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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 æsthetic 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 Mallarmé 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
Mallarmé 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 Mallarmé 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 Mallarmé 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 Comédie
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_
flâneur, _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 æsthetic basis was bad, one, at least, cannot pretend that it was
dangerous, since it enabled them to accomplish their masterpieces. Wilde,
unfortunately, was an æsthete 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 Merimée, 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
étrusques_."

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 héröiques jours où les jeunes pensées
  Allaient chercher leur miel aux lèvres 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 René Boylesve has drawn of the æsthete in his fine
novel "Le Parfum des Iles Borromées," 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 mystérieux de souiller la Beauté._

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 _Défense 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 _régime_ 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 _régime_, 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 André 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 Cæsar 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 £30 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 £30?"

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
£300 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 £130."

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
£200 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 £500--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 £45,000. 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 Café 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 Café 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
£300 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
£30, 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 £5 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 £45,000. 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 £30 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 £2,500 and two sureties of
£1,250 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 £45,000 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 £5,000 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 £400 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 cafés 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 ça 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
nécessité_."

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
maître_, 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 cafés 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, Moréas, 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 Café. 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


Thaïs

_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._

"THAÏS" 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 Thaïs of Alexandria by a monk of the
    Thebaïd. Thaïs 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 Thaïs 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 Thaïs 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 _édition 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 Doña 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_, £1. 11_s._ 6_d._

_Fifteen Copies on Papier de Chine, Price_ £2. 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 rosâ_ 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  £1.1s.

Detailed circular on demand for 2d.


Curious By-Paths of History

Studies of Louis XIV; Richelieu; Mdlle de la Vallière; 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 Récamier 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.
MASSÉ.

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. Cabanès)

Translated by W. C. COSTELLO, And preceded by a letter from the pen of
M. VICTORIEN SARDOU (de l'Académie française).

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. Cabanès 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 LÉON LEBÈQUE, the whole
strongly bound in English water-coloured Silk Cloth.

Price £3.3s.

500 NUMBERED COPIES PRINTED

For England and America

ALSO 75 LARGE NUMBERED COPIES

Printed on Japanese vellum

PRICE: £5. 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 FÉRÉ of the Bicêtre 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 française de HUGUES REBELL

  Préface de CHARLES GROLLEAU

  _Orné d'un portrait_

  Un volume in-8o carré. Impression de luxe sur _antique vellum_.

  Prix: 6 francs.

  Il a été tiré _trente_ exemplaires sur Japon impérial.

  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'étonnante culture du brillant
écrivain 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 fidélité scrupuleuse
et son incontestable élégance, offre cet attrait particulier d'être le
dernier travail d'un des jeunes maîtres de la prose française, Hugues
REBELL, qui l'acheva peu de jours avant sa mort.

La préface de M. Charles GROLLEAU, écrite avec une délicatesse remarquable
et une émotion pénétrante, constitue la plus subtile étude psychologique
que l'on ait jamais publiée sur Oscar WILDE.


Sous presse:

  _Du même Auteur_:

  Poèmes en Prose.
  La Duchesse de Padoue.
  La Maison des Grenades.


L'oeuvre d'Oscar Wilde demande à être traduite à la fois avec précision
et avec art. Les phrases ont des significations si ténues et le choix des
mots est si habile qu'une traduction défectueuse, abondante en contre-sens
ou en coquilles, risquerait de décevoir grandement le lecteur. Car il faut
bien compter que ceux qui se soucient de connaître Oscar Wilde ne peuvent
être ni des concierges ni des cochers de fiacre; ils n'appartiennent
certainement pas à ce «grand public» qui se délecte aux émouvants
feuilletons de nos quotidiens populaires ou qui savoure avidement les
élucubrations égrillardes de certains fabricants de prétendue littérature.
C'est ce qu'avait compris l'éditeur Carrington quand il chargea Hugues
Rebell de lui traduire _Intentions_. Ces essais d'Oscar Wilde représentent
plus particulièrement le côté paradoxal et frondeur de sa personalité. Il
y exprime ses idées ou plutôt ses subtilités esthétiques; il y «cause»
plus qu'ailleurs, à tel point que trois de ces essais sur cinq sont
dialogués; l'auteur s'entretient avec des personnages qu'il suppose aussi
cultivés, aussi beaux esprits que lui-même: «s'entretient» est beaucoup
dire, car ce sont plutôt des contradicteurs auxquels il suggère les
objections dont il a besoin pour poursuivre le développement et le
triomphe de ses arguments. La conversation vagabonde à plaisir et le
causeur y fait étalage de toutes les richesses de son esprit, de son
imagination, de sa mémoire. Au milieu de ces citations, de ces allusions,
de ces exemples innombrables empruntés à tous les temps et à tous les
pays, le traducteur a chance de s'égarer s'il n'est lui-même homme d'une
culture très sûre et très variée. Hugues Rebell pouvait, sans danger de
paraître ignorant ou ridicule, entreprendre de donner une version
d'_Intentions_. Il n'avait certes pas fait de la littérature anglaise
contemporaine, non plus que d'aucune époque, l'objet d'études spéciales.
Mais il connaissait cette littérature dans son ensemble beaucoup mieux que
certains qui s'autorisent de quelques excursions à Londres pour clamer à
tout venant leur compétence douteuse. J'ai souvenir de maintes occasions
où Rebell, avec cet air mystérieux qu'il ne pouvait s'empêcher de prendre
pour les choses les plus simples, m'attirait à l'écart de tel groupe
d'amis, où la conversation était générale, pour me parler de tel jeune
auteur sur qui l'une de mes chroniques avait attiré son attention. Et,
chaque fois, il faisait preuve, en ces matières, d'un savoir très étendu.

Hugues Rebell fit donc cette nécessaire traduction, et, dit l'éditeur dans
une note préliminaire, «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 préfacer ce travail d'une étude sur la vie et les oeuvres du
poète anglais, étude qu'il ne put qu'ébaucher, malheureusement, car, avec
Gide,--mais celui-ci d'un point de vue différent et peut-être opposé,--il
était exclusivement qualifié pour saisir, démêler et interpréter l'étrange
personnalité de Wilde. Quelques fragments de cette étude nous sont donnés
cependant et ils nous font très vivement regretter que le vigoureux et
paradoxal auteur de l'_Union des Trois Aristocraties_ n'ait pu achever son
travail.

Mais ce regret bien légitime se mitige grandement à mesure qu'on lit la
belle préface de M. Charles Grolleau. Prenant pour épigraphe cette pensée
de Pascal: «Je blâme également et ceux qui prennent le parti de louer
l'homme, et ceux qui le prennent de le blâmer, et ceux qui le prennent de
se divertir; et je ne puis approuver que ceux qui cherchent en gémissant»,
M. Grolleau s'efforce de comprendre et de résoudre ce «douloureux
problème» que fut Wilde. Et il le fait avec cette réserve et ce parfait
bon goût que doivent s'imposer les véritables amis et les sincères
admirateurs d'Oscar Wilde. Il y a plus, dans ces cinquante pages: il y a
l'une des meilleures études qui aient jamais été faites du brillant
dramaturge. Bien qu'il s'en défende, M. Grolleau, dans cette langue
élégante et harmonieuse que lui connaissent ceux qui ont lu ses beaux
vers, réussit a discerner mieux et à mieux révéler que certaines diatribes
«l'âme et la passion» de l'auteur de _De Profundis_.

    Je me suis interdit d'écrire une biographie. Je ne connais que
    l'écrivain, et l'homme est trop vivant encore et si blessé! J'ai la
    dévotion des plaies, et le plus beau rite de cette dévotion est le
    geste qui voile.

Toute «cette meditation sur une âme très belle» est écrite avec ce tact
délicat et cette tendre sympathie. Ainsi, après avoir admiré ces
émouvantes pages, le lecteur peut aborder dans un état d'esprit convenable
les essais parfois déconcertants qui sont réunis sous le titre
significatif d'_Intentions_. C'est dans cette belle édition qu'il faut les
lire. On sait avec quel souci d'artiste M. Carrington établit ses volumes;
il n'y laisse pas de ces incroyables coquilles, de ces épais mastics qui
ressemblent si fort à des contre-sens, et, sachant quel public intelligent
et éclairé voudrait ce livre, il n'a pas eu l'idée saugrenue d'abîmer ses
pages par d'inutiles notes assurant le lecteur par exemple que Dante a
écrit la Divine Comédie, que Shelley fut un grand poète, que Keats mourut
poitrinaire, que George Eliot était femme de lettres et Lancret peintre.
Un portrait de l'auteur est reproduit en tête de cette excellente édition.

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.