Do Not Afraid Of The Past
made by wincestuouslove
De Profundis, a passionate letter written by Oscar Wilde in prison to his lover, Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas.
In the letter Wilde blamed Bosie for not writing to him [1], for leading him to his bankruptcy and imprisonment, as well as ruining his Art by recalling Bosie's conduct and behaviors over the years.
Consequently, a disastrous story extended from the moment Wilde wrote this bitter letter:
When Wilde was released in 1897, he gave Robert Baldwin 'Robbie' Ross, his devoted friend, ex-lover and literary executor, his prison letter with instructions to have two copies made, the original to be given to Bosie, and had Bosie's name omitted when publish.
Wilde reconciled with Bosie briefly without further words about the bitter letter.
Robbie, however, sent Bosie one of the copies -- whether the entire letter or excerpts -- and gave the original letter to British Museum as a gift to the nation.
Bosie, who was concealed from the truth that the whole manuscript had originally been couched in the form of a letter to him, gave beingn review to the first published version with no idea of the existence of the unpublished parts.
In 1912, when Arthur Ransome (who concidentally happened to be a close friend of Robbie) published Oscar Wilde: A Critical Study, Bosie, sued the author for libel over certain passages.
To prove Bosie was ruinous to Wilde's life, the original letter was brought out from British Museum.
The entire letter was read aloud in court and subsequently published in national newspapers.
Bosie, who insisted that he had never received a copy despite Robbie's assertion that Bosie had told him and Wilde that he had thrown the typescript almost immediately into the fire, almost faint in the courtroom and lost the case.
Eventually, Ransome removed the passages in the second edition out of consideration for Douglas, but the trauma was not healed until 1928, when Bosie went to prison for a libellous attack on Winston Churchill and experienced a taste of prison conditions for himself.
He could now feel only pity for what Oscar had suffered, and he began to regard Oscar's memory with his former fondness and affection instead of bitterness.
In his final book Oscar Wilde: A summing up, Bosie writes of Oscar as the man whom he will always love.
Regardless to the maglinant nature of Bosie portrayed by Wilde, the following extracts from De Profundis actually left me tear-stained because we know Bosie hasd been constantly, HOPELESSLY devoted to Wilde:
Dear Bosie,
> As far as I can make out, I ended my friendship with you every three months regularly.
> And each time that I did so you managed by means of entreaties, telegrams, letters, the interposition of your friends, the interposition of mine, and the like to induce me to allow you back.
> When you came one Monday evening to my rooms, accompanied by two of your friends, I found myself actually flying abroad next morning to escape from you, giving my family some absurd reason for my sudden departure, and leaving a false address with my servant for fear you might follow me by the next train....
> You started without delay for Paris, sending me passionate telegrams on the road to beg me to see you once, at any rate.
> I declined.
> You arrived in Paris late on a Saturday night and found a brief letter from me waiting for you at your hotel stating that I would not see you.
> Next morning I received in Tite Street a telegram of some ten or eleven pages in length from you.
> You stated in it that no matter what you had done to me you could not believe that I would absolutely decline to see you;
you reminded me that for the sake of seeing me even for one hour you had travelled six days and six nights across Europe without stopping once on the way;
you made what I must admit was a most pathetic appeal, and ended with what seemed to me a threat of suicide and one not thinly veiled.
> You had yourself often told me how many of your race there had been who had stained their hands in their own blood: your uncle certainly, your grandfather possibly;
many others in the mad bad line from which you come.
> Pity, my old affection for you, regard for your mother, to whom your death under such dreadful circumstances would have been a blow almost too great for her to bear, the horror of the idea that so young a life, and one that amidst all its ugly faults had still promise of beauty in it, should come to so revolting an end, mere humanity itself - all these, if excuses be necessary, must serve as an excuse for consenting to accord you one last interview.
> When I arrived in Paris, your tears breaking out again and again all through the evening, and falling over your cheeks like rain as we sat at dinner first at Voisin’s, at supper at Paillard’s afterwards, the unfeigned joy you evinced at seeing me, holding my hand whenever you could, as though you were a gentle and penitent child;
your contrition, so simple and sincere at the moment made me consent to renew our friendship.
Your affectionate friend,
Oscar Wilde
I said Bosie was "hopelessly" devoted to Wilde because he did not know how to express his love and gratitude -- he was unaware to his selfishness when he showed his love to Wilde with growing dependency and occurpancy -- Bosie was clueless to his faults. It seizes my sympathy.
Remarks
[1] -- It could be a wrongful blame because Wilde had turned down Bosie's letter in favour of those from his wife, due the limited allowance of correspondence he could recieved from in prison.
Futhermore, after Wilde's conviction and sentence to two years at hard labour, Douglas sent a desperate petition to Queen Victoria, appealing to her to pardon Wilde
"unjustly convicted by the force of prejudice; a victim not to the righteous indignation of abstract justice but rather to the spite and unscrupulous cunning of another man, the Marquess of Queensberry, whose son I have the misfortune to be."
At Windsor, the Queen's private secretary prevented the petition from reaching her and sent it to the Home Secretary, who replied with a formal letter of rejection to Douglas in Rouen.
In an attempt to reconcile himself with Wilde, Douglas wrote to More Adey, a mutual friend of both, who was reportedly soon going to visit Reading Prison:
If only you could make him understand that though he is in prison he is still the court, the jury, the judge of my life and that I am waiting hoping for some sign that I have to go on living. There is nobody to play my cards in England, nobody to say anything for me, and Oscar depends entirely on what is said to him, and they all seem to be my enemies....
Credit to
The Bosie Web-Site for some trivia of the story
Oscar Wilde - Standing Ovation for Bosie's overlooked action to Wilde's conviction