Nobody dared to mention the gross indecency his father had been convicted of. Vilified by society, condemned to walk a treadmill for six hours a day and sleep on a plank, witness to daily spectacles of violence, he was spared few humiliations. When his wife visited him in Reading Gaol, she witnessed a heart-breaking transformation.
He was allowed two books a week. This was not enough to assuage him. The best-known story in the collection is that of a gilded statue which, befriended by a migrating swallow, attempts to help the poor and miserable of its town. During his youth in Dublin, Wilde had been infatuated with the beautiful and witty Florence Balcombe.
She is just seventeen with the most perfectly beautiful face I ever saw and not a sixpence of money. I will show you her photograph when I see you next. Fitzsimons notes that although Wilde was crushed, he went on to propose marriage to two further women before he met Constance Lloyd, the woman who would become his wife. Wilde was introduced to Lloyd, the daughter of an Irish barrister, in They married in and had two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan.
The couple argued and reconciled frequently. You are so dear, so wonderful. I think of you all day long, and miss your grace, your boyish beauty, the bright sword-play of your wit, the delicate fancy of your genius, so surprising always in its sudden swallow-flights towards north and south, towards sun and moon — and, above all, yourself. Wilde had gone back and forth between hiding his sexual orientation and attempting to gain some measure of public acceptance. In his defense, Douglas argued that Wilde had solicited 12 boys to commit sodomy between and Rather than flee to France, Wilde decided to remain and stand trial.
Wilde was denied bail. The second trial began on May Although many of the potential witnesses refused to betray Wilde by testifying, he was convicted. I shall pass the severest sentence that the law allows.
In my judgment it is totally inadequate for such a case as this. The sentence of the Court is that you be imprisoned and kept to hard labor for two years. Wilde served his two years and then spent the last three years of his life in exile.
No gentleman ever takes exercise. I liked them. I have a passion to civilize the community. Wilde may have considered working-class male escorts like the Parkers noble enough to civilize the community, but his closest romantic associations were with fellow artists and intellectuals. When he defended the love in question, it was usually in its idealized, chaste Platonic form.
When he reflected cryptically on it in a letter to his young companion Harry Marillier, it was in a resoundingly ambivalent, searching key:. You too have the love of things impossible … Sometime you will find, even as I have found, that there is no such thing as a romantic experience; there are romantic memories, and there is the desire of romance—that is all … And, strangely enough, what comes of all this is a curious mixture of ardour and indifference.
I myself would sacrifice everything for a new experience, and I know there is no such thing as a new experience at all. I think I would more readily die for what I do not believe in than what I hold to be true. I would go to the stake for a sensation and be a skeptic to the last!
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