“Of course no child under fourteen years of age should be sent to prison at all.  It is an absurdity, and, like many absurdities, of absolutely tragical results....”

This letter, I am informed, brought about some improvement in the treatment of young children in British prisons.  But in regard to adults the British prison is still the torture chamber it was in Wilde’s time; prisoners are still treated more brutally there than anywhere else in the civilised world; the food is the worst in Europe, insufficient indeed to maintain health; in many cases men are only saved from death by starvation through being sent to the infirmary.  Though these facts are well known, Punch, the pet organ of the British middle-class, was not ashamed a little while ago to make a mock of some suggested reform, by publishing a picture of a British convict, with the villainous face of a Bill Sykes, lying on a sofa in his cell smoking a cigar with champagne at hand.  This is not altogether due to stupidity, as Oscar tried to believe, but to reasoned selfishness. Punch and the class for which it caters would like to believe that many convicts are unfit to live, whereas the truth is that a good many of them are superior in humanity to the people who punish and slander them.

While waiting for his wife to join him, Oscar rented a little house, the Chalet Bourgeat, about two hundred yards away from the hotel at Berneval, and furnished it.  Here he spent the whole of the summer writing, bathing, and talking to the few devoted friends who visited him from time to time.  Never had he been so happy:  never in such perfect health.  He was full of literary projects; indeed, no period of his whole life was so fruitful in good work.  He was going to write some Biblical plays; one entitled “Pharaoh” first, and then one called “Ahab and Jezebel,” which he pronounced Isabelle.  Deeper problems, too, were much in his mind:  he was already at work on “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” but before coming to that let me first show how happy the song-bird was and how divinely he sang when the dreadful cage was opened and he was allowed to use his wings in the heavenly sunshine.

Here is a letter from him shortly after his release which is one of the most delightful things he ever wrote.  Fitly enough it was addressed to his friend of friends, Robert Ross, and I can only say that I am extremely obliged to Ross for allowing me to publish it: 

Hotel de la Plage.  Berneval, near Dieppe,
Monday night, May 31st (1897).

My dearest Robbie,

I have decided that the only way in which to get boots properly is to go to France to receive them.  The Douane charged 3 francs.  How could you frighten me as you did?  The next time you order boots please come to Dieppe to get them sent to you.  It is the only way and it will be an excuse for seeing you.