1905] Oscar Wilde's Death Described 121 



leave the poet free to marry 4 My Lady.' Cockerell thinks that to have 

 been an afterthought, and that the poem really ended before the two 

 last stanzas, and that the wife eloped with her lover. Meredith, 

 Meynell says, seems to have persuaded himself that his wife, in real 

 life, left him for some such altruistic motive, but this must have been 

 self-delusion, as she certainly lived with her lover till her death. 



" 16th Nov. — I have become reconciled to my fate, the more so 

 because the rest has done me good, the pain is less and I have 

 lost all inclination to get up. Numbers of friends have been with me. 

 Yesterday I saw Ross, Oscar Wilde's friend, who was with him in his 

 last hours. I was curious to know about these and he told me every- 

 thing. Ross is a good honest fellow as far as I can judge, and stood 

 by Oscar when all had abandoned him. He used to go to him in 

 prison, being admitted on an excuse of legal business, for Ross managed 

 some of Mrs. Wilde's affairs while her husband was shut up. He told 

 me Oscar was very hardly treated during his first year, as he was a 

 man of prodigious appetite and required more food than the prison 

 allowance gave him, also he suffered from an outbreak of old symp- 

 toms and was treated as a malingerer when he complained of it. Ross's 

 representation got attention paid to these things, and in the last eight 

 months of his imprisonment, Wilde had books and writing materials in 

 abundance and so was able to write his ' De Profundis.' I asked him 

 how much of this poem was sincere. He said, 'As much as possi- 

 ble in a man of Oscar's artificial temperament. While he was writing 

 he was probably sincere, but his " style " was always in his mind. It 

 was difficult to be sure about him. Sometimes when I called he was 

 hysterical, at other times laughing. When Oscar came out of prison 

 he had the idea of becoming a Catholic, and he consulted me about it, 

 for you know I am a Catholic. I did not believe in his sincerity and 

 told him if he really meant it, to go to a priest, and I discouraged him 

 from anything hasty in the matter. As a fact, he had forgotten all 

 about it in a week, only from time to time he used to chaff me as one 

 standing in the way of his salvation. I would willingly have helped him 

 if I had thought him in earnest, but I did not fancy religion being 

 made ridiculous by him. I used to say that if it came to his dying I 

 would bring a priest to him, not before. I am not at all a moral man, 

 but I had my feeling on this point and so the matter remained between 

 us. After he had been nearly a year out of prison he took altogether 

 to drink, and the last two years of his life were sad to witness. I was at 

 Rome when I heard that he was dying and returned at once to Paris 

 and found him in the last stage of meningitis. It is a terrible disease 

 for the bystanders, though they say the sufferer himself is unconscious. 

 He had only a short time to live, and I remembered my promise and got 

 a priest to come to him. I asked him if he would consent to see him, 



