Part 8

The judge held that Shelley must be treated on the footing of an accomplice. He adhered, after a most careful consideration of the point, to his former view, that there was no corroboration of the nature required by the Act to warrant conviction, and therefore he felt justified in withdrawing that count from the jury.

Sir Edward Clarke made the same submission in the case of Wood.

The Solicitor General protested against any decision being given on these questions other than by a verdict of the jury. In his opinion the case of the man Wood could not be withheld from the jury. He submitted that there was every element of strong corroboration of Wood's story, having regard especially to the strange and suspicious circumstances under which Wilde and Wood became acquainted.

Sir Edward Clarke quoted from the summing-up of Mr. Justice Charles on the last trial relative to the directions which he gave the jury in the law respecting the corroboration of the evidence of an accomplice.

The judge was of opinion that the count affecting Wood ought to go to the jury, and he gave reasons why it ought not to be withheld.

Sir Edward Clarke after a private passage of arms with the Solicitor-General in respect to the need for corroborative evidence, then began a brief, but able appeal to the jury on behalf of his client, after which Wilde entered the witness-box. He formally denied the allegations against him. Sir Frank Lockwood, in cross-examination: "Now, Mr. Wilde, I should like you to tell me where Lord A. Douglas is now?"

WITNESS.--"He is in Paris, at the Hotel des Deux Mondes."

Sir FRANK.--"How long has he been there?"

WITNESS.--"Three weeks."

Sir FRANK.--"Have you been in communication with him?"

WITNESS.--"Certainly. These charges are founded on sand. Our friendship is founded on a rock. There has been no need to cancel our acquaintance."

Sir FRANK.--"Was Lord Alfred in London at the time of the trial of the Marquis of Queensberry?"

WITNESS.--"Yes, for about three weeks. He went abroad at my request before the first trial on these counts came on."

Sir FRANK.--"May we take it that the two letters from you to him were samples of the kind you wrote him?"

WITNESS.--"No. They were exceptional letters born of the two exceptional letters he sent to me. It is possible, I assure you, to express poetry in prose."

Sir FRANK.--"I will read one of these prose-poem letters. Do you think this line is decent, addressed to a young man? "Your rose-red lips which are made for the music of song and the madness of kissing."

WITNESS.--"It was like a sonnet of Shakespeare. It was a fantastic, extravagant way of writing to a young man. It does not seem to be a question of whether it is proper or not."

Sir FRANK.--"I used the word decent."

WITNESS.--"Decent, oh yes."

Sir FRANK.--"Do you think you understand the word, Sir?"

WITNESS.--"I do not see anything indecent in it, it was an attempt to address in beautiful phraseology a young man who had much culture and charm."

Sir FRANK.--"How many times have you been in the College Street 'snuggery' of the man Taylor?"

WITNESS.--"I do not think more than five or six times."

Sir FRANK.--"Who did you meet there?"

WITNESS.--"Sidney Mavor and Schwabe--I cannot remember any others. I have not been there since I met Wood there."

Sir FRANK.--"With regard to the Savoy Hotel Witnesses?"

WITNESS.--"Their evidence is quite untrue."

Sir FRANK.--"You deny that the bed-linen was marked in the way described?"

WITNESS.--"I do not examine bed-linen when I arise. I am not a housemaid."

Sir FRANK.--"Were the stains there, Sir?"

WITNESS.--"If they were there, they were not caused in the way the Prosecution most filthily suggests."

Sir Edward Clarke, after a slight "breeze" with the Solicitor-General as to the right to the last word to the jury, then addressed that devoted band of men for the third time, and asked for the acquittal of his client on all the counts.

Sir Frank Lockwood also addressed the jury and the Court then adjoined.

Next day the Solicitor-General, resuming his speech on behalf of the Crown dealt in details with the arguments of Sir E. Clarke in defence of Wilde, and commented in strong terms on observations that he made respecting the lofty situation of Wilde, with his literary accomplishments, for the purpose of influencing the judgment of the young. He said that the jury ought to discard absolutely any such appeal, to apply simply their common-sense to the testimony; and to form a conclusion on the evidence, which he submitted fully established the charges.

He was commenting on another branch of the case, when Sir E. Clarke interposed on the ground that the learned Solicitor-General was alluding to incidents connected with another trial. The Solicitor-General maintained that he was strictly within his rights, and the Judge held that the latter was entitled to make the comments objected to. "My learned friend does not appear to have gained a great deal by his superfluity of interruption", remarked the Solicitor-General suavely, and the Court laughed loudly. The Judge said that this sort of thing was most offensive to him. It was painful enough to have to try such a case and keep the scales of justice evenly balanced without the Court being pestered with meaningless laughter and applause. If such conduct were repeated he would have the Court cleared.

The Solicitor-General then criticised the answers given by Wilde to the charges, which explanations he submitted, were not worthy of belief. The jury could not fail to put the interpretation on the conduct of the accused that he was a guilty man and they ought to say so by their verdict.

The Judge, in summing-up, referred to the difficulties of the case in some of its features. He regretted, that if the conspiracy counts were unnecessary, or could not be established, they should have been placed in the indictment. The jury must not surrender their own independent judgment in dealing with the facts and ought to discard everything which was not relevant to the issue before them, or did not assist their judgment.

He did not desire to comment more than he could help about Lord Alfred Douglas or the Marquis of Queensberry, but the whole of this lamentable enquiry arose through the defendant's association with Lord A. Douglas.

He did not think that the action of the Marquis of Queensberry in leaving the card at the defendant's club, whatever motives he had, was that of a gentleman. The jury were entitled to consider that these alleged acts happened some years ago. They ought to be the best judges as to the testimony of the witnesses and whether it was worthy of belief.

The letters written by the accused to Lord A. Douglas were undoubtedly open to suspicion, and they had an important bearing on Wood's evidence. There was no corroboration of Wood as to the visit to Tite Street, and if his story had been true, he thought that some corroboration might have been obtained. Wood belonged to the vilest class of person which Society was pestered with, and the jury ought not to believe his story unless satisfactorily corroborated.

Their decision must turn on the character of the first introduction of Wilde to Wood. Did they believe that Wilde was actuated by charitable motives or by improper motives?

The foreman of the jury, interposing at this stage, asked whether a warrant had been issued for the arrest of Lord Alfred Douglas and if not, whether it was intended to issue one.

The Judge said he could not tell, but he thought not. It was a matter they could not now discuss. The granting of a warrant depended not upon the inferences to be drawn from the letters referred to in the case, but on the production of evidence of specific acts. There was a disadvantage in speculating on this question. They must deal with the evidence before them and with that alone. The foreman said, "If we are to deduce from the letters it applies to Lord Alfred Douglas equally as to the defendant."

THE JUDGE.--"In regard to the question as to the absence of Lord A. Douglas, I warn you not to be influenced by any consideration of the kind. All that they knew was that Lord A. Douglas went to Paris shortly after the last trial and had remained there since. He felt sure that if the circumstances justified it, the necessary proceedings could be taken."

His lordship dealt with each of the charges, and the evidence in support of them, and he then, after thanking the jury for the patient manner in which they had attended to the case, left the issues in their hands.

The jury retired to consider their verdict at half past three o'clock and at half past five they returned into Court.

_THE VERDICT_

Amidst breathless excitement, the Foreman, in answer to the usual formal questions, announced the verdict, "Guilty."

Sir EDWARD CLARKE.--"I apply, my lord, for a postponement of sentence."

The JUDGE.--"I must certainly refuse that request. I can only characterise the offences as the worst that have ever come under my notice. I have, however, no wish to add to the pain that must be felt by the defendants. I sentence both Wilde and Taylor to two years imprisonment with hard labour."

The sentence was met with some cries of "shame", "a scandalous verdict", "unjust," by certain persons in Court. The two prisoners appeared dazed and Wilde especially seemed ready to faint as he was hurried out of sight to the cells.

* * * * *

Thus perished by his own act a man who might have made a lasting mark in British Literature and secured for himself no mean place in the annals of his time.

He forfeited, in the pursuit of forbidden pleasures, if pleasures they can be called, all and everything that made life dear.

He entered upon his incarceration bankrupt in reputation, in friends, in pocket, and had not even left to him the poor shreds of his own self-esteem.

He went into gaol, knowing that if he emerged alive, the darkness would swallow him up and that his world--the spheres which had delighted to honour him--would know him no more.

He had covered his name with infamy and sank his own celebrity in a slough of slime and filth.

He would die to leave behind him what?--the name of a man who was absolutely governed by his own vices and to whom no act of immorality was too foul or horrible.

Oscar Wilde emerged from prison in every way a broken man. The wonderful descriptive force of the _Ballad of Reading Gaol_; the perfect, torturing self-analysis of _De Profundis_ speak eloquently of powers unimpaired; but they were the swan-songs of a once great mind. All his abilities had fled. He seemed unable to concentrate his mind upon anything. He took up certain subjects, played with them, and wearied of them in a day. French authors did not ostracise the erratic English genius when he hid himself amongst them and they honestly endeavoured to find him employment. But his faculties had been blunted by the horrors of prison life. His epigrams had lost their edge. His aphorisms were trite and aimless. He abandoned every subject he took up, in despair. His mind died before his body. He suffered from a complete mental atrophy. A nightingale cannot sing in a cage. A genius cannot flourish in a prison. He died in two years and is now--the merest memory! Let us remember this of him: if he sinned much, he suffered much.

Peace to his ashes!

HIS LAST BOOK AND HIS LAST YEARS IN PARIS _By_ "_A_" (LORD ALFRED DOUGLAS?)

The following three articles, two of them from the "St. James's Gazette" and one from the "Motorist", are marked with so much good sense and dissipate so many errors touching Oscar Wilde's last Years in Paris that the publisher deemed it a duty to reproduce them here as a permanent answer to the wild legends circulated about the subject of this book.

OSCAR WILDE

His last Book and his last Years

_The publication of Oscar Wilde's last book, "De Profundis," has revived interest in the closing scenes of his life, and we to-day print the first of two articles dealing with his last years in Paris from a source which puts their authenticity beyond question._

_The one question which inevitably suggested itself to the reader of "De Profundis," was, "What was the effect of his prison reflections on his subsequent life?" The book is full not only of frank admissions of the error of his ways, but of projects for his future activity. "I hope," he wrote, in reply to some criticisms on the relations of art and morals, "to live long enough to produce work of such a character that I shall be able at the end of my days to say, "Yes, that is just where the artistic life leads a man!" He mentions in particular two subjects on which he proposed to write, "Christ as the Precursor of the Romantic Movement in Life" and "The Artistic Life Considered in its Relation to Conduct." These resolutions were never carried out, for reasons some of which the writer of the following article indicates._

_Oscar Wilde was released from prison in May, 1897. He records in his letters the joy of the thought that at that time "both the lilac and the laburnum will be blooming in the gardens." The closing sentences of the book may be recalled: "Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole."_

_He died in November, 1900, three years and a half after his release from Reading Gaol._

* * * * *

Monsieur Joseph Renaud, whose translation of Oscar Wilde's "Intentions" has just appeared in Paris, has given a good example of how history is made in his preface to that work. He recounts an obviously imaginary meeting between himself and Oscar Wilde in a bar on the Boulevard des Italiens. He concludes the episode, such as it is, with these words: "Nothing remained of him but his musical voice and his large blue childlike eyes." Oscar Wilde's eyes were curious--long, narrow, and green. Anything less childlike it would be hard to imagine. To the physiognomist they were his most remarkable feature, and redeemed his face from the heaviness that in other respects characterised it. So much for M. Joseph Renaud's powers of observation.

The complacent unanimity with which the chroniclers of Oscar Wilde's last years in Paris have accepted and spread the "legend" of his life in that city is remarkable, and would be exasperating considering its utter falsity to anyone who was not aware of their incompetence to deal with the subject. Scarcely one of his self-constituted biographers had more than the very slightest acquaintance with him, and their records and impressions of him are chiefly made up of stale gossip and secondhand anecdotes. The stories of his supposed privations, his frequent inability to obtain a square meal, his lonely and tragic death in a sordid lodging, and his cheap funeral are all grotesquely false.

True, Oscar Wilde, who for several years before his conviction had been making at least £5,000 a year, found it very hard to live on his rather precarious income after he came out of prison; he was often very "hard up," and often did not know where to turn for a coin, but I will undertake to prove to anyone whom it may concern that from the day he left prison till the day of his death his income averaged at least £400 a year. He had, moreover, far too many devoted friends in Paris ever to be in need of a meal provided he would take the trouble to walk a few hundred yards or take a cab to one of half a dozen houses. His death certainly was tragic--deaths are apt to be tragic--but he was surrounded by friends when he died, and his funeral was not cheap; I happen to have paid for it in conjunction with another friend of his, so I ought to know.

He did not become a Roman Catholic before he died. He was, at the instance of a great friend of his, himself a devout Catholic, "received into the Church" a few hours before he died; but he had then been unconscious for many hours, and he died without ever having any idea of the liberty that had been taken with his unconscious body. Whether he would have approved or not of the step taken by his friend is a matter on which I should not like to express a too positive opinion, but it is certain that it would not do him any harm, and, apart from all questions of religion and sentiment, it facilitated the arrangements which had to be made for his interment in a Catholic country, in view of the fact that no member of his family took any steps to claim his body or arrange for his funeral.

Having disposed of certain false impressions in regard to various facts of his life and death in Paris, I may turn to what are less easily controlled and examined theories as to that life. Without wishing to be paradoxical, or harshly destructive of the carefully cherished sentiment of poetic justice so dear to the British mind (and the French mind, too, for that matter), I give it as my firm opinion that Oscar Wilde was, on the whole, fairly happy during the last years of his life. He had an extraordinarily buoyant and happy temperament, a splendid sense of humour, and an unrivalled faculty for enjoyment of the present. Of course, he had his bad moments, moments of depression and sense of loss and defeat, but they were not of long duration. It was part of his pose to luxuriate a little in the details of his tragic circumstances. He harrowed the feelings of many of those whom he came across; words of woe poured from his lips; he painted an image of himself, destitute, abandoned, starving even (I have heard him use the word after a very good dinner at Paillard's); as he proceeded he was caught by the pathos of his own words, his beautiful voice trembled with emotion, his eyes swam with tears; and then, suddenly, by a swift, indescribably brilliant, whimsical touch, a swallow-wing flash on the waters of eloquence, the tone changed and rippled with laughter, bringing with it his audience, relieved, delighted, and bubbling into uncontrollable merriment.

He never lost his marvellous gift of talking; after he came out of prison he talked better than before. Everyone who knew him really before and after his imprisonment is agreed about that. His conversation was richer, more human, and generally on a higher intellectual level. In French he talked as well as in English; to my own English ear his French used to seem rather laboured and his accent too marked, but I am assured by Frenchmen who heard him talk that such was not the effect produced on them.

He explained to me his inability to write, by saying that when he sat down to write he always inevitably began to think of his past life, and that this made him miserable and upset his spirits. As long as he talked and sat in cafés and "watched life," as his phrase was, he was happy, and he had the luck to be a good sleeper, so that only the silence and self-communing necessary to literary work brought him visions of his terrible sufferings in the past and made his old wounds bleed again. My own theory as to his literary sterility at this period is that he was essentially an interpreter of life, and that his existence in Paris was too narrow and too limited to stir him to creation. At his best he reflected life in a magic mirror, but the little corner of life he saw in Paris was not worth reflecting. If he could have been provided with a brilliant "entourage" of sympathetic listeners as of old and taken through a gay season in London, he would have begun to write again. Curiously enough, society was the breath of life to him, and what he felt more than anything else in his "St. Helena" in Paris, as he often told me, was the absence of the smart and pretty women who in the old days sat at his feet!

A.

OSCAR WILDE'S

LAST YEARS IN PARIS.--II

The French possess the faculty, very rare in England, of differentiating between a man and his work. They are utterly incapable of judging literary work by the moral character of its author. I have never yet met a Frenchman who was able to comprehend the attitude of the English public towards Oscar Wilde after his release from prison. They were completely mystified by it. An eminent French man-of-letters said to me one day: "You have a man of genius, he commits crimes, you put him in prison, you destroy his whole life, you take away his fortune, you ruin his health, you kill his mother, his wife, and his brother (_sic_), you refuse to speak to him, you exile him from your country. That is very severe. In France we should never so treat a man of genius, but _enfin ça peut se comprendre_. But not content with that, you taboo his books and his plays, which before you enjoyed and admired, and _pour comble de tout_ you are very angry if he goes into a restaurant and orders himself some dinner. _Il faut pourtant qu'il mange ce pauvre homme!_" If I had been representing the British public in an official capacity I should have probably given expression to its views and furnished a sufficient repartee to my voluble French friend by replying: "_Je n'en vois pas la nécessité_."

Fortunately for Oscar Wilde, the French took another view of the attitude to adopt towards a man who has offended against society, and who has been punished for it. Never by a word or a hint did they show that they remembered that offence, which, in their view, had been atoned for and wiped out. Oscar Wilde remained for them always _un grand homme, un maître_, a distinguished man, to be treated with deference and respect and, because he had suffered much, with sympathy. It says a great deal for the innate courtesy and chivalry of the French character that a man in Oscar Wilde's position, as well known by sight, as he once remarked to me, as the Eiffel Tower, should have been able to go freely about in theatres, restaurants, and cafés without encountering any kind of hostility or even impertinent curiosity.

It was this benevolent attitude of Paris towards him that enabled him to live and, in a fashion, to enjoy life. His audience was sadly reduced and precarious, and except on some few occasions it was of inferior intellectual calibre; but still he had an audience, and an audience to him was everything. Nor was he altogether deprived of the society of men of his own class and value. Many of the most brilliant young writers in France were proud to sit at his feet and enjoy his brilliant conversation, chief among whom I may mention that accomplished critic and essayist, Monsieur Ernest Lajeunesse, who is the author of what is perhaps the best posthumous notice of him that has been published in France in that excellent magazine, the "Revue blanche"; among older men who kept up their friendship with him, Octave Mirbeau, Moréas, Paul Fort, Henri Bauer, and Jean Lorrain may be mentioned.

In contrast to this attitude taken up towards him by so many distinguished and eminent men, I cannot refrain from recalling the attitude adopted by the general run of English-speaking residents in Paris. For the credit of my country I am glad to be able to put them down mostly as Americans, or at any rate so Americanised by the constant absorption of "American drinks" as to be indistinguishable from the genuine article. These gentlemen "guessed they didn't want Oscar Wilde to be sitting around" in the bars where they were in the habit of shedding the light of their presence, and from one of these establishments Oscar Wilde was requested by the proprietor to withdraw at the instance of one of our "American cousins" who is now serving a term of two years penal servitude for holding up and robbing a bank!