Oscar Wilde. Leonard Cresswell Ingleby
usually hires, by the advice of one of the warders, from a local firm who have a suite they keep for the use of this 'special cell' in Holloway. When Mr. Wilde arrived at the prison last Saturday week afternoon this 'cell' was vacant. He promptly gave orders for the furniture to be brought in, and in an incredibly short space of time the cell was furnished, and the distinguished prisoner took possession of his apartment. I will first describe the room, and then take one typical day in the prison routine, which will clearly show the kind of life that Mr. Wilde is compelled to live.
"Now to the cell. The room is situated at the far end of the east wing of the prison, and is entered from the long passage which runs from the head warder's rooms past the convict cells, and terminates at the door which protects Oscar from the common herd, and helps to make him secure. The door is an ordinary prison cell door, possessing spyholes and flaptrap, and large iron bars and locks. The cell itself is about 10 ft. broad, 12 ft. long, and 11 ft. high. The walls are not papered but whitewashed, and the light by which the room is supplied is obtained through an iron-barred window in the wall placed high up and well out of the prisoner's reach. A small fireplace is also fixed securely at the end of the room, but it is seldom lit, as the room is well heated by hot-water pipes. Now to the furniture in the room. Just on the right-hand side of the window is placed a table made of hard, white wood. No cloth covers it, but at the back is placed a looking-glass, whilst on the table itself is a water jug and a Bible. Near the table and almost under the window is an arm-chair, in which Oscar spends most of his time. But more of this anon. In the corner near the fireplace is placed a small camp bedstead, which is so small that it seems almost an impossibility that so massive a form as that of Oscar could recline with any ease upon so small a space. No feather bed is upon the iron supports, and the sleeper is compelled to repose upon hard—probably too hard—mattresses. The bed is supplied with sheets, blankets, and a cover quilt, made up of patches of all colours of the rainbow. This quilt is not pretty, and most considerably upsets the artistic being of a man like Wilde. A small table on the other side of the room, another chair, and a small metal washing stand, go to make up all the furniture the room possesses. No carpet is on the floor, but the boards are kept scrupulously clean. This I think briefly comprises a description of Mr. Wilde's residential and sleeping compartment. Now to his daily routine and the life he is compelled to lead. He is awakened by a warder at six o'clock, and whether he likes it or not, is compelled to get up. After washing himself in cold water—hot is not permitted—and using ordinary common soap, Mr. Wilde dresses himself, and to do him justice, he turns himself out very neat and span considering he has no valet to wait upon him. At seven o'clock one of the convicted prisoners enters Mr. Wilde's cell, cleans up the room, makes the bed, and generally tidies up the place. For this service the prisoner receives 1s. per week, and it usually takes him quite half-an-hour per day to get through his work. Truly a munificent remuneration, but then prison regulations, whenever reasonable, are on the side of liberality. At half-past seven o'clock Wilde's breakfast, usually consisting of tea, ham and eggs, or a chop, toast and bread and butter, arrives from a well-known restaurant in Holloway. Of course Mr. Wilde pays for the food, and, within reason, can eat and drink what he pleases.
"At nine o'clock Mr. Wilde is compelled to leave his cell, and proceed to the exercising yard of the prison, and for one hour he is compelled to walk at regulation pace round a kind of tower erected in the centre of the yard. After exercise the distinguished prisoner returns to his cell, and the daily newspapers are brought to him, for which he also pays. Mr. Wilde sits during the time he is in his cell in the chair by the window, and then reads his papers. He, however, has moments of very low-spiritedness, and becomes almost despondent in the moods. The sketch in this issue represents him seated in his favourite chair, with a paper in his hand, and, after an interview with his solicitor, Mr. Wilde is very fond, when his active brain is working too deeply, to push back his hair from off his forehead and then leave the hand on the head, and, as if staring into vacancy, sit for hours in this position thinking deeply. But, to continue, at twelve o'clock Mr. Wilde's lunch arrives from the restaurant, for which he pays. It consists of a cut off the joint, vegetables, cheese, and biscuits and water, or one glass of wine. After lunch he is again taken to the exercise ground for an hour, and then sent back to his cell. Still seated in his chair, he still reads his papers, and thinks out improbable problems. Sometimes one of his friends comes to see him. On these occasions he brightens up, but after the visits of his solicitor he is visibly very low-spirited and morose. At six o'clock Mr. Wilde's dinner—for which he pays—arrives. It consists usually of soup, fish, joint, or game, cheese, and half-a-pint of any wine he chooses to select. The dinner finished, Mr. Wilde sits again in his chair, and the agony he endures at not being allowed even a whiff at his favourite cigarette must to him be agony indeed. At eight o'clock a warder enters his room and places a lamp on the table to light the room. At nine o'clock the same warder again enters the room and gives Oscar five minutes to undress himself and get into bed. He complies willingly but with a sigh. When he is safely in bed the warder removes the lamp, bolts and locks the door, and leaves Oscar to sleep or remain awake thinking, just as he pleases. Oscar, however, does not sleep much. He is out of bed most of the night, and in unstockinged feet paces the room in apparently not too good a mood. Yes, poor Oscar, I do pity you."
So much for popular kindness!
The trial, at which the accused man was admitted by everyone to have comported himself with a dignity and resignation that had nothing of that levity and occasional pose which must be allowed to have characterised his attitude during the two former ordeals, came to a close. Wilde was sentenced to prison for two years' hard labour.
During the trial, of course, no comment was permissible, though there were not wanting some papers who committed contempt of court. When, however, the sentence had been pronounced and Wilde as a man with a place in society—I am using the word society here not in its limited but its economic sense—had ceased to exist, then the thunders of the important and influential journals were let loose.
The Daily Telegraph which, to do it justice, had never been sympathetic to Wilde in his days of prosperity and fame, came out with a most weighty and severe condemnation. The article, from which I am about to quote an extract, certainly represented the opinion of the country at the time—as The Daily Telegraph has nearly always represented the mass of opinion of the country at any given moment. To the sympathisers with Wilde this article will seem unnecessarily cruel and severe. But to those who have taken into account the best that has been written herein about him during this terrible third period, and who have realised that the writer simply states facts and does not desire to comment on them, the article will seem only a natural and dignified expression of a truth which was hardly controvertible.
"No sterner rebuke could well have been inflicted on some of the artistic tendencies of the time than the condemnation on Saturday of Oscar Wilde at the Central Criminal Court. We have not the slightest intention of reviewing once more all the sordid incidents of a case which has done enough, and more than enough, to shock the conscience and outrage the moral instincts of the community. The man has now suffered the penalties of his career, and may well be allowed to pass from that platform of publicity which he loved into that limbo of disrepute and forgetfulness which is his due. The grave of contemptuous oblivion may rest on his foolish ostentation, his empty paradoxes, his insufferable posturing, his incurable vanity. Nevertheless, when we remember that he enjoyed a certain popularity among some sections of society, and, above all, when we reflect that what was smiled at as insolent braggadocio was the cover for, or at all events ended in, flagrant immorality, it is well, perhaps, that the lesson of his life should not be passed over without some insistence on the terrible warning of his fate. Young men at the universities, clever sixth-form boys at public schools, silly women who lend an ear to any chatter which is petulant and vivacious, novelists who have sought to imitate the style of paradox and unreality, poets who have lisped the language of nerveless and effeminate libertinage—these are the persons who should ponder with themselves the doctrines and the career of the man who has now to undergo the righteous sentence of the law. We speak sometimes of a school of Decadents and Æsthetes in England, although it may well be doubted whether at any time its prominent members could not have been counted on the fingers of one hand; but, quite apart from any fixed organisation or body such as may or may not exist in Paris, there has lately shown itself in London a contemporary bias of thought, an affected manner of expression and style, and a few