Editing Oscar Wilde (section)

== Imprisonment ==
{{quote box|When first I was put into prison some people advised me to try and forget who I was. It was ruinous advice. It is only by realising what I am that I have found comfort of any kind. Now I am advised by others to try on my release to forget that I have ever been in a prison at all. I know that would be equally fatal. It would mean that I would always be haunted by an intolerable sense of disgrace, and that those things that are meant for me as much as for anybody else&nbsp;– the beauty of the sun and moon, the pageant of the seasons, the music of daybreak and the silence of great nights, the rain falling through the leaves, or the dew creeping over the grass and making it silver&nbsp;– would all be tainted for me, and lose their healing power, and their power of communicating joy. To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.|source=''De Profundis''|align=right|width=35%}}
{{Further|De Profundis (letter)}}

Having been convicted in "one of the first celebrity trials", Wilde was incarcerated from 25 May 1895 to 18 May 1897.<ref name="Trials"/>

He first entered [[Newgate Prison]] in London for processing, then was moved to [[HM Prison Pentonville|Pentonville Prison]], where the "hard labour" to which he had been sentenced consisted of many hours of walking a [[Penal treadmill|treadmill]] and picking [[oakum]] (separating the fibres in scraps of old navy ropes),{{sfn|Ellmann|1988|p=769}} and where prisoners were allowed to read only the Bible and ''[[The Pilgrim's Progress]]''.{{sfn|Ellmann|1988|p=777}}

A few months later he was moved to [[HM Prison Wandsworth|Wandsworth Prison]] in London. Inmates there also followed the regimen of "hard labour, hard fare and a hard bed", which wore harshly on Wilde's delicate health.{{sfn|Ellmann|1988|p=474}} In November he collapsed during chapel from illness and hunger. His right ear drum was ruptured in the fall, an injury that later contributed to his death.{{sfn|Ellmann|1988|p=465}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Medina |first=John J. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1yItZukgsmEC&q=%22he+fell+head+first+and+damaged+his+ear%22&pg=PA250 |title=The Clock of Ages: Why We Age, How We Age, Winding Back the Clock |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |year=1997 |isbn=978-0-521-59456-1 |page=250 |access-date=4 October 2020 |archive-date=10 August 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210810125422/https://books.google.com/books?id=1yItZukgsmEC&q=%22he+fell+head+first+and+damaged+his+ear%22&pg=PA250 |url-status=live}}</ref> He spent two months in the infirmary.{{sfn|Holland|Hart-Davis|2000|p=735}}{{sfn|Ellmann|1988|p=465}}

[[Richard Haldane, 1st Viscount Haldane|Richard B. Haldane]], the Liberal MP and reformer, visited Wilde and had him transferred in November to [[HM Prison Reading|Reading Gaol]], {{convert|30|miles}} west of London on 23 November 1895.{{sfn|Ellmann|1988|p=456}} The transfer itself was the lowest point of his incarceration, as a crowd jeered and spat at him on the platform at [[Clapham Junction railway station]]{{sfn|Ellmann|1988|p=465}} (in 2019 a [[rainbow plaque]] was unveiled at the station recalling this event).<ref name="WT">{{cite news |last1=Krause |first1=Riley |title=Permanent Rainbow Plaque dedicated to Oscar Wilde unveiled at Clapham Junction |url=https://www.wandsworthguardian.co.uk/news/17791279.permanent-rainbow-plaque-dedicated-oscar-wilde-unveiled-clapham-junction/ |access-date=25 July 2023 |work=Wandsworth Times |date=24 July 2019}}</ref> He spent the remainder of his sentence at Reading, addressed and identified only as "C.3.3" – the occupant of the third cell on the third floor of C ward.

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About five months after Wilde arrived at Reading Gaol, [[Charles Thomas Wooldridge]], a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards, was brought to Reading to await his trial for murdering his wife on 29 March 1896; on 17 June Wooldridge was sentenced to death and returned to Reading for his execution, which took place on Tuesday, 7 July 1896 – the first hanging at Reading in 18 years. From Wooldridge's hanging, Wilde later wrote ''[[The Ballad of Reading Gaol]]''.<ref>Sandulescu, C. George, ed. (1994). ''Rediscovering Oscar Wilde''. Gerrards Cross [England]: C. Smythe. {{ISBN|0-86140-376-2}} (1994) pg. 308</ref>

Wilde was not, at first, even allowed paper and pen, but Haldane eventually succeeded in allowing access to books and writing materials.{{sfn|Ellmann|1988|p=475}} Wilde requested, among others, the Bible in French; Italian and German grammars; some Ancient Greek texts; [[Dante Alighieri|Dante]]'s ''[[Divine Comedy]]''; [[Joris-Karl Huysmans]]'s new French novel about Christian redemption, ''[[En route (novel)|En route]]''; and essays by [[Augustine of Hippo|St Augustine]], [[John Henry Newman|Cardinal Newman]] and Walter Pater.{{sfn|Ellmann|1988|pp=477–478}}

Between January and March 1897 Wilde wrote a 50,000-word letter to Douglas. He was not allowed to send it but was permitted to take it with him when released from prison.{{sfn|Holland|Hart-Davis|2000|p=683}} In reflective mode, Wilde coldly examines his career to date, how he had been a colourful ''[[agent provocateur]]'' in Victorian society, his art, like his paradoxes, seeking to subvert as well as sparkle. His estimation of himself was: one who "stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age".{{sfn|Holland|Hart-Davis|2000|pp=737–738}} It was from these heights that his life with Douglas began, and Wilde examines that particularly closely, repudiating him for what Wilde finally sees as his arrogance and vanity: he had not forgotten Douglas' remark, when he was ill, "When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting."{{sfn|Holland|Hart-Davis|2000|p=700}} Wilde blamed himself, though, for the ethical degradation of character that he allowed Douglas to bring about in him, and took responsibility for his own fall: "I am here for having tried to put your father in prison."<ref name=wheatcroft/> The first half concludes with Wilde forgiving Douglas, for his own sake as much as Douglas's. The second half of the letter traces Wilde's spiritual journey of redemption and fulfilment through his prison reading. He realised that his ordeal had filled his soul with the fruit of experience, however bitter it tasted at the time.
<blockquote> ... I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world ... And so, indeed, I went out, and so I lived. My only mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom.{{sfn|Holland|Hart-Davis|2000|p=739}}
</blockquote>

Wilde was released from prison on 19 May 1897{{sfn|Ellmann|1988|p=[https://archive.org/details/oscarwilde00ellm/page/527 527]}} and sailed that evening for [[Dieppe]], France.{{sfn|Ellmann|1988|p=528}} He never returned to the United Kingdom.

On his release, he gave the manuscript to Ross, who may or may not have carried out Wilde's instructions to send a copy to Douglas (who later denied having received it). The letter was partially published in 1905 as ''[[De Profundis (letter)|De Profundis]]''; its complete and correct publication first occurred in 1962 in ''[[The Letters of Oscar Wilde]]''.{{efn|Ross published a version of the letter expurgated of all references to Douglas in 1905 with the title ''De Profundis'', expanding it slightly for an edition of Wilde's collected works in 1908, and then donated it to the [[British Museum]] on the understanding that it would not be made public until 1960. In 1949, Wilde's son [[Vyvyan Holland]] published it again, including parts formerly omitted, but relying on a faulty typescript bequeathed to him by Ross. Ross's typescript had contained several hundred errors, including typist's mistakes, Ross's "improvements" and other inexplicable omissions.{{sfn|Holland|Hart-Davis|2000|p=683}}}}