Oscar Wilde, by Montgomery Hyde

[p049] Oscar Wilde: The Aftermath. By H. Mont gomery Hyde. Methuen, 30/-. Wilde was sentenced in 1895 to two years’ hard labour, and this book is concerned with his suffering under the harsh penal regulations. After 14 months of solitary confinement, picking oakum and sewing mailbags, he was on the verge of insanity. His

[p050] BOOK REVIEWS petition for release in 1896 is a moving statement of the effect of the system on any prisoner. He writes: of ‘isolation from all human and humane infiuences’ and his fear of ‘absoiute and entire insanity’ while his eyesight, hearing and general healih deveriorated. His petition, a true statement of his condition, was refused. Wiude’s ‘Bailad of Reading Gaol’ expresses his two-year torment, his hauwed of a prison system which broke his health and spirit (he died in 1900 at the age of 460). He recog- nised the destructive nature of the system and the sadistic bent of many of the warders in the application of the crank and treadmill punishments. ‘Ic is not the prisoners who need reformation. It is the prisons,’ he says in a letter. The author of this book incribes it to ‘those who have toiled in the cause of penal reform’. Strange complacent talk this at the present. Things have changed little since Wiide’s day, as we see the way ‘justice’ and punishment are handed out in the Profumo affair, or the way our police and warders handle suspects and prisoners. So if we are hopeful about our legal and prison system, events at the moment serve as a useful corrective, and the author, an MP, may be having second thoughis. His book does, however, serve as a useful account of the last years of Wilde’s life in prison and after, when he was hounded out of British society. G.W. Modern Japan