plays and books, would it? That reason ought to be
sufficient, I grant you; but, you see yourself, it would not be so
regarded."
"You are right, I suppose," I had to admit. "But if I got you a petition
from men of letters, asking you to release Wilde for his health's sake:
would that do?"
Sir Ruggles Brise jumped at the suggestion.
"Certainly," he exclaimed, "if some men of letters, men of position,
wrote asking that Wilde's sentence should be diminished by three or
four months on account of his health, I think it would have the best
effect."
"I will see Meredith at once," I said, "and some others. How many
names should I get?"
"If you have Meredith," he replied, "you don't need many others. A
dozen would do, or fewer if you find a dozen too many."
"I don't think I shall meet with any difficulty," I replied, "but I will let
you know."
"You will find it harder than you think," he concluded, "but if you get
one or two great names the rest may follow. In any case one or two
good names will make it easier for you."
Naturally I thanked him for his kindness and went away absolutely
content. I had never set myself a task which seemed simpler. Meredith
could not be more merciless than a Royal Commission. I returned to
my office in The Saturday Review and got the Royal Commission
report on this sentence of two years' imprisonment with hard labour.
The Commission recommended that it should be wiped off the Statute
Book as too severe. I drafted a little petition as colourless as possible:
"In view of the fact that the punishment of two years' imprisonment
with hard labour has been condemned by a Royal Commission as too
severe, and inasmuch as Mr. Wilde has been distinguished by his work
in letters and is now, we hear, suffering in health, we, your petitioners,
pray--and so forth and so on."
I got this printed, and then sat down to write to Meredith asking when I
could see him on the matter. I wanted his signature first to be printed
underneath the petition, and then issue it. To my astonishment Meredith
did not answer at once, and when I pressed him and set forth the facts
he wrote to me that he could not do what I wished. I wrote again,
begging him to let me see him on the matter. For the first time in my
life he refused to see me: he wrote to me to say that nothing I could
urge would move him, and it would therefore only be painful to both of
us to find ourselves in conflict.
Nothing ever surprised me more than this attitude of Meredith's. I knew
his poetry pretty well, and knew how severe he was on every sensual
weakness perhaps because it was his own pitfall. I knew too what a
fighter he was at heart and how he loved the virile virtues; but I thought
I knew the man, knew his tender kindliness of heart, the founts of pity
in him, and I felt certain I could count on him for any office of human
charity or generosity. But no, he was impenetrable, hard. He told me
long afterwards that he had rather a low opinion of Wilde's capacities,
instinctive, deep-rooted contempt, too, for the showman in him, and an
absolute abhorrence of his vice.
"That vile, sensual self-indulgence puts back the hands of the clock," he
said, "and should not be forgiven."
For the life of me I could never forgive Meredith; never afterwards was
he of any importance to me. He had always been to me a standard
bearer in the eternal conflict, a leader in the Liberation War of
Humanity, and here I found him pitiless to another who had been
wounded on the same side in the great struggle: it seemed to me
appalling. True, Wilde had not been wounded in fighting for us; true,
he had fallen out and come to grief, as a drunkard might. But after all
he had been fighting on the right side: had been a quickening
intellectual influence: it was dreadful to pass him on the wayside and
allow him callously to bleed to death. It was revoltingly cruel! The
foremost Englishman of his time unable even to understand Christ's
example, much less reach his height!
This refusal of Meredith's not only hurt me, but almost destroyed my
hope, though it did not alter my purpose. I wanted a figurehead for my
petition, and the figurehead I had chosen I could not get. I began to
wonder and doubt. I next approached a very different man, the late
Professor Churton Collins, a great friend of mine, who, in spite of an
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