He promised to send me the book “De Profundis” as soon as it was finished.  Just before his release his friend, Mr. More Adey, called upon me and wanted to know whether I would publish Oscar’s work.  I said I would.  He then asked me what I would give for it.  I told him I didn’t want to make anything out of Oscar and would give him as much as I could, rehearsing the proposal I had made to Oscar.  Thereupon he told me Oscar would prefer a fixed price.  I thought the answer extraordinary and the gentle, urbane manner of Mr. More Adey, whom I hardly knew at that time and misunderstood, got on my nerves.  I replied curtly that before I could state a price, I’d have to see the work, adding at the same time that I had wished to do Oscar a good turn, but, if he could find another publisher, I’d be delighted.  Mr. More Adey assured me that there was nothing in the book to which any prude even could object, no arriere pensee of any kind, and so forth and so on.  I answered with a jest, a wretched play on his French phrase.

That night I happened to dine with Whistler and telling him of what had occurred called forth a most stinging gibe at Oscar’s expense.  Whistler’s mot cannot be published.

A week or two later Oscar asked me to get him some clothes, which I did and on his release sent them to him, and received in reply a letter thanking me which I reproduce on page 583.

In that same talk with Oscar in Reading Gaol, I was so desirous of helping him that I proposed a driving tour through France.  I told him of one I had made a couple of years before which was full of delightful episodes—­an entrancing holiday.  He jumped at the idea, said nothing would please him better, he would feel safe with me, and so forth.  In order to carry out the idea in the best way I ordered an American mail phaeton so that a pair of horses would find the load, even with luggage, ridiculously light.  I asked Mr. More Adey whether Oscar had spoken to him of this proposed trip:  he told me he had heard nothing of it.

In one letter to me Oscar asked me to postpone the tour; afterwards he never mentioned it.  I thought I had been treated rather cavalierly.  As I had gone to some expense in getting everything ready and making myself free, I, no doubt, expressed some amazement at Oscar’s silence on the matter.  At any rate the idea got about that I was angry with him, and Oscar believed it.  Nothing could have been further from the truth.  What I had done and proposed was simply in his interest:  I expected no benefit of any kind and therefore could not be cross; but the belief that I was angry drew this sincere and touching letter from Oscar, which I think shows him almost as perfectly as that still more beautiful letter to Robert Ross which I have inserted in Chapter XIX.

From
M. Sebastian Melmoth,
Hotel de la Plage,
Bernavol-sur-Mer,
Dieppe.

June 13, ’97

MY DEAR FRANK: