penurious, except where his own pleasures were concerned, and
when my allowance ceased, he left.
"With regard to the L500[22] which he said was a debt of
honour, he has written to me to say that he admits the debt of
honour, but as lots of gentlemen don't pay their debts of
honour, it is quite a common thing and no one thinks any the
worse of them.
"I don't know what you said to Constance, but the bald fact is
that I accepted the offer of the home, and found that I was
expected to provide the money, and when I could no longer do
so I was left to my own devices. It is the most bitter
experience of a bitter life. It is a blow quite awful. It had
to come, but I know it is better I should never see him again,
I don't want to, it fills me with horror."
A word of explanation will explain his reference to his wife, Constance,
in this letter: by a deed of separation made at the end of his
imprisonment, Mrs. Wilde undertook to allow Oscar L150 a year for life,
under the condition that the allowance was to be forfeited if Oscar ever
lived under the same roof with Lord Alfred Douglas. Having forfeited the
allowance Oscar got Robert Ross to ask his wife to continue it and in
spite of the forfeiture Mrs. Wilde continually sent Oscar money through
Robert Ross, merely stipulating that her husband should not be told
whence the money came. Ross, too, who had also sent him L150 a year,
resumed his monthly payments as soon as he left Douglas.
My friendship with Oscar Wilde, which had been interrupted after he left
prison by a silly gibe directed rather against the go-between he had
sent to me than against him, was renewed in Paris early in 1898. I have
related the little misunderstanding in the Appendix. I had never felt
anything but the most cordial affection for Oscar and as soon as I went
to Paris and met him I explained what had seemed to him unkind. When I
asked him about his life since his release he told me simply that he had
quarrelled with Bosie Douglas.
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