OSCAR WILDE

HIS LIFE AND CONFESSIONS

BY

FRANK HARRIS

VOLUME I

Oscar Wilde at About Thirty

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED
BY THE AUTHOR

29 WAVERLEY PLACE NEW YORK CITY

MCMXVIII

Imprime en Allemagne
Printed in Germany

Copyright, 1916,
By Frank Harris

CONTENTS

VOLUME I

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS i

INTRODUCTION iii

I. Oscar's Father and Mother on Trial 1

II. Oscar Wilde as a Schoolboy 23

III. Trinity, Dublin: Magdalen, Oxford 37

IV. Formative Influences: Oscar's Poems 50

V. Oscar's Quarrel with Whistler and Marriage 73

VI. Oscar Wilde's Faith and Practice 91

VII. Oscar's Reputation and Supporters 102

VIII. Oscar's Growth to Originality About 1890 112

IX. The Summer of Success: Oscar's First Play 133

X. The First Meeting with Lord Alfred Douglas 144

XI. The Threatening Cloud Draws Nearer 156

XII. Danger Signals: the Challenge 175

XIII. Oscar Attacks Queensberry and is Worsted 202

XIV. How Genius is Persecuted in England 229

XV. The Queen vs. Wilde: The First Trial 261

XVI. Escape Rejected: The Second Trial and Sentence 292

VOLUME II

[Transcriber's Note: Volume II is also available on Project Gutenberg.]

XVII. Prison and the Effects of Punishment 321

XVIII. Mitigation of Punishment; but not Release 345

XIX. His St. Martin's Summer: His Best Work 363

XX. The Results of His Second Fall: His Genius 406

XXI. His Sense of Rivalry; His Love of Life and Laziness 433

XXII. "A Great Romantic Passion!" 450

XXIII. His Judgments of Writers and of Women 469

XXIV. We Argue About His "Pet Vice" and Punishment 488

XXV. The Last Hope Lost 509

XXVI. The End 532

XXVII. A Last Word 542

Shaw's "Memories" 1-32

The Appendix, 549

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME I

Oscar Wilde at About Thirty

Dr. Sir William Wilde

Oscar Wilde at Twenty-Seven, as He First Appeared in America

Oscar Wilde

VOLUME II

Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas About 1893

"Speranza": Lady Wilde as a Young Woman

Note to Warder Martin

INTRODUCTION

I was advised on all hands not to write this book, and some English friends who have read it urge me not to publish it.

"You will be accused of selecting the subject," they say, "because sexual viciousness appeals to you, and your method of treatment lays you open to attack.

"You criticise and condemn the English conception of justice, and English legal methods: you even question the impartiality of English judges, and throw an unpleasant light on English juries and the English public—all of which is not only unpopular but will convince the unthinking that you are a presumptuous, or at least an outlandish, person with too good a conceit of himself and altogether too free a tongue."

I should be more than human or less if these arguments did not give me pause. I would do nothing willingly to alienate the few who are still friendly to me. But the motives driving me are too strong for such personal considerations. I might say with the