Dr. Cabanes will quickly convince the sceptically inclined
+that the whole is based on unimpeachable documents.
+
+
+"Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles"
+
+(Louis XI.)
+
+Done now for the first time into English.
+
+One Hundred Merrie and Delightsome Stories
+
+right pleasaunte to relate in all goodly compagnie by way of joyaunce and
+jollity
+
+Two volumes demy 8vo., over 526 pages on fine English antique deckle-edged
+paper, with FIFTY COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS by LEON LEBEQUE, the whole
+strongly bound in English water-coloured Silk Cloth.
+
+Price L3.3s.
+
+500 NUMBERED COPIES PRINTED
+
+For England and America
+
+ALSO 75 LARGE NUMBERED COPIES
+
+Printed on Japanese vellum
+
+PRICE: L5. 5s. net
+
+Although this work has been published many times in French during the last
+four-and-a half centuries, it has never hitherto been done into English,
+and in fact is little known in England at all on account of its archaic
+form, which renders the reading of the original impossible to any but a
+student of old French.
+
+Very little inferior to Boccaccio and far superior to the Heptameron, the
+stories possess a brightness and gaiety entirely their own; moreover they
+are of high literary merit.
+
+Illustrated Circular free by post for 5d.
+
+
+The ... Evolution and Dissolution of the Sexual Instinct ...
+
+By ... Doctor Charles FERE of the Bicetre Hospital, (PARIS)
+
+Price: 21s.
+
+"Truth and science are never immoral; but it cannot be denied that the
+narration of facts relating to sexual physiology and pathology, if their
+real significance is not pointed out, may be the cause of perversion in
+the case of predisposed subjects. The danger appears more serious to those
+who think that normal individuals may be perverted under the influence of
+environment, and yet more serious when the sexual instinct is represented
+as an uncontrollable instinct, which nobody can resist, however abnormal
+the form in which the instinct may reveal itself."
+
+
+
+
+  The Only Worthy Translation into French
+
+  OSCAR WILDE
+
+  Intentions
+
+  Traduction francaise de HUGUES REBELL
+
+  Preface de CHARLES GROLLEAU
+
+  _Orne d'un portrait_
+
+  Un volume in-8o carre. Impression de luxe sur _antique vellum_.
+
+  Prix: 6 francs.
+
+  Il a ete tire _trente_ exemplaires sur Japon imperial.
+
+  Prix: 12 francs.
+
+
+  PARIS
+  CHARLES CARRINGTON, LIBRAIRE-EDITEUR
+  13, Faubourg Montmartre, 13
+
+  1906
+
+
+NOTICE
+
+"INTENTIONS" est un des ouvrages les plus curieux qui se puisse lire. On y
+trouve tout l'esprit, si paradoxal, toute l'etonnante culture du brillant
+ecrivain que fut Oscar WILDE.
+
+Des cinq _Essais_ que contient ce livre, trois sont sous forme de dialogue
+et donnent l'impression parfaite de ce qui fut le plus grand prestige de
+WILDE: la Causerie.
+
+La traduction que nous publions aujourd'hui, outre sa fidelite scrupuleuse
+et son incontestable elegance, offre cet attrait particulier d'etre le
+dernier travail d'un des jeunes maitres de la prose francaise, Hugues
+REBELL, qui l'acheva peu de jours avant sa mort.
+
+La preface de M. Charles GROLLEAU, ecrite avec une delicatesse remarquable
+et une emotion penetrante, constitue la plus subtile etude psychologique
+que l'on ait jamais publiee sur Oscar WILDE.
+
+
+Sous presse:
+
+  _Du meme Auteur_:
+
+  Poemes en Prose.
+  La Duchesse de Padoue.
+  La Maison des Grenades.
+
+
+L'oeuvre d'Oscar Wilde demande a etre traduite a la fois avec precision
+et avec art. Les phrases ont des significations si tenues et le choix des
+mots est si habile qu'une traduction defectueuse, abondante en contre-sens
+ou en coquilles, risquerait de decevoir grandement le lecteur. Car il faut
+bien compter que ceux qui se soucient de connaitre Oscar Wilde ne peuvent
+etre ni des concierges ni des cochers de fiacre; ils n'appartiennent
+certainement pas a ce "grand public" qui se delecte aux emouvants
+feuilletons de nos quotidiens populaires ou qui savoure avidement les
+elucubrations egrillardes de certains fabricants de pretendue litterature.
+C'est ce qu'avait compris l'editeur Carrington quand il chargea Hugues
+Rebell de lui traduire _Intentions_. Ces essais d'Oscar Wilde representent
+plus particulierement le cote paradoxal et frondeur de sa personalite. Il
+y exprime ses idees ou plutot ses subtilites esthetiques; il y "cause"
+plus qu'ailleurs, a tel point que trois de ces essais sur cinq sont
+dialogues; l'auteur s'entretient avec des personnages qu'il suppose aussi
+cultives, aussi beaux esprits que lui-meme: "s'entretient" est beaucoup
+dire, car ce sont plutot des contradicteurs auxquels il suggere les
+objections dont il a besoin pour poursuivre le developpement et le
+triomphe de ses arguments. La conversation vagabonde a plaisir et le
+causeur y fait etalage de toutes les richesses de son esprit, de son
+imagination, de sa memoire. Au milieu de ces citations, de ces allusions,
+de ces exemples innombrables empruntes a tous les temps et a tous les
+pays, le traducteur a chance de s'egarer s'il n'est lui-meme homme d'une
+culture tres sure et tres variee. Hugues Rebell pouvait, sans danger de
+paraitre ignorant ou ridicule, entreprendre de donner une version
+d'_Intentions_. Il n'avait certes pas fait de la litterature anglaise
+contemporaine, non plus que d'aucune epoque, l'objet d'etudes speciales.
+Mais il connaissait cette litterature dans son ensemble beaucoup mieux que
+certains qui s'autorisent de quelques excursions a Londres pour clamer a
+tout venant leur competence douteuse. J'ai souvenir de maintes occasions
+ou Rebell, avec cet air mysterieux qu'il ne pouvait s'empecher de prendre
+pour les choses les plus simples, m'attirait a l'ecart de tel groupe
+d'amis, ou la conversation etait generale, pour me parler de tel jeune
+auteur sur qui l'une de mes chroniques avait attire son attention. Et,
+chaque fois, il faisait preuve, en ces matieres, d'un savoir tres etendu.
+
+Hugues Rebell fit donc cette necessaire traduction, et, dit l'editeur dans
+une note preliminaire, "c'est le dernier travail auquel il put se livrer.
+Il nous en remit les derniers feuillets peu de jours avant sa mort".
+Rebell devait prefacer ce travail d'une etude sur la vie et les oeuvres du
+poete anglais, etude qu'il ne put qu'ebaucher, malheureusement, car, avec
+Gide,--mais celui-ci d'un point de vue different et peut-etre oppose,--il
+etait exclusivement qualifie pour saisir, demeler et interpreter l'etrange
+personnalite de Wilde. Quelques fragments de cette etude nous sont donnes
+cependant et ils nous font tres vivement regretter que le vigoureux et
+paradoxal auteur de l'_Union des Trois Aristocraties_ n'ait pu achever son
+travail.
+
+Mais ce regret bien legitime se mitige grandement a mesure qu'on lit la
+belle preface de M. Charles Grolleau. Prenant pour epigraphe cette pensee
+de Pascal: "Je blame egalement et ceux qui prennent le parti de louer
+l'homme, et ceux qui le prennent de le blamer, et ceux qui le prennent de
+se divertir; et je ne puis approuver que ceux qui cherchent en gemissant",
+M. Grolleau s'efforce de comprendre et de resoudre ce "douloureux
+probleme" que fut Wilde. Et il le fait avec cette reserve et ce parfait
+bon gout que doivent s'imposer les veritables amis et les sinceres
+admirateurs d'Oscar Wilde. Il y a plus, dans ces cinquante pages: il y a
+l'une des meilleures etudes qui aient jamais ete faites du brillant
+dramaturge. Bien qu'il s'en defende, M. Grolleau, dans cette langue
+elegante et harmonieuse que lui connaissent ceux qui ont lu ses beaux
+vers, reussit a discerner mieux et a mieux reveler que certaines diatribes
+"l'ame et la passion" de l'auteur de _De Profundis_.
+
+    Je me suis interdit d'ecrire une biographie. Je ne connais que
+    l'ecrivain, et l'homme est trop vivant encore et si blesse! J'ai la
+    devotion des plaies, et le plus beau rite de cette devotion est le
+    geste qui voile.
+
+Toute "cette meditation sur une ame tres belle" est ecrite avec ce tact
+delicat et cette tendre sympathie. Ainsi, apres avoir admire ces
+emouvantes pages, le lecteur peut aborder dans un etat d'esprit convenable
+les essais parfois deconcertants qui sont reunis sous le titre
+significatif d'_Intentions_. C'est dans cette belle edition qu'il faut les
+lire. On sait avec quel souci d'artiste M. Carrington etablit ses volumes;
+il n'y laisse pas de ces incroyables coquilles, de ces epais mastics qui
+ressemblent si fort a des contre-sens, et, sachant quel public intelligent
+et eclaire voudrait ce livre, il n'a pas eu l'idee saugrenue d'abimer ses
+pages par d'inutiles notes assurant le lecteur par exemple que Dante a
+ecrit la Divine Comedie, que Shelley fut un grand poete, que Keats mourut
+poitrinaire, que George Eliot etait femme de lettres et Lancret peintre.
+Un portrait de l'auteur est reproduit en tete de cette excellente edition.
+
+Henry-D. Davray.
+
+_(Extrait du "Mercure de France," 15 septembre 1905)._
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Hugues Rebell.
+
+[2] Hugues Rebell.
+
+[3] Sebastian Melmoth (Oscar Wilde).
+
+[4] Hugues Rebell.
+
+[5] _De Profundis._
+
+[6] Hugues Rebell.
+
+[7] _Studies in Prose & Verse_, by Arthur Symons. (Lond. 1905).
+
+[8] Sebastian Melmoth.
+
+[9] _Intentions._
+
+[10] Hugues Rebell.
+
+[11] _Macaulay._
+
+[12] De Profundis, 1905.
+
+[13] De Profundis, 1905.
+
+[14] Both of the articles given above appeared for the first time in the
+ST. JAMES'S GAZETTE.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Trial of Oscar Wilde, by Anonymous
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