The Trial of Oscar Wilde Part 2

You cannot possibly form any notion of the extreme severity of "hard labour" which is implacable in its _regime_ of absorbing and exigent regularity.

"Oscar Wilde, who wore his hair long like the esthete he was, was obliged to undergo the indignity of having it cut close, and wearing the sack-cloth suit bearing the broad-arrow mark of the convict. Thrust into a small narrow cell with only a bed, or rather a wooden plank in guise of a bed, for all his furniture,--a bed without a matress, and with a bolster made of wood, this talented man was made to pa.s.s 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 quant.i.ties 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-b.a.l.l.s, 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-b.a.l.l.s one by one to the place from whence he had first taken them.

"Then finally, he was made to work the tread-mill which is a harder task than those even that we have endeavoured faintly to describe. Imagine if you can, an enormous wheel in the interior of which exist cunningly arranged winding steps. Wilde, mounting on one of the steps, would immediately set the wheel in motion by the movement of his feet; then the steps follow each other under the feet in rapid and regular evolution, thus forcing the legs to a precipitous action which becomes laborious, enervating, and even maddening after a few minutes. But this enervating fatigue and suffering the convict is obliged to overcome, whilst continuing to move his legs for all they are worth, if he would escape being knocked down, caught up and thrown over, by the revolving movement of the wheel. This fantastical exercise lasts a quarter of an hour, and the wretch obliged to indulge in it, is allowed five minutes rest before the silly game recommences.

"The convict is always kept apart and not allowed to speak even to his gaoler except at certain moments. All correspondence and reading is forbidden, save for the Bible and Prayer book placed at the head of the wooden plank, which serves him for a bed; and relatives are not admitted to see him excepting at the end of the year.

"His food consists of meat and black bread, and of course only water is allowed. The meal-times take place at fixed hours, for naturally he has to follow a regular _regime_, in order to accomplish the hard labours that are inc.u.mbent upon him.

"Many of the convicts have been known to say, on coming out of prison, that they would have far more preferred to pa.s.s 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 h.e.l.l 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 pa.s.sionate anguish which refrains from expressing itself with the same intensity as the sorrows it had suffered, stricken with infinite sadness at the utter shipwreck of all hope and the cowardice of the human nature that had brought him to such low estate.

That he should have conjured up the happy times he had seen decked out in all the charming graces of youth, and which smiled back his visage from the limpid mirror of his marvellously artistic intelligence, is only perfectly natural; and this evocation of happier times took on a new and horribly strange beauty, just as the feeblest ray of light stealing through prison walls gains in puissance from the sheer opacity of enveloping darkness.

I will not stop here to enquire whether he found later the consolation he so much desired, a haven of peace in the friendship of the aristocratic adolescent, who had unwittingly caused him to become cast-a-way. It is highly probable that the bitter words which Andre Gide heard him utter, referred to that unfortunate intimacy: "No, he does not understand me; he can no longer understand me. I repeat to him in each letter; we can no more follow together the same path; you have yours, and it is certainly beautiful; and I have mine. His path is the path of Alcibiade, whilst mine henceforth must be that of St. Francis of a.s.sisi."

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 att.i.tudinizing, 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 G.o.ds of fact.i.tious 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 antic.i.p.ating 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 pa.s.sage, 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, pa.s.sionate, 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 pa.s.sion 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 chastis.e.m.e.nt. Spasmodic movements agitate them, revealing beneath their mendacious laughter the secret agony of their souls; and we are suddenly called upon to witness the heart-rending spectacle of the slow death-agony of a haughty, talented poet, a Petronius self-poisoned through fear of Caesar or a Wilde whom a vicious and over-wrought Public had only half a.s.sa.s.sinated, 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 a.s.sumed 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 plat.i.tudes or ba.n.a.lities for the author of "Lady Windermere's Fan," who made a G.o.d 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 pa.s.sions, 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 pa.s.sions consumed the fire of his being. He had had children of his wife, but s.e.xual 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 a.s.sociates 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 dest.i.tute 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 s.e.xual 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 a.s.sault. 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 t.i.te Street and there was a terrible scene. The Marquis fumed; Wilde laughed. He a.s.sured his Lordship that only at his son's own request would he break off the a.s.sociation 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 b.u.g.g.e.r." 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 cla.s.ses 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 pa.s.sing 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.