Note 3 — Oscar Wilde

M. Gide says that Wilde's words were 'je suis absolument sans ressources,' which, I think, need not mean more than a temporary embarrassment. I have been at some pains to find out what the actual circumstances were, and I am able to state the following facts on the authority of Lord Alfred Douglas. When Mr. Wilde came out of prison, the sum of £800 was subscribed for him by his friends. Lord Alfred Douglas gave or sent Mr. Wilde, in the last twelve months of his life, cheques for over £600, as he can show by his bank-book, in addition to ready money gifts, and several others gave him at various times amounts totalling up to several hundreds of pounds. 'It is true,' Lord Alfred Douglas writes, 'he was always hard up and short of money, but that was because he was incurably extravagant and reckless. I think these facts ought to be known in justice to myself and many others of his friends, all poor men.' In another letter Lord Alfred Douglas says that Mr. Wilde, when he was well off, before his disaster, was the most generous of men. After 1897 received also large sums of money as advance fees for plays which he never finished. 'I hope,' Lord Alfred Douglas continues, 'you will not think that I blame him, or have any grievance against him on any account. What I gave him I considered I owed him, as he had often lent and given me money before he came to grief. I was delighted that he should have it, and I wish I had had time to give him more.' It was not, however, till after the death of his father, that Lord Alfred Douglas was in a position to help Mr. Wilde to the extent that he did, and Mr. Wilde died within a few months of the death of Lord Queensberry.

Lord Alfred Douglas adds that he thinks 'it is about time that some of the poisonous nonsense which has been written about Mr. Wilde should be qualified by a little fact.'

It must be remembered, however, that large as the sums of money were which Mr. Wilde received during the last few years of his life, they would not appear so to him, as in the days of his highest success he was receiving several thousands a year from his plays and other works.

It is since the first sheets of this book passed through the press that I have been favoured with the information that Lord Alfred Douglas has been good enough to give me, and I now wish to qualify the statement in my introductory remarks that Mr. Wilde died 'in poverty.' It would be more accurate to say 'in comparative poverty.'