Oscar Wilde: A Plea and Reminiscence

by Alfred Bruce Douglas, Caspar Wintermans (Contributor)

In 1895, Lord Alfred Douglas wrote an article for the Mercure de France, but it was withdrawn and never published. His original manuscript was lost, but a manuscript copy of the French translation was found, retranslated into English, and published here for the first time, along with Douglas's reminiscences of Wilde's last years in Paris. Introduced and annotated by Caspar Wintermans.

49 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas was an British author, poet and translator, better known as the intimate friend and lover of the writer Oscar Wilde. Much of his early poetry was Uranian in theme, though he tended, later in life, to distance himself from both Wilde's influence and his own role as a Uranian poet.

Reviews

[Laura Lee]

This book is hard to track down. I wish it were more widely available. Lord Alfred Douglas believed his passionate article would change the public perception of Oscar Wilde and might help secure and early release for him. He was a bit out of touch with the thinking of the public. People like Oscar and himself, as artists, should be given more leeway to behave in ways that do not conform with society's expectations, he argues. His railings against English hypocrisy would not have won him friends among his countrymen. Of course, his audience was French.

Most of Lord Alfred Douglas's published writing on Oscar Wilde came after he had been beaten down by life and become more prudent. In this youthful article, he expresses his love and devotion for Wilde, prints three of Wilde's love letters, and makes a surprisingly bold defense, given the time and his circumstances, of "the love that dares not speak its name." At this point, Douglas was fearless enough to speak.

The first letter of Wilde's included with the article gave him his power to do so: "Those who know not what love is will write, I know, if fate is against us, that I have had a bad influence upon your life. If they do that, you shall write, you shall say in your turn that it is not so."

It is also fairly poignant to read Douglas's: "One thing saves us from the deepest misery, and renders our sufferings bearable: the knowledge, nay the certainty that neither my friend nor myself regret in the slightest what brought it about-- that is to say, our friendship."

Wilde, suffering in prison, was about to start writing De Profundis, a book-length letter expressing exactly the opposite sentiment.

The article was described by the editor of the Mercure de France as a "document of great psychological interest." It is that. The young man's personality comes through with flying colors. He was utterly incapable of toning down any of his emotions or points of view to make them more palatable to the people he wanted to persuade. Whether you agree with his arguments, or like his personality, I don't think it is possible to read this article without admiring his courage.