Bernard Shaw or anyone else." I said this to encourage him.
"I'm sure of that," he answered. "I'll send you the book as soon as I've
finished it. I think you'll like it"--and there for the moment the
matter ended.
At length I felt sure that all would be well with him. How could I help
feeling sure? His mind was richer and stronger than it had ever been;
and he had broken with all the dark past. I was overjoyed to believe
that he would yet do greater things than he had ever done, and this
belief and determination were in him too, as anyone can see on reading
what he wrote at this time in prison:
"There is before me so much to do that I would regard it as a terrible
tragedy if I died before I was allowed to complete at any rate a little
of it. I see new developments in art and life, each one of which is a
fresh mode of perfection. I long to live so that I can explore what is
no less than a new world to me. Do you want to know what this new world
is? I think you can guess what it is. It is the world in which I have
been living. Sorrow, then, and all that it teaches one, is my new
world....
"I used to live entirely for pleasure. I shunned suffering and sorrow of
every kind. I hated both...."
Through the prison bars Oscar had begun to see how mistaken he had been,
how much greater, and more salutary to the soul, suffering is than
pleasure.
"Out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child
or a star there is pain."
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Cfr. Appendix: "Criticisms by Robert Ross."
[4] I give Oscar's view of the trial just to show how his romantic
imagination turned disagreeable facts into pleasant fiction. Oscar could
only have heard of the trial, and perhaps his mother was his
informant--which adds to the interest of the story.
[5] Permission to visit a dying mother is accorded in France, even to
murderers. The English pretend to be more religious than the French; but
are assuredly less humane.
[6] "De Profundis." What Oscar called "the terrible part" of the
book--the indictment of Lord Alfred Douglas--has since been read out in
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