We shook hands.  I think there were tears in both our eyes as we parted.  This humane Governor had taught me that Oscar’s gentleness and kindness—­his sweetness of nature—­would win all hearts if it had time to make itself known.  Yet there he was in prison.  His face and figure came before me again and again:  the unshaven face; the frightened, sad air; the hopeless, toneless voice.  The cleanliness even of the bare hard room was ugly; the English are foolish enough to degrade those they punish.  Revolt was blazing in me.

As I went away I looked up at the mediaeval castellated gateway of the place, and thought how perfectly the architecture suited the spirit of the institution.  The whole thing belongs to the middle ages, and not to our modern life.  Fancy having both prison and hospital side by side; indeed a hospital even in the prison; torture and lovingkindness; punishment and pity under the same roof.  What a blank contradiction and stupidity.  Will civilisation never reach humane ideals?  Will men always punish most severely the sins they do not understand and which hold for them no temptation?  Did Jesus suffer in vain?

* * * * *

Oscar Wilde was committed on the 19th of April; a “true bill” was found against him by the grand jury on the 24th; and, as the case was put down for trial at the Old Bailey almost immediately, a postponement was asked for till the May sessions, on the ground first that the defence had not had time to prepare their case and further, that in the state of popular feeling at the moment, Mr. Wilde would not get a fair and impartial trial.  Mr. Justice Charles, who was to try the case, heard the application and refused it peremptorily:  “Any suggestion that the defendant would not have a fair trial was groundless,” he declared; yet he knew better.  In his summing up of the case on May 1st he stated that “for weeks it had been impossible to open a newspaper without reading some reference to the case,” and when he asked the jury not to allow “preconceived opinions to weigh with them” he was admitting the truth that every newspaper reference was charged with dislike and contempt of Oscar Wilde.  A fair trial indeed!

The trial took place at the Old Bailey, three days later, April 27th, 1895, before Mr. Justice Charles.  Mr. C.F.  Gill and A. Gill with Mr. Horace Avory appeared for the Public Prosecutor.  Mr. Wilde was again defended by Sir Edward Clarke, Mr. Charles Mathews and Mr. Travers Humphreys, while Mr. J.P.  Grain and Mr. Paul Taylor were counsel for the other prisoner.  The trial began on a Saturday and the whole of the day was taken up with a legal argument.  I am not going to give the details of the case.  I shall only note the chief features of it and the unfairness which characterised it.