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

[Text of Title Page]

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 melopœia 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?”