Look at this fucking hipster

Came across this article in The Telegraph about a collection of "affectionate" letters Oscar Wilde wrote to magazine editor Alsager Vian in 1887 (they're being auctioned off), causing me to think about Wilde, and the tragedy his life became. Considering the moral climate he lived in, it is remarkable he lasted as long as he did, and his relationship with the poisonous Bosie Douglas obviously did not help.

I've always loved him, and this is probably my favorite of his depictions (although this one is cropped—don't get the full Oscar-effect without seeing the flamboyant dress—he was among the first, and still greatest, of the hipsters). It was reading his early poetry when I was a teenager, as well as De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol that originally made me a fan, and the more you learn about him, the greater your affection for him becomes. His eyes hold the key, I think. He was a brilliant guy, no slouch at Greek and Latin like Bill Shakespeare was (he graduated with double-firsts, from Oxford), famous for his verses, plays, and novel, and his wit was known and feared by the pompous and the satisfied everywhere. But have you ever seen eyes more tender, more vulnerable, than these?

If you haven't read The Ballad of Reading Gaol, I encourage you to do it. Wilde wasn't originally incarcerated at Reading, confined initially at Wandsworth, where he was forbidden books or even writing impliments, and nearly died from illness and injury. When he was transferred to Reading, the Londoners at the train platform jeered and spit at him. He completed his term there, and from it created the referenced poem, which would be the last art he would make. These verses are selected from near the end of this long poem:

They think a murderer's heart would taint
Each simple seed they sow.
It is not true! God's kindly earth
Is kindlier than men know,
And the red rose would but blow more red,
The white rose whiter blow.

They hanged him as a beast is hanged:
They did not even toll
A requiem that might have brought
Rest to his startled soul,
But hurriedly they took him out,
And hid him in a hole.

They stripped him of his canvas clothes,
And gave him to the flies;
They mocked the swollen purple throat
And the stark and staring eyes:
And with laughter loud they heaped the shroud
In which their convict lies.

I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in goal
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.

With bars they blur the gracious moon,
And blind the goodly sun:
And they do well to hide their Hell,
For in it things are done
That Son of God nor son of Man
Ever should look upon!

The vilest deeds like poison weeds
Bloom well in prison-air:
It is only what is good in Man
That wastes and withers there:
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
And the Warder is Despair

For they starve the little frightened child
Till it weeps both night and day:
And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,
And gibe the old and grey,
And some grow mad, and all grow bad,
And none a word may say.

Yeah, great stuff. Still makes me sad and angry, thinking of it—not only that it was done to him, a man who never hurt anyone, and who added to this world far more than he took—but that the kind of cruelty and despair he endured still happens, mainly to the poor, the uneducated, and the abused. All in all, we are still a barbaric lot.

Another thing occurred to me—everyone always talks about Wilde's reputed last words—something like, "This wallpaper is hideous—one of has to go!", or some such, which is droll, and typically Oscar. But I remember another thing he said to his old friend Robert Ross a day or two before that I like better—sad and touching, and still funny: "When the last trumpet sounds, and we're couched in our porphyry tombs, I shall turn and whisper to you, `Robbie, Robbie, let us pretend we do not hear it.' "

Surely, God reserved a special place for Oscar. How can you not love him?