HIS LIFE AND CONFESSIONS
BY
FRANK HARRIS
VOLUME II
[Illustration: Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas About 1893]
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR
29 Waverley place new York city
MCMXVIII
Imprime en Allemagne
Printed in Germany
For he who sins a second time
Wakes a dead soul
to pain,
And draws it from its spotted
shroud,
And makes it bleed
again,
And makes it bleed great gouts
of blood,
And makes it bleed
in vain.
—The Ballad of Reading Gaol.
Copyright, 1916, BY FRANK HARRIS
BOOK II
CHAPTER XVII
Prison for Oscar Wilde, an English prison with its insufficient bad food[1] and soul-degrading routine for that amiable, joyous, eloquent, pampered Sybarite. Here was a test indeed; an ordeal as by fire. What would he make of two years’ hard labour in a lonely cell?
There are two ways of taking prison, as of taking most things, and all the myriad ways between these two extremes; would Oscar be conquered by it and allow remorse and hatred to corrupt his very heart, or would he conquer the prison and possess and use it? Hammer or anvil—which?
Victory has its virtue and is justified of itself like sunshine; defeat carries its own condemnation. Yet we have all tasted its bitter waters: only “infinite virtue” can pass through life victorious, Shakespeare tells us, and we mortals are not of infinite virtue. The myriad vicissitudes of the struggle search out all our weaknesses; test all our powers. Every victory shows a more difficult height to scale, a steeper pinnacle of god-like hardship—that’s the reward of victory: it provides the hero with ever-new battle-fields: no rest for him this side the grave.
But what of defeat? What sweet is there in its bitter? This may be said for it; it is our great school: punishment teaches pity, just as suffering teaches sympathy. In defeat the brave soul learns kinship with other men, takes the rub to heart; seeks out the reason for the fall in his own weakness, and ever afterwards finds it impossible to judge, much less condemn his fellow. But after all no one can hurt us but ourselves; prison, hard labour, and the hate of men; what are these if they make you truer, wiser, kinder?