The Wisdom of Oscar Wilde

by the Wisdom of

  LADY BRACKNELL: A country house! How many bedrooms? Well, that point can be cleared up afterwards. You have a town house, I hope? A girl with a simple, unspoiled nature, like Gwendolen, could hardly be expected to reside in the country.

  JACK: Well, I own a house in Belgrave Square, but it is let by the year to Lady Bloxham. Of course, I can get it back whenever I like, at six months’ notice.

  LADY BRACKNELL: Lady Bloxham? I don’t know her.

  JACK: Oh, she goes about very little. She is a lady considerably advanced in years.

  LADY BRACKNELL: Ah, nowadays that is no guarantee of respectability of character. What number in Belgrave Square?

  JACK: 149.

  LADY BRACKNELL (shaking her head): The unfashionable side. I thought there was something. However, that could easily be altered.

  JACK: Do you mean the fashion, or the side?

  LADY BRACKNELL (sternly): Both, if necessary, I presume. What are your politics?

  JACK: Well, I am afraid I really have none. I am a Liberal Unionist.

  LADY BRACKNELL: Oh, they count as Tories. They dine with us. Or come in the evening at any rate. You have, of course, no sympathy of any kind with the Radical Party?

  JACK: Oh! I don’t want to put the asses against the classes, if that is what you mean, Lady Bracknell.

  LADY BRACKNELL: That is exactly what I do mean… ahem!.. Are your parents living?

  JACK: I have lost both my parents.

  LADY BRACKNELL: Both?… To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune… to lose both seems like carelessness. Who was your father? He was evidently a man of some wealth. Was he born in what the Radical papers call the purple of commerce, or did he rise from the ranks of the aristocracy?

  JACK: I am afraid I really don’t know. The fact is, Lady Bracknell, I said I had lost my parents. It would be nearer the truth to say that my parents seemed to have lost me.... I don’t actually know who I am by birth. I was … well, I was found.

  LADY BRACKNELL: Found!

  JACK: The late Mr. Thomas Cardew, an old gentleman of a very charitable and kindly disposition, found me, and gave me the name of Worthing, because he happened to have a first-class ticket for Worthing in his pocket at the time. Worthing is a place in Sussex. It is a seaside resort.

  LADY BRACKNELL: Where did the charitable gentleman who had a first-class ticket for this seaside resort find you?

  JACK (gravely): In a hand-bag.

  LADY BRACKNELL: A hand-bag?

  JACK (very seriously): Yes, Lady Bracknell. I was in a handbag—a somewhat large, black leather hand-bag, with handles to it—an ordinary hand-bag in fact.

  LADY BRACKNELL: In what locality did this Mr. James, or Thomas, Cardew come across this ordinary hand-bag?

  JACK: In the cloak-room at Victoria Station. It was given to him in mistake for his own.

  LADY BRACKNELL: The cloak room at Victoria Station?

  JACK: Yes. The Brighton line.

  LADY BRACKNELL: The line is immaterial. Mr. Worthing, I confess I feel somewhat bewildered by what you have just told me. To be born, or at any rate bred, in a hand-bag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution. And I presume you know what that unfortunate movement led to? As for the particular locality in which the hand-bag was found, a cloak-room at a railway station might serve to conceal a social indiscretion—has probably indeed, been used for that purpose before now—but it could hardly be regarded as an assured basis for a recognised position in good society.

  JACK: May I ask you then what you would advise me to do? I need hardly say I would do anything in the world to ensure Gwendolen’s happiness.

  LADY BRACKNELL: I would strongly advise you, Mr. Worthing, to try and acquire some relations as soon as possible, and to make a definite effort to produce at any rate one parent, of either sex, before the season is quite over.

  JACK: Well, I don’t see how I could possibly manage to do that. I can produce the hand-bag at any moment. It is in my dressing-room at home. I really think that should satisfy you, Lady Bracknell.

  LADY BRACKNELL: Me, sir! What has it do to with me? You can hardly imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would dream of allowing our only daughter—a girl brought up with the utmost care—to marry into a cloak-room, and form an alliance with a parcel. (Jack starts indignantly.) Kindly open the door for me sir. You will of course understand that for the future there is to be no communication of any kind between you and Miss Fairfax.

  LADY BRACKNELL sweeps out in majestic indignation. Algernon, from the other room, strikes up the Wedding March.

  THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL (1898)

  1

  HE DID not wear his scarlet coat,

  For blood and wine are red,

  And blood and wine were on his hands

  When they found him with the dead,

  The poor dead woman whom he loved,

  And murdered in her bed.

  He walked amongst the Trial Men

  In a suit of shabby grey;

  A cricket cap was on his head,

  And his step seemed light and gay;

  But I never saw a man who looked

  So wistfully at the day.

  I never saw a man who looked

  With such a wistful eye

  Upon that little tent of blue

  Which prisoners call the sky,

  And at every drifting cloud that went

  With sails of silver by.

  I walked, with other souls in pain,

  Within another ring,

  And was wondering if the man had done

  A great or little thing,

  When a voice behind me whispered low,

  “That fellows’s got to swing.”

  Dear Christ! the very prison walls

  Suddenly seemed to reel,

  And the sky above my head became

  Like a casque of scorching steel;

  And, though I was a soul in pain,

  My pain I could not feel.

  I only knew what hunted thought

  Quickened his step, and why

  He looked upon the garish day

  With such a wistful eye;

  The man had killed the thing he loved,

  And so he had to die.

  Yet each man kills the thing he loves,

  By each let this be heard,

  Some do it with a bitter word.

  Some with a flattering look,

  The coward does it with a kiss,

  The brave man with a sword!

  Some kill their love when they are young,

  And some when they are old;

  Some strangle with the hands of Lust,

  Some with the hands of Gold:

  The kindest use a knife, because

  The dead so soon grow cold.

  Some love too little, some too long,

  Some sell, and others buy;

  Some do the deed with many tears,

  And some without a sigh:

  For each man kills the thing he loves,

  Yet each man does not die.

  He does not die a death of shame

  On a day of dark disgrace,

  Nor have a noose about his neck,

  Nor a cloth upon his face,

  Nor drop feet foremost through the floor

  Into an empty space.

  He does not sit with silent men

  Who watch him night and day;

  Who watch him when he tries to weep,

  And when he tries to pray;

  Who watch him lest himself should rob

  The prison of its prey.

  He does not wake at dawn to see

  Dread figures throng his room,

  The shivering Chaplain robed in white,

  The Sheriff stern with gloom,

  And the Governor all in shiny black,

  With the yellow face of Doom.

  He does not rise in piteous h
aste

  To put on convict-clothes,

  While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes

  Each new and nerve-twitched pose,

  Fingering a watch whose little ticks

  Are like horrible hammer-blows.

  He does not feel that sickening thirst

  That sands one’s throat, before

  The hangman with his gardener’s gloves

  Comes through the padded door,

  And binds one with three leathern thongs,

  That the throat may thirst no more.

  He does not bend his head to hear

  The Burial Office read,

  Nor, while the anguish of his soul

  Tells him he is not dead,

  Cross his own coffin, as he moves

  Into the hideous shed.

  He does not stare upon the air

  Through a little roof of glass:

  He does not pray with lips of clay

  For his agony to pass;

  Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek

  The kiss of Caiaphas.

  2

  Six weeks the guardsman walked the yard,

  In the suit of shabby grey:

  His cricket cap was on his head,

  And his step seemed light and gay,

  But I never saw a man who looked

  So wistfully at the day.

  I never saw a man who looked

  With such a wistful eye

  Upon that little tent of blue

  Which prisoners call the sky,

  And at every wandering cloud that trailed

  Its ravelled fleeces by.

  He did not wring his hands, as do

  Those witless men who dare

  To try to rear the changeling

  Hope In the cave of black Despair:

  He only looked upon the sun,

  And drank the morning air.

  He did not wring his hands nor weep,

  Nor did he peek or pine,

  But he drank the air as though it held

  Some healthful anodyne;

  With open mouth he drank the sun

  As though it had been wine!

  And I and all the souls in pain,

  Who tramped the other ring,

  Forgot if we ourselves had done

  A great or little thing,

  And watched with gaze of dull amaze

  The man who had to swing.

  For strange it was to see him pass

  With a step so light and gay,

  And strange it was to see him look

  So wistfully at the day,

  And strange it was to think that he

  Had such a debt to pay.

  For oak and elm have pleasant leaves

  That in the spring-time shoot;

  But grim to see is the gallows-tree,

  With its adder-bitten root,

  And, green or dry, a man must die

  Before it bear its fruit!

  The loftiest place is that seat of grace

  For which all worldlings try:

  But who would stand in hempen band

  Upon a scaffold high,

  And through a murderer’s collar take

  His last look at the sky?

  It is sweet to dance to violins

  When Love and Life are fair:

  To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes

  Is delicate and rare:

  But it is not sweet with nimble feet

  To dance upon the air!

  So with curious eyes and sick surmise

  We watched him day by day,

  And wondered if each one of us

  Would end the self-same way,

  For none can tell to what red Hell

  His sightless soul may stray.

  At last the dead man walked no more

  Amongst the Trial Men,

  And I knew that he was standing up

  In the black dock’s dreadful pen,

  And that never would I see his face

  For weal or woe again.

  Like two doomed ships that pass in storm

  We had crossed each other’s way:

  But we made no sign, we said no word,

  We had no word to say;

  For we did not meet in the holy night,

  But in the shameful day.

  A prison wall was round us both,

  Two outcast men we were:

  The world had thrust us from its heart,

  And God from out His care:

  And the iron gin that waits for Sin

  Had caught us in its snare.

  3

  In Debtor’s Yard the stones are hard,

  And the dripping wall is high,

  So it was there he took the air

  Beneath the leaden sky,

  And by each side a Warder walked,

  For fear the man might die.

  Or else he sat with those who watched

  His anguish night and day;

  Who watched him when he rose to weep,

  And when he crouched to pray;

  Who watched him lest himself should rob

  Their scaffold of its prey.

  The Governor was strong upon

  The Regulations Act:

  The Doctor said that Death was but

  A scientific fact:

  And twice a day the Chaplain called,

  And left a little tract.

  And twice a day he smoked his pipe,

  And drank his quart of beer:

  His soul was resolute, and held

  No hiding-place for fear;

  He often said that he was glad

  The hangman’s day was near.

  But why he said so strange a thing

  No warder dared to ask:

  For he to whom a watcher’s doom

  Is given as his task,

  Must set a lock upon his lips,

  And make his face a mask.

  Or else he might be moved, and try

  To comfort or console:

  And what should Human Pity do

  Pent up in Murderers’ Hole?

  What word of grace in such a place

  Could help a brother’s soul?

  With slouch and swing around the ring

  We trod the Fools’ Parade!

  We did not care: we knew we were

  The Devil’s Own Brigade:

  And shaven head and feet of lead

  Make a merry masquerade.

  We tore the tarry rope to shreds

  With blunt and bleeding nails;

  We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors,

  And cleaned the shining rails:

  And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank,

  And clattered with the pails.

  We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,

  We turned the dusty drill:

  We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,

  And sweated on the mill:

  But in the heart of every man

  Terror was lying still.

  So still it lay that every day

  Crawled like a weed-clogged wave:

  And we forgot the bitter lot

  That waits for fool and knave,

  Till once, as we tramped in from work,

  We passed an open grave.

  With yawning mouth the yellow hole

  Gaped for a living thing;

  The very mud cried out for blood

  To the thirsty asphalte ring:

  And we knew that ere one dawn grew fair

  Some prisoner had to swing.

  Right in we went, with soul intent

  On Death and Dread and Doom:

  The hangman, with his little bag,

  Went shuffling through the gloom:

  And I trembled as I groped my way

  Into my numbered tomb.

  That night the empty corridors

  Were full of forms of Fear,

  And up and down the iron town

  Stole feet we could not hear,

 
And through the bars that hide the stars

  White faces seemed to peer.

  He lay as one who lies and dreams

  In a pleasant meadow-land,

  The watchers watched him as he slept,

  And could not understand

  How one could sleep so sweet a sleep

  With a hangman close at hand.

  But there is no sleep when men must weep

  Who never yet have wept:

  So we—the fool, the fraud, the knave—

  That endless vigil kept,

  And through each brain on hands of pain

  Another’s terror crept.

  Alas! it is a fearful thing

  To feel another’s guilt!

  For, right within, the Sword of Sin

  Pierced to its poisoned hilt,

  And as molten lead were the tears we shed

  For the blood we had not split.

  The warders with their shoes of felt

  Crept by each padlocked door,

  And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe,

  Grey figures on the floor,

  And wondered why men knelt to pray

  Who never prayed before.

  All through the night we knelt and prayed,

  Mad mourners of a corse!

  The troubled plumes of midnight were