Unbreakable Spirit

Abstract

It was about this time that I first met Oscar Wilde, a man generous to a fault and witty past belief. I have of him only pleasant memories. What happened in the years that followed, when his friends and admirers saw with the greatest pain the downfall of a man of genius, is not for me to write of or to criticize. We all have our faults, and as Father Bernard Vaughan once said to me: ‘Don’t let us ever blame anyone for what they do, but instead kneel down and thank God that it is only through His goodness we are free from the things we might be tempted to condemn in others.’ Oscar Wilde had to pay for the perversion of his genius¹ in bitter agony and bloody sweat. I knew him as a charming companion from whose lips I never heard fall anything but the most delightful sentiments and the finest thoughts. So I prefer to remember him as I knew him, and to those who never enjoyed the privilege of being in his company, and read of him only when he had ceased to be the real Wilde we all admired, I would venture to recall a speech in ‘The Merchant of Venice,’ which, I believe, begins with a line to the effect that ‘The quality of mercy is not strained.’

Me and My Missus; Fifty Years on the Stage (London: Cassell, 1939) pp. 97–9. Editor’s title.