I feel dreadfully sorry for him."

The delicate one adroitly changed the conversation and coffee came in,
but Miss Stanley said to me:

"I wish I had known him, there must have been great good in him to win
such friendship."

"Great charm in any case," I replied, "and that's rarer among men than
even goodness."

The first news that came to us from prison was not altogether bad. He
had broken down and was in the infirmary, but was getting better. The
brave Stewart Headlam, who had gone bail for him, had visited him, the
Stewart Headlam who was an English clergyman, and yet, wonder of
wonders, a Christian. A little later one heard that Sherard had seen
him, and brought about a reconciliation with his wife. Mrs. Wilde had
been very good and had gone to the prison and had no doubt comforted
him. Much to be hoped from all this....

For months and months the situation in South Africa took all my heart
and mind.

In the first days of January, 1896, came the Jameson Raid, and I sailed
for South Africa. I had work to do for _The Saturday Review_, absorbing
work by day and night. In the summer I was back in England, but the task
of defending the Boer farmers grew more and more arduous, and I only
heard that Oscar was going on as well as could be expected.

Some time later, after he had been transferred to Reading Gaol, bad news
leaked out, news that he was breaking up, was being punished,
persecuted. His friends came to me, asking: could anything be done? As
usual my only hope was in the supreme authority. Sir Evelyn Ruggles
Brise was the head of the Prison Commission; after the Home Secretary,
the most powerful person, the permanent official behind the
Parliamentary figure-head; the man who knew and acted behind the man who
talked. I sat down and wrote to him for an interview: by return came a
courteous note giving me an appointment.

I told him what I had heard about Oscar, that his health was breaking
down and his reason going, pointed out how monstrous it was to turn
prison into a torture-chamber. To my utter astonishment he agreed with
me, admitted, even, that an exceptional man ought to have exceptional
treatment; showed not a trace of pedantry; good brains, good heart. He
went so far as to say that Oscar Wilde should be treated with all
possible consideration, that certain prison rules which pressed very
hardly upon him should be interpreted as mildly as possible. He admitted
that the punishment was much more se