Oscar had begun his prison sentence of two years hard labour in the spring of 1895, being housed first in the London jails of Pentonville and Wandsworth where he soon was physically broken by the poor food, deprived conditions and the meaningless, gruelling tasks that made up his sentence. In the chapel at Wandsworth, he collapsed and burst his right ear-drum. He was transferred to Reading jail in the hopes he would be given easier work but the brutal governor made sure he was punished for any infringement.
In 1897 a new governor Major Nelson was installed and made a point of visiting his infamous prisoner and bringing him a book from his own library, a small act of kindness that reduced Oscar to tears. Oscar had not been allowed to write anything while in prison but Nelson soon arranged for him to have a page of paper at a time to write to friends and his legal team, an important lifeline to any prisoner approaching the end of their sentence.
Apart from the surroundings and the debilitating nature of his punishment, Oscar had been emotionally distraught that he had heard nothing from Lord Alfred Douglas, his volatile young lover. With time to dwell on the catastrophic nature of their relationship, Oscar slowly worked on a letter to 'Bosie' which took the last three months of his confinement, each page was taken away when completed. He was not allowed to send it to Douglas or Oscar's close friend Robbie Ross but Major Nelson gave him the many pages when he was released.
On release he gave it to Ross to have a copy typed up and the original sent to Douglas but Ross wisely did the reverse; Douglas burnt his copy without bothering to read it. The first publication was in 1905, five years after Oscar's death from Meningitis, believed to have been a result of the fall in Wandsworth. It is a bitter irony that Lord Alfred Douglas was himself imprisoned for six months in 1923 for libelling no less that Winston Churchill.
Alone in his cell without any distractions, Oscar cast his memory back over their three years together and reveals to Lord Alfred - and himself - that their relationship was always one-sided with Oscar becoming just a pawn in the power-play between members of the poisonous family and, once he was no longer of use, was discarded...
HM Prison, ReadingOscar recalls with bitter clarity the times when his generosity wasn't reciprocated, most notably the occasion, when staying in Brighton, when he nursed Lord Alfred through a bout of influenza but when Oscar caught it 'Bosie' left him alone to suffer alone and when asked to simply fetch some water for him, Oscar was met with screaming rage. He also recalls the times when rooms were hired for him to meet a deadline for a play, only to be distracted by an insistent Douglas to take him out to many dinners.
Dear Bosie,
After long and fruitless waiting I have determined to write to you myself, as much for your sake as for mine, as I would not like to think that I had passed through two long years of imprisonment without ever having received a single line from you, or any news or message even, except such as gave me pain ...
Oscar constantly returns to the misery he inflicted on his wife Constance and his sons Cyril and Vyvyan and his misery in the knowledge that a court order forbade him from ever seeing them. He contrasts this with the damaging relationship between Lord Alfred and his dangerously vindictive father The Marquess of Queensbury. After Queensbury's eldest son Francis was found dead, a suspected suicide, having been implicated in a homosexual relationship with the Prime Minister, Queensbury pursued Oscar and Lord Alfred until Oscar fatally sued him for slander. Citing that Bosie had wanted to revenge the abuse that his mother had suffered at the hands of his father, Oscar tells Bosie he just has to see how Constance is a woman truly destroyed by a husband's actions.
Remarkably, despite his situation, there are still flashes of Oscar's preening ego at what the world has lost with his fall from grace. He writes well on the that great leveller, Pain - he remembers the disgrace he felt when he was surrounded by a jeering crowd while left to stand on Clapham Junction to the way to prison, and also the heartbreaking pathos of seeing his friend Robbie Ross raise his hat to him in salute as Oscar was led away from the courtroom. The sting in the tail is that on release he still wishes to see Bosie again, even after all that he now understands of their relationship. They did meet again three months after his release but lived together only for a few months in Naples before parting forever due to family pressures and their own disenchantment with each other.
Simon Callow certainly caught all the shifting emotions Oscar conjures up in the letter seated most of the time in a hard-backed chair, occasionally trudging around the stage as Oscar would have walked around the prison yard. It was a very powerful performance aided by Frank McGuinness' adaptation of the text.
It was well paced by director Mark Rosenblatt and the stark overhead lighting was courtesy of Paul Keogan. With two more breaks between productions in Classic Spring's year-long Oscar Wilde celebration at the Vaudeville, DE PROFUNDIS might just come back for another limited engagement.
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