When speaking to him later about this poem I remember assuming that his prison experiences must have helped him to realise the suffering of the condemned soldier and certainly lent passion to his verse.  But he would not hear of it.

“Oh, no, Frank,” he cried, “never; my experiences in prison were too horrible, too painful to be used.  I simply blotted them out altogether and refused to recall them.”

“What about the verse?” I asked: 

    “We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,
      We turned the dusty drill: 
    We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,
      And sweated on the mill: 
    And in the heart of every man
      Terror was lying still.”

“Characteristic details, Frank, merely the decor of prison life, not its reality; that no one could paint, not even Dante, who had to turn away his eyes from lesser suffering.”

It may be worth while to notice here, as an example of the hatred with which Oscar Wilde’s name and work were regarded, that even after he had paid the penalty for his crime the publisher and editor, alike in England and America, put anything but a high price on his best work.  They would have bought a play readily enough because they would have known that it would make them money, but a ballad from his pen nobody seemed to want.  The highest price offered in America for “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” was one hundred dollars.  Oscar found difficulty in getting even L20 for the English rights from the friend who published it; yet it has sold since by hundreds of thousands and is certain always to sell.

I must insert here part of another letter from Oscar Wilde which appeared in The Daily Chronicle, 24th March, 1898, on the cruelties of the English prison system; it was headed, “Don’t read this if you want to be happy to-day,” and was signed by “The Author of ’The Ballad of Reading Gaol.’” It was manifestly a direct outcome of his prison experiences.  The letter was simple and affecting; but it had little or no influence on the English conscience.  The Home Secretary was about to reform (!) the prison system by appointing more inspectors.  Oscar Wilde pointed out that inspectors could do nothing but see that the regulations were carried out.  He took up the position that it was the regulations which needed reform.  His plea was irrefutable in its moderation and simplicity:  but it was beyond the comprehension of an English Home Secretary apparently, for all the abuses pointed out by Oscar Wilde still flourish.  I can’t help giving some extracts from this memorable indictment:  memorable for its reserve and sanity and complete absence of any bitterness: 

“...  The prisoner who has been allowed the smallest privilege dreads the arrival of the inspectors.  And on the day of any prison inspection the prison officials are more than usually brutal to the prisoners.  Their object is, of course, to show the splendid discipline they maintain.