The tap-root of the letter is a colossal vanity; the bitterness of it, wounded egotism; the falseness of it, a self-righteous pose of ineffable superiority as of a superman.  Oscar denies to Alfred Douglas imagination, scholarship, or even a knowledge of poetry:  he tells him in so many words:—­he is without brain or heart.  Then why did he allow himself to be hag-ridden to his ruin by such a creature?

Yet how human the letter is, how pathetic!

OSCAR WILDE’S KINDNESS OF HEART

Here is a note which Oscar Wilde wrote to Warder Martin towards the end of his imprisonment in Reading Gaol.  Warder Martin, it will be remembered, was dismissed from his post for having given some sweet biscuits, bought with his own money, to some hungry little children confined in the prison.

Wilde happened to see the children and immediately wrote this note on a scrap of paper and slipped it under his door so that it should catch Warder Martin’s eye as he patrolled the corridor.

     Please find out for me the name of A.2.11.  Also, the names of
     the children who are in for the rabbits, and the amount of the
     fine.

     Can I pay this and get them out?  If so I will get them out
     tomorrow.  Please, dear friend, do this for me.  I must get them
     out.

Think what a thing for me it would be to be able to help three little children.  I would be delighted beyond words:  if I can do this by paying the fine tell the children that they are to be released tomorrow by a friend, and ask them to be happy and not to tell anyone.

Here is a second note which shows Oscar’s peculiar sensitiveness; what is ugly and terrible cannot, he thinks, furnish even the subject of art; he shrinks from whatever gives pain.

     I hope to write about prison-life and to try and change it for
     others, but it is too terrible and ugly to make a work of art
     of.  I have suffered too much in it to write plays about it.

A third note simply thanks Warder Martin for all his kindness.  It ends with the words: 

     ...  Everyone tells me I am looking better and happier.

     This is because I have a good friend who gives me The
     Chronicle and PROMISES me ginger biscuits.  O.W.

MY COLDNESS TOWARDS OSCAR IN 1897

(See page 408)

When I talked with Oscar in Reading Gaol, he told me that the only reason he didn’t write was that no one would accept his work.  I assured him that I would publish it in The Saturday Review and would pay for it not only at the rate I paid Bernard Shaw but also if it increased the sale of the journal I’d try to compute its value to the paper and give him that besides.  He told me that was too liberal; he would be quite content with what I paid Shaw:  he feared that no one else in England would ever publish his work again.