Could Oscar Wilde have won and made for himself a new and greater life?  The majority of men are content to think that such a victory was impossible to him.  Everyone knows that he lost; but I at least believe that he might have won.  His wife was on the point of yielding, I have since been told; on the point of complete reconciliation when she heard that he had gone to Naples and returned to his old habit of living; a few days made all the difference.

It was at the instigation of Lord Alfred Douglas that Oscar began the insane action against Lord Queensberry, in which he put to hazard his success, his position, his good name and liberty, and lost them all.  Two years later at the same tempting, he committed soul-suicide.

He was not only better in health than he had ever been; but he was talking and writing better than ever before and full of literary projects which would certainly have given him money and position and a measure of happiness besides increasing his reputation.  From the moment he went to Naples he was lost, and he knew it himself; he never afterwards wrote anything:  as he used to say, he could never afterwards face his own soul.

He could never have won up again, the world says, and shrugs careless shoulders.  It is a cheap, unworthy conclusion.  Some of us still persist in believing that Oscar Wilde might easily have won and never again been caught in that dreadful wind which whips the victims of sensual desire about unceasingly, driving them hither and thither without rest in that awful place where:  “Nulla speranza gli conforta mai.” (No hope ever comforts!)

FOOTNOTES: 

[7] Reproduced in the Appendix.

[8] Fac-simile copies of some of the notes Oscar wrote to Warder Martin about these children are reproduced in the Appendix.  The notes were written on scraps of paper and pushed under his cell-door; they are among the most convincing evidences of Oscar’s essential humanity and kindness of heart.

[9] The Home Secretary, Sir Matthew White Ridley, when questioned by Mr. Michael Davitt in the House of Commons, May 25, 1897, declared that this dismissal of a warder for feeding a little hungry child at his own expense was “fully justified” and a “proper step.”  This same Home Secretary appointed his utterly incompetent brother to be a judge of the High Court.

[10] The correspondent to whom Wilde writes and the other friend referred to are Roman Catholics.

[11] This refers to a story which Wilde was much interested in at the time.

[12] The proprietor of the hotel.

[13] The Sphinx is a nickname for Mrs. Leverson, author of “The Eleventh Hour,” and other witty novels.

[14] Ernest was her husband.

[15] The silver spoon is a proposed line for a play given by Ross to Turner (Reggie).

[16] Wilde’s solicitor in Regina v.  Wilde.