nglish governing
classes; here was to be seen a famous ex-Minister; there the fine face
of the president of a Royal society; at one table in the Cafe de la
Paix, a millionaire recently ennobled, and celebrated for his
exquisite taste in art; opposite to him a famous general. It was even
said that a celebrated English actor took a return ticket for three or
four days to Paris, just to be in the fashion. The mummer returned
quickly; but the majority of the migrants stayed abroad for some time.
The wind of terror which had swept them across the Channel opposed
their return, and they scattered over the Continent from Naples to
Monte Carlo and from Palermo to Seville under all sorts of pretexts.

The gravest result of the magistrate's refusal to accept bail was
purely personal. Oscar's income dried up at the source. His books were
withdrawn from sale; no one went to see his plays; every shop keeper
to whom he owed a penny took immediate action against him. Judgments
were obtained and an execution put into his house in Tite Street.
Within a month, at the very moment when he most needed money to fee
counsel and procure evidence, he was beggared and sold up, and because
of his confinement in prison the sale was conducted under such
conditions that, whereas in ordinary times his effects would have
covered the claims against him three times over, all his belongings
went for nothing, and the man who was making L4,000 or L5,000 a year
by his plays was adjudicated a bankrupt for a little over L1,000. L600
of this sum were for Lord Queensberry's costs which the Queensberry
family--Lord Douglas of Hawick, Lord Alfred Douglas and their
mother--had promised in writing to pay, but when the time came,
absolutely refused to pay. Most unfortunately many of Oscar's MSS.
were stolen or lost in the disorder of the sheriff's legal
proceedings. Wilde could have cried, with Shylock, "You take my life
when you do take away the means whereby I live." But at the time nine
Englishmen out of ten applauded what was practically persecution.

A worse thing remains to be told. The right of free speech which
Englishmen pride themselves on had utterly disappeared, as it always
does disappear in England when there is most need of it. It was
impossible to say one word in Wilde's defence or even in extenuation
of his sin in any London print. At this time I owned the greater part
of the _Saturday Review_ and edited it. Here at any rate one might
have thought