“You are right, I suppose,” I had to admit.  “But if I got you a petition from men of letters, asking you to release Wilde for his health’s sake:  would that do?”

Sir Ruggles Brise jumped at the suggestion.

“Certainly,” he exclaimed, “if some men of letters, men of position, wrote asking that Wilde’s sentence should be diminished by three or four months on account of his health, I think it would have the best effect.”

“I will see Meredith at once,” I said, “and some others.  How many names should I get?”

“If you have Meredith,” he replied, “you don’t need many others.  A dozen would do, or fewer if you find a dozen too many.”

“I don’t think I shall meet with any difficulty,” I replied, “but I will let you know.”

“You will find it harder than you think,” he concluded, “but if you get one or two great names the rest may follow.  In any case one or two good names will make it easier for you.”

Naturally I thanked him for his kindness and went away absolutely content.  I had never set myself a task which seemed simpler.  Meredith could not be more merciless than a Royal Commission.  I returned to my office in The Saturday Review and got the Royal Commission report on this sentence of two years’ imprisonment with hard labour.  The Commission recommended that it should be wiped off the Statute Book as too severe.  I drafted a little petition as colourless as possible: 

“In view of the fact that the punishment of two years’ imprisonment with hard labour has been condemned by a Royal Commission as too severe, and inasmuch as Mr. Wilde has been distinguished by his work in letters and is now, we hear, suffering in health, we, your petitioners, pray—­and so forth and so on.”

I got this printed, and then sat down to write to Meredith asking when I could see him on the matter.  I wanted his signature first to be printed underneath the petition, and then issue it.  To my astonishment Meredith did not answer at once, and when I pressed him and set forth the facts he wrote to me that he could not do what I wished.  I wrote again, begging him to let me see him on the matter.  For the first time in my life he refused to see me:  he wrote to me to say that nothing I could urge would move him, and it would therefore only be painful to both of us to find ourselves in conflict.

Nothing ever surprised me more than this attitude of Meredith’s.  I knew his poetry pretty well, and knew how severe he was on every sensual weakness perhaps because it was his own pitfall.  I knew too what a fighter he was at heart and how he loved the virile virtues; but I thought I knew the man, knew his tender kindliness of heart, the founts of pity in him, and I felt certain I could count on him for any office of human charity or generosity.  But no, he was impenetrable, hard.  He told me long afterwards that he had rather a low opinion of Wilde’s capacities, instinctive, deep-rooted contempt, too, for the showman in him, and an absolute abhorrence of his vice.