I have commented the document as it stands mainly for the sake of clearness and because it justifies in every particular and almost in every epithet the shadows of the portrait which I have endeavoured to paint in this book.  Curiously enough Oscar Wilde depicts himself unconsciously in this part of “De Profundis” in a more unfavourable light than that accorded him in my memory.  I believe mine is the more faithful portrait of him, but that is for my readers to determine.

FRANK HARRIS.

NEW YORK, December, 1915.

H.M.  Prison,
Reading.

DEAR BOSIE,

After long and fruitless waiting I have determined to write to you myself, as much for your sake as for mine, as I would not like to think that I had passed through two long years of imprisonment without ever having received a single line from you, or any news or message even, except such as gave me pain.

Our ill-fated and most lamentable friendship has ended in ruin and public infamy for me, yet the memory of our ancient affection is often with me, and the thought that loathing, bitterness and contempt should for ever take the place in my heart once held by love is very sad to me; and you yourself will, I think, feel in your heart that to write to me as I lie in the loneliness of prison life is better than to publish my letters without my permission, or to dedicate poems to me unasked, though the world will know nothing of whatever words of grief or passion, of remorse or indifference, you may choose to send as your answer or your appeal.

I have no doubt that in this letter which I have to write of your life and mine, of the past and of the future, of sweet things changed to bitterness and of bitter things that may be turned to joy, there will be much that will wound your vanity to the quick.  If it prove so, read the letter over and over again till it kills your vanity.  If you find in it something of which you feel that you are unjustly accused, remember that one should be thankful that there is any fault of which one can be unjustly accused.  If there be in it one single passage that brings tears to your eyes, weep as we weep in prison, where the day no less than the night is set apart for tears.  It is the only thing that can save you.  If you go complaining to your mother, as you did with reference to the scorn of you I displayed in my letter to Robbie, so that she may flatter and soothe you back into self-complacency or conceit, you will be completely lost.  If you find one false excuse for yourself you will soon find a hundred, and be just what you were before.  Do you still say, as you said to Robbie in your answer, that I “attribute unworthy motives” to you?  Ah! you had no motives in life.  You had appetites merely.  A motive is an intellectual aim.  That you were “very young” when our friendship began?  Your defect was not that you knew so little about life, but that you knew so much.  The morning dawn of boyhood with its delicate