BOOKS OF THE DAY
Oscar Wilde in Prison
De Profundis. Being the first complete and accurate version of "Epistola: in Carcere et Vinculis," the last prose work in English of Oscar Wilde. Introduction by Vyvyan Holland. kMethuen. 10s. 6d.)
THE tragedy of Oscar Wilde has served as the theme for such a multitude of books that a great many people have become heartily sick of the subject. Yet for various reasons it retains its hold on a wide public. To begin with, so long as Wilde's plays are performed regu- larly in the theatre and cinema and on the wireless (as is the present case), they will always stimulate a perfectly natural curiosity about their author ; he was, after all, a man of genius whose work is still giving a lot of pleasure. Add to these genuine enquirers a number of equally sincere people who are interested in the psychological rela- tions of genius and morality, and another less attractive group who simply enjoy toying with the details of an unpleasant scandal ; and the total mounts up to what American statisticians would call an unusually large " readership."
This week there is made publicly available for the first time in English a document of considerable importance in the Wilde story— namely, the full text of the letter that Wilde wrote to Lord Alfred Douglas in Reading prison, of which extracts were published by his literary executor Robert Ross under the title De Profundis in 19o5. In the new book the letter runs to 136 pages, and not until we reach the fifty-second of these pages do we find the opening words of De Profundis, " Suffering is one very long moment." There are many more omissions in the last • part of the letter ; in fact, De Profundis, as it was published in 1905, amounted to less than half the whole text. The omitted portions constitute a scathing indict- ment of the character and conduct of Lord Alfred Douglas.
On his arrival at Dieppe after his release from prison in 1897, Wilde handed the manuscript of the letter to Robert Ross. It is written on tv. onty folio sheets of blue prison paper, beginning " Dear Bosic " and ending "Your affectionate friend, Oscar Wilde." Ross dictated the text to a typist who made an original and a carbon copy. Then, according to Mr. Vyvyan Holland's introduction to the present volume:— "Instead of sending the manuscript itself to Alfred Douglas, . Robert Ross kept it in his own possession and sent him the type- written copy. It was as well that he did so ; but then he knew Douglas's character. For, after reading the first few pages, he found it was more than his vanity could stand and he put it down. He subsequently destroyed it, thinking, in one of the fits of naiveté which sometimes assailed him, that it was the only copy in existence and that his act would put an end to an awkward situation."
Mr. Holland does not mention that Alfred Douglas more than once categorically denied this, maintaining that when De Profundis was published in 1905 he had no idea that it formed part of a letter to him, and declaring that he knew nothing of the 'existence of the manu- script until 1912.
In 19o9 Ross sealed the manuscript and presented it to the British Museum, with the proviso that it should remain sealed for sixty years ; but in 1912 Alfred Douglas was certainly provided with a copy of it, for it was relied upon by the defence in a libel action which he brought against Arthur Ransome and had to be unsealed by the librarian under subpoena. Soon afterwards Ross had sixteen copies privately printed in America to secure copyright there. Trans- lations, in whole or in part, have appeared in Germany, France and Spain. The suppressed portions of the letter have therefore been accessible, to those who could get hold of them, for some time. Lord Alfred Douglas's death in 1945 has made the present publication possible, and Mr. Holland tells us that the text has been taken from the carbon of the typewritten copy of 1897 which came into his possession on the death of Ross in 1918.
The appearance of the full text will not add to the reputation of De Profundis as a work of literature. The well-known version of 1905 is now seen CO have been carefully selected and arranged so as to set off Wilde's letter in the best possible light. Wilde's moving philosophical passages lose in dignity when they are read beside the bitter recriminations and detailed accusations which he poured out against his friend. Perhaps the unkindest cut is Wilde's allegation that Alfred Douglas had no understanding of his needs as a creative artist. " I am not speaking in phrases of rhetorical exaggeration but in terms of absolute truth to actual fact," writes Wilde, " when I remind you that during the whole time we were together I never wrote one single line." Douglas has answered this accusation as follows (Autobiography, 1929, pp. 40-41):— The fact is that Wilde planned and wrote the whole of A Woman of No Importance while we were together at Lady Mount Temple's house, at Babbacombe, Torquay . . . that he wrote the whole of The Importance of Being Earnest while I was with him at Worthing, and An Ideal Husband partly at Goring and partly in London, in rooms he took in St. James's Place, where I saw him every day." Alfred Douglas went on to say: " It is the same right through the De Profundis letter. Lie, lie, lie." We know from Douglas's later career that he was his own worst enemy, but it is clear that he was unjustly treated in this unbalanced letter, that Wilde exaggerated quarrels in which both men had been at fault, and that Wilde's violent reaction against his friend—influenced perhaps by Ross's jealousy of Douglas—was an abnormal one caused by his own agony of mind. The best answer to the whole tirade, from Douglas's point of view, is the opening of a letter which Wilde wrote to him from Dieppe only a few months after his release: " My own Darling Boy, I got your telegram half an hour ago—and just send you a line to say that I feel that my only hope of again doing beautiful work in Art is being with you." They went to stay at Posilipo where Wilde wrote additional verses for "The Ballad of Reading Gaol.
The story of Wilde has, from a historical point of view, been turned into a confusing tangle by the spate of writing it has provoked from interested parties. Though there has been much grinding of individual axes, we are still waiting for a detached and unbiased biographer who will cut through the accumulation. Mr. Hesketh Pearson has done his best in a popular sense ; but the standard biography must be documented (and perhaps a part of the difficulty lies here). As for De Profundis, it has truth in it, but not the whole truth ; it is like a distorting mirror in which the faults of Douglas
so as w (Wilde's junior by sixteen years) arc extravagantly swollen offset the responsibility of the older man for the disaster which
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