insane action against Lord Queensberry, in which he put to hazard his
success, his position, his good name and liberty, and lost them all. Two
years later at the same tempting, he committed soul-suicide.
He was not only better in health than he had ever been; but he was
talking and writing better than ever before and full of literary
projects which would certainly have given him money and position and a
measure of happiness besides increasing his reputation. From the moment
he went to Naples he was lost, and he knew it himself; he never
afterwards wrote anything: as he used to say, he could never afterwards
face his own soul.
He could never have won up again, the world says, and shrugs careless
shoulders. It is a cheap, unworthy conclusion. Some of us still persist
in believing that Oscar Wilde might easily have won and never again been
caught in that dreadful wind which whips the victims of sensual desire
about unceasingly, driving them hither and thither without rest in that
awful place where: "Nulla speranza gli conforta mai." (No hope ever
comforts!)
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Reproduced in the Appendix.
[8] Fac-simile copies of some of the notes Oscar wrote to Warder Martin
about these children are reproduced in the Appendix. The notes were
written on scraps of paper and pushed under his cell-door; they are
among the most convincing evidences of Oscar's essential humanity and
kindness of heart.
[9] The Home Secretary, Sir Matthew White Ridley, when questioned by Mr.
Michael Davitt in the House of Commons, May 25, 1897, declared that this
dismissal of a warder for feeding a little hungry child at his own
expense was "fully justified" and a "proper step." This same Home
Secretary appointed his utterly incompetent brother to be a judge of the
High Court.
[10] The correspondent to whom Wilde writes and the other friend
referred to are Roman Catholics.
[11] This refers to a story which Wilde was much interested in at the
time.
[12] The proprietor of the hotel.
[13] The Sphinx is a nickname for Mrs. Leverson, author of "The Eleventh
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