Oscar

by Sturgis, Matthew;

  While all this was being laid out in the courtroom, Wilde waited with his two warders in an adjacent office. Arthur Clifton, in his capacity as one of the trustees of the marriage settlement, was – unexpectedly – allowed to see him there. Clifton was ‘very much shocked’ at his friend’s appearance, and at his distressed state. ‘[He] cried a good deal,’ Clifton reported; ‘he seemed quite broken-hearted and kept on describing his punishment as savage.’ Clifton tried to cheer him up with news of friends and talk of books: Wilde had been reading his volumes of Pater and Newman at the permitted rate of one a week. But it was a hard task. Wilde remained ‘terribly despondent and said several times that he did not think he would be able to last the punishment out’. When Clifton tried to explain Hargrove’s proposed scheme, Wilde expressed no particular opinion but suggested that ‘he ought to be left something out of the settlement if possible’. Clifton, as a qualified lawyer, should have explained that this was not really possible – that the life interest, as an asset, needed to be sold in full. Instead he casually embraced the idea, telling Wilde he thought it ‘a very good plan… that he should retain about a third of his life interest’. He mentioned this to Constance shortly afterwards, and she too, with her ignorance of the law, thought that it sounded very reasonable. It was, though, an idea that would lead to endless complications and strife.30

  The small scraps of comfort offered by these interviews with Clifton, Sherard and Constance were not enough to raise Wilde’s spirits, and his physical and mental condition remained precarious. The prison chaplain (a passionate advocate of penal reform) was convinced that – with his ‘morbid disposition’ – Wilde had succumbed to ‘perverse sexual practices’ and was masturbating compulsively. ‘This is a common occurrence among prisoners of his class,’ Rev. Morrison wrote to Haldane, ‘and is of course favoured by constant cellular isolation. The odour of [Wilde’s] cell is now so bad that the officer in care of him has to use carbolic acid in it every day.’ The charge was not insignificant: many Victorians authorities regarded masturbation as a symptom, if not the cause, of insanity. There were regular instances of prisoners being certified on the grounds of their indulgence in ‘self-abuse’. Wilde, happily, avoided this fate.31

  An inquiry was launched by Ruggles-Brise; it concluded there was no evidence to support the chaplain’s rather overheated suspicions. The medical inspector to prisons, Dr R. M. Gover, dismissed Morrison’s ‘extraordinary allegation’ as ‘a vile and malignant misrepresentation’. And even Ruggles-Brise (writing to the Home Office) regretted that the chaplain was probably ‘a dangerous man who is trying to make Wilde a peg whereon to hang his theories of the brutality of our prison system’. The curious smell in Wilde’s cell was put down to his use of ‘Jeyes’ purifying fluid’ in cleaning his utensils.32

  Dr Gover (veering in the opposite direction from the chaplain) reported that Wilde was, in fact, perfectly fine – with ‘an excellent appetite’ and ‘in good mental and bodily health’. He did concede that – to lessen the prisoner’s apparent sense of isolation – it might be advisable to start him working ‘in association’, perhaps at rebinding the prison hymn books, an idea that had been mooted by Haldane. But, to achieve this, some ‘special arrangement’ would be necessary, to avoid placing the prisoner ‘in association with the London thieves and other low criminals who form the bulk of the population of Wandsworth prison’. This concern to prevent Wilde consorting with ‘London thieves’ seems to have prompted plans to ‘advise the Secretary of State to transfer Wilde to a country prison’.33

  In the midst of these deliberations – and despite Dr Gover’s optimistic assessment – Wilde’s physical health broke down completely. The crisis came towards the middle of October. Weak from a bout of ‘dysentery’, he collapsed on the floor of the prison chapel during the Sunday service and was taken to the prison infirmary. As he later told Frank Harris, he thought that he had died and been reborn ‘in heaven’. ‘My hand rested on a clean white sheet… it was so smooth and cool and clean.’ The nurse gave him some thin white bread and butter – it was ‘so delicious’ he burst into tears.34 His sense of rebirth was not, however, immediately apparent to either Sherard or Willie’s wife, Lily, both of whom received permission to visit him in the infirmary. They found the patient pitifully weak and still ‘very unhappy’. Sherard pronounced him ‘a perfect wreck’.35

  Hoping to cheer the invalid, Sherard suggested that something might be done towards improving his living arrangements by agitation in the Daily Chronicle, a paper committed to prison reform. This remark, however, led to Sherard being reported by the warder for ‘subversion’ (he had already disclosed details of Wilde’s daily routine to the Chronicle after his previous visits). The governor of Wandsworth, like his colleague at Pentonville, was beginning to find Wilde a rather too taxing charge with his overactive friends and supporters. He hastened to put forward the recommendation that Wilde be removed ‘to a country Prison where he would be less accessible to such influences’.36

  The idea found general support, and Haldane thought it necessary for Wilde’s mental well-being. While he accepted that Rev. Morrison might have rather overstepped the mark with his allegations, he had been unconvinced by Dr Gover’s rosy report. And his reservations had persuaded the Home Office to sanction a fuller assessment of Wilde’s mental state.37 Whatever the continuing popular animus against Wilde, there was a clear recognition in official circles that it would be a bad thing (even a ‘loss to English literature’) should the prison system totally destroy him. ‘If [Wilde] were to go off his head under cellular discipline,’ Morrison had written, ‘it is almost certain to arouse a good deal of indignation in the public mind and the authorities will no doubt be blamed for allowing such a thing to happen.’38

  Two doctors, experts in criminal lunacy (one the governor of Broadmoor), examined Wilde in the Wandsworth infirmary on 22 October. They were heartened to discover him ‘smiling and conversing’ in a ‘cheerful way’ with the other ward inmates. And this positive impression (as to his mental state) was largely confirmed by their subsequent interview:

  He entered freely in to the circumstances of his past history, more especially as they had relation to his present position which he appeared to feel acutely, and upon which he dilated with great fervour and some amount of emotional depression, occasionally accompanied by tears. This display of feeling was no doubt referable, as he himself gave us to understand, to remorseful and bitter thoughts of the blasting of his future by the abominable follies of the past, and we do not regard this as being either unnatural or as indicating moral derangement.39

  Aware of the evolving plans for Wilde’s transfer, they considered that ‘with careful treatment and, shortly removal to a Prison in the country, with different work and a greater range of reading there is nothing to indicate that prison will prejudicially affect him’. They also recognized that it would be beneficial if he were allowed more ‘association with other prisoners’ – although their concerns about bad influences ran in the opposite direction. Given Wilde’s ‘proclivities’ and ‘avowed love for the society of males’, they stipulated that such interaction should only be allowed ‘under the continuous supervision of a warden’.40 In the wake of Doctors Nicolson and Bryan’s report, it was decided that Wilde should be transferred to Reading Prison in Berkshire as soon as possible.41

  There would be a short delay, as Wilde needed to remain in London until the bankruptcy court proceedings were concluded. The optimism that followed from the first court hearing in September had not been sustained. Percy Douglas – who had promised £500 to Adey’s fund – had failed to come through, claiming, improbably, that rather than giving money that would go to pay his hated father’s legal costs, he would reserve the sum to give to Wilde after he came out of prison. On the eve of the second hearing the fund being assembled by Adey was still some £400 short.42 Hargrove’s plan had to be abandoned, and the bankruptcy had to proceed.

  Wilde was brought from the i
nfirmary to the bankruptcy court, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, on the morning of 12 November. He looked ‘very unwell and broken down’ swathed in his ‘long blue overcoat’. He wore the same silk hat that he had worn to the Old Bailey, but it had lost its sheen. Much to Wilde’s distress a crowd of ‘loafers and sightseers’ had gathered, hoping to glimpse him. But, as he was escorted by two uniformed warders down the long corridor towards the courtroom, he was heartened by the sight of Robbie Ross (now back in England), standing to one side. As Wilde passed, Ross ‘gravely’ raised his hat in greeting. Wilde regarded it as the act of a saint. He never forgot it. The examination itself was brief (barely half an hour) and Wilde, leaning against the witness box for support, confined himself to answering the questions ‘yes’ or ‘no’.43

  After the examination both Clifton and Ross were allowed to see him for half an hour each in a private room. Ross, who had not seen Wilde since his arrest, was shocked. ‘Indeed I really should not have known him at all,’ he reported to Oscar Browning. ‘This I know is an ordinary figure of speech, but it exactly described what I experienced. His clothes hung about him in loose folds and his hands are like those of a skeleton. The colour of his face is completely changed, but this cannot be altogether attributed to his slight beard. The latter only hides the appalling sunken cheeks.’ Mentally, Ross considered Wilde’s condition ‘better than I had dared hope’, but acknowledged that his mind was ‘considerably impaired’. Wilde was still in the infirmary, but told Ross he wanted to leave ‘as he hoped to die very soon. Indeed he only spoke calmly about death, every other subject caused him to break down.’44

  The following week Wilde was taken back to Lincoln’s Inn Fields to sign the transcript of his statement. The formalities were complete. The next day, 20 November, he was transferred to Reading. The move was supposed to mark an improvement in his circumstances, but it began in traumatic fashion. He was transported – handcuffed and in his prison clothes – not in a prison van, but by rail, and in the middle of the day. Brought to Clapham Junction station, he was forced to stand, between his warders, for half an hour (from two o’clock to half past) on the central platform, attracting the attention and the contempt of the public. A laughing crowd gathered. He was recognized, and one man spat at him. ‘For a year after that was done to me,’ Wilde wrote later, ‘I wept every day at the same hour and for the same space of time.’45

  * Public interest in Wilde’s imprisonment was great during the first weeks. Among many entirely spurious, but imaginative, reports was one that described how he was put directly on to the treadmill upon his arrival, but after four days of such punishing labour (roughly equivalent to climbing Ben Nevis twice over each day), he collapsed and had to be taken to the infirmary (‘Oscar Wilde in Prison’, Western Mail, 7 June 1895). Other equally fanciful reports declared that Wilde was ‘as full of quaint and epigrammatic expressions as of old’ and, in telling one visitor of his cell, had remarked, ‘I always thought I was born to be a monk. Now, since my confinement here, I am convinced of it’ (Evening News (Sydney, NSW) Friday 15 November 1895).

  † Several weeks after Wilde had left Pentonville, Manning received an extraordinary coded communication from ‘a few American friends’ asking whether, for £100,000, he might co-operate in a plot to have Wilde sprung from prison: ‘All you have to do is pay some people in the prison to look the other way.’ They asked him to take this risk out of respect for Wilde’s ‘respectable father and mother and the position [he] has lost by his heinous unnatural crimes, which we have no wish to excuse’. Their motive was to prevent him becoming ‘tainted with the abominations of prison life’. They looked forward to receiving his answer via the personal columns of the New York Herald.

  ‡ The ‘life interest’ entitled Wilde to the income from Constance’s marriage settlement (roughly £800 a year) for the duration of his own life, should she predecease him. After his death, it would revert to Constance’s heirs.

  § Douglas, as part of his energetic but ill-conceived campaign of protest, had also written to Henry Labouchère (still editor of Truth) and W. T. Stead (now editor of the Review of Reviews) extolling the virtues of homosexual love. He had also dispatched a letter to Queen Victoria [25 June 1895] asking her to exercise her power of pardon on Wilde’s behalf. He received no reply from the Queen. Labouchère printed an extract from his letter, with the comment that ‘it is to be regretted that he is not afforded an opportunity to meditate upon [his opinions] in the seclusion of Pentonville’.

  2

  The System

  ‘To those who are in prison, tears are a part of every day’s experience.’

  oscar wilde

  Reading Gaol had been selected specially by Ruggles-Brise. The prison governor, Lieutenant-Colonel H. B. Isaacson (an ex-marine) was conscious of the honour, and informed his staff that ‘a certain prisoner’ was due to be transferred, ‘and you should be proud to think the Prison Commissioners have chosen Reading gaol as the most suitable for this man to serve the remainder of his sentence in’. No name was mentioned but Wilde’s identity was divined at once upon his arrival. His distress at having his hair cut seemed characteristic to the warder charged with the task. ‘“Must it be cut,” he cried piteously to me. “You don’t know what it means to me,” and the tears rolled down his cheeks.’ For Wilde, part of the ‘horror of prison life’ was ‘the contrast between the grotesqueness of one’s aspect, and the tragedy of one’s soul’.1

  Wilde served out the remaining eighteen months of his sentence at Reading. Although the gaol was very much smaller than Pentonville and Wandsworth (with a shifting population of about 150 inmates) it was built to the same standard Victorian design, with a central core and four radiating wings. Wilde – as prisoner C.3.3. – was assigned cell 3 on the third landing of Gallery C. He was an exceptional figure in this new world: the only educated middle-class convict among dozens of young labourers and squaddies, most of them serving short sentences for drunkenness or petty theft.2

  Some aspects of his existence improved at once. The air was cleaner. He was put on to a better diet. He was given coal sacks to sew in his cell, rather than oakum to pick. But these were tiny ameliorations. The regime was quite as strict as at Wandsworth. And Wilde frequently fell foul of its petty regulations. ‘The worst of it is I am perpetually being punished for nothing,’ he lamented. Lieutenant-Colonel Isaacson, he claimed, ‘loves to punish’. Certainly the governor, with his military background, was a stickler for discipline. Wilde called him a ‘mulberry faced dictator’ – a man with ‘the eyes of a ferret, the body of an ape, and the soul of a rat’; but he also recognized that the real reason for Isaacson’s harshness was that ‘he was entirely lacking in imagination’. It became Isaacson’s boast that he was ‘knocking the nonsense out of Wilde’. Of all the punishments he imposed, the one Wilde dreaded most was being denied access to his books (his personal library followed him from Wandsworth); they alone made life endurable. Without them the mind was left to ‘grind itself away between the upper and nether millstones of regret and remorse without respite’.3

  Wilde found no relief from the prison doctor. As a class he considered such officials as ‘brutes and excessively cruel’. But Dr Oliver Maurice seems to have exceeded the norm. Described by Ross as resembling – with his ‘greasy white beard’ – a ‘bullying director of a sham city company’, he was consistently ‘unkind’ and uncaring to Wilde.4

  Nevertheless, on a visit to Reading at the end of November, More Adey was pleased to detect some small improvement in Wilde’s mental condition, after the horrors of Wandsworth. ‘I think that he is conscious that he must make efforts to prevent his mind suffering more,’ Adey reported, ‘because he was so very anxious to get some rather drudging mental work to do, in order to occupy and, in a sort of way, discipline his mind.’ By the new year Wilde was set to rebinding the prison hymn books, as well as working in the prison garden.5

  Adey had been busying himself on Wilde’s behalf but with little effect
. He had tried to raise a petition to the home secretary seeking Wilde’s early release, but – beyond the two self-designated ‘cranks’, Bernard Shaw and Stewart Headlam – he could find few people to sign it. York Powell, Regius Professor of History at Oxford, was an honourable exception. The literary and artistic establishments turned their backs.* Adey was, though, able to put together a further collection of books for Wilde, and – through the intervention of Haldane and Ruggles-Brise – have them sent directly to the ill-stocked prison library at Reading. They included Dante and selections from the Greek and Latin poets.6

  In drafting his ill-fated petition Adey had listed, among the several indications of Wilde’s pitifully diminished mental state, the fact that having, in the past, ‘always showed the tenderest solicitude for his mother, charging himself with the larger part of her maintenance, and commending her specially to his friends during the most harassing days of his two trials, he now seems quite indifferent to her’. In fact she came to his mind often. On the night of 3 February she appeared to him in a vision, dressed in her outdoor clothes. When he asked her to take off her hat and cloak and sit down, she shook her head sadly, and vanished. It seemed like an intimation of death.7

  Some two weeks later he was informed that he had a special visitor. It was Constance. Although weak with illness (following an operation just before Christmas) she had travelled from Italy, where she was living, to bring him the news that his mother had indeed died on 3 February. Constance had been unable to bear the thought ‘that such a terrible thing’ might otherwise be told to him ‘roughly’. The news – even if it confirmed his premonition – still stunned him. ‘Her death was so terrible to me,’ he wrote afterwards, ‘that I, once a lord of language, have no words in which to express my anguish and my shame.’ She – along with Sir William – had bequeathed him ‘a name made noble and honoured, not merely in Literature, Art, Archaeology, and Science, but in the public history of our country in its evolution as a nation’. And he had ‘disgraced that name eternally… made it a low byword among low people… dragged it through the mire’.8