Oscar Wilde and the Murders at Reading Gaol: A Mystery (6 page)

I stepped into the waiting bathtub. The water was cold and the colour of dung. I washed myself while Warder Harrison stood watching. ‘You are overweight, Wilde. The treadmill will be to your benefit.’ I said nothing. What could I say? ‘You’ll be on it for six hours a day for the first month – twenty minutes on, five minutes off. It’s useful exercise – the equivalent of climbing six thousand feet of hillside daily. You’ll be a fit man before you’re through.’

I stepped out of the tub and the warder handed me a small brown rag with which to dry myself. ‘There’s your uniform,’ he said, pointing with his rule to some garments that hung like a shroud from a peg in a corner of the wash-house. As I saw them I thought at once of Dürer’s drawing of Christ’s body taken down from the cross and wrapped in a winding cloth. As I donned them I thought of Watteau’s paintings of Pantaloon and Scaramouche. The prisoner’s garb is a costume, not a set of clothes. It makes him both a figure of tragedy and a figure of fun – a zany of sorrow, a shabby clown whose heart, we know, is broken.

I put on the uniform. The jacket and trousers were made of coarse grey serge, rough to the skin, and decorated from ankle to collar with a pattern of broad black arrows – the sign that the garments, like their wearer, are the property of Her Majesty. ‘Put on the cap,’ ordered Warder Harrison.

I put it on and was enveloped in darkness. The cap had a soft peak that hung down like a mask or veil.

‘There are slits for you to see through,’ said the warder. ‘Can you find them?’

I adjusted the cap until my eyes found the narrow slits, each one no wider than a penny, no deeper than a farthing’s rim. I half closed my eyes and the warder’s face came into view.

‘Outside your cell you will wear the cap at all times. If you fail to do so, you will be flogged. Do you understand?’

I bowed my hooded head, but said nothing.

‘We work what’s called the “separate system” here,’ Warder Harrison explained. ‘We keep you prisoners apart – at all times. You cannot communicate with one another so you cannot contaminate one another – or make trouble. You have separate, solitary cells. You lead separate, solitary lives. You may not speak to another prisoner – ever. You may not see another prisoner’s face.’

‘I will go mad,’ I said from behind the mask.

‘You will be silent at all times,’ said Warder Harrison.

My life at Pentonville was hell. For four weeks I endured the torment of the treadmill. Hour after hour, day after day, thirty-two of us silent, nameless, faceless wretches were caged within a gigantic wooden wheel, pacing, pacing, pacing – to no purpose beyond our own humiliation.

When my month on the treadmill was up – and I had lost two stone in weight – Warder Harrison told me I was ‘fit enough now to take on useful work’. For ten hours each day I was set to picking oakum – pulling hemp fibres from old tar-soaked rope. I made a poor fist of it. My fingers bled too readily.

Through all these weeks I spoke to no one and no one – beyond the prison chaplain – spoke to me. The chaplain – a good man, no doubt: God moves in a mysterious way – came to my cell to bring me the only two books the prison regulations would allow me: the Bible and John Bunyan’s
Pilgrim’s Progress
. As he handed over the precious volumes, he enquired, ‘Did you have morning prayers in your house, Wilde?’

‘No, sir,’ I said, ‘I am sorry. I fear not.’

‘You see where you are now,’ said the chaplain. ‘Reflect on that.’

My days were hell – and my nights were worse. Within our prisons three permanent punishments are authorised by law: 1. Hunger, 2. Insomnia, and 3. Disease. I could not sleep because in prison, until a man’s spirit has been broken, and been seen to be broken, he has no mattress to sleep on: his only bed is a bare board set on the floor of his cell, covered with one sheet and two thin blankets. I shivered all night long. And I lay bent double in agonies of hunger. The smell and sight of the prison food turned my stomach. For days I could not eat and when I did eat something – thin gruel for breakfast, bitter bread and black potatoes for lunch, suet and water and yet more gruel for supper – it produced in me violent diarrhoea.

Pentonville Prison when it was built, in the 1840s, had been equipped with a water closet in every cell, but these had been removed because the drains became so often blocked and the prisoners used the drainpipes to communicate with one another. Each water closet was duly replaced with a small tin pot. By day, a prisoner might empty his slops into the prison latrines. By night – from five o’clock in the evening when he would be locked into his cell, until morning – he had to live with them. My cell – like every other – was thirteen foot long, seven foot wide and nine foot high. Because of my diarrhoea, the stench within it was indescribable. On three occasions, the warder who unlocked me in the morning became violently sick as he opened my cell door.

I confess it. Out of my nature came wild despair; an abandonment to grief that was piteous even to look at; terrible and impotent rage; bitterness and scorn; anguish that wept aloud; misery that could find no voice; sorrow that was dumb. At Pentonville, in the black summer of 1895, I passed through every possible mood of suffering. Better than Wordsworth himself I knew what Wordsworth meant when he said:

Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark,

And has the nature of infinity.

One day – it was a Wednesday: 12 June 1895 – a man came to see me in my cell. I knew from the regulations that Warder Harrison had read out to me on the day of my arrival that I would not be allowed any visitors until I had served three months of my sentence, so who was this man?

‘I am a friend,’ he said. ‘We have met before.’

I turned my head away.

‘My name is Haldane,’ he said. ‘I am a Member of Parliament and a member of the Home Office committee investigating prisons.’

His name meant nothing to me.

‘The prison chaplain,’ he went on, ‘tells me that you are depressed, and will not listen to any spiritual comfort. He would you were more patient. Prison calls for patience.’

‘I could be patient,’ I said, still not looking at the man, ‘for patience is a virtue. But it is not patience you want here: it is apathy. And apathy is a vice.’

‘You are a brilliant man, Wilde,’ said my visitor. ‘You have not yet used your great literary gift to the full because you have not yet found any great subject of your own. You have wasted your genius in a life of pleasure. You have squandered your youth wading in the shallows and have become enmeshed among the weeds. But, I wonder, could your misfortune now prove your salvation? May you not find your great subject here?’

Still I said nothing, though in that moment I knew that what the man spoke was true.

‘I am sorry to find you here,’ continued Mr Haldane, ‘and sorry to find you in this state of mind.’

I remained silent, so he turned to leave and, as he did so, he stretched out a hand and touched me on the shoulder. ‘I am a good friend of good friends of your wife’s,’ he said. ‘I can tell you that your wife is well. She is coping. She is in Switzerland and wants you to know that she is thinking of you – and so are your boys.’

He pressed my shoulder and, as he did so, the tears poured slowly from my eyes. ‘Do my sons know where I am?’ I asked.

‘They know that you have gone away. They do not know where.’

‘Do they know why?’

‘No.’

He put out his hand to shake mine and, as he did so, he glanced around the cell. ‘Do you have books here, Wilde?’

‘I have the Bible – and
Pilgrim’s Progress
.’

‘You should have others. A writer must have books to read. I will arrange it.’

The tears now tumbled down my cheeks. I tasted the salt and it was sweet as, together, Haldane and I drew up my reading list. We were circumspect in our choices. We settled on fifteen volumes – The
Confessions
of Saint Augustine, Mommsen’s
History of Rome
and Cardinal Newman’s
Essays on Miracles
among them.

Haldane’s visit was to me a miracle. In the hellhole that was Pentonville, in the depths of my despair, I was visited by an angel – who was also a Member of Parliament! God’s ways are mysterious indeed.

Mr Haldane was true to his word and later that very day ordered all fifteen books on my behalf at his own expense. The books arrived at the prison before the week was out, but the governor of Pentonville – indignant at Haldane’s intervention – refused to let me to have them, on the grounds that it was forbidden under the provisions of the Prison Act of 1865.

Haldane appealed at once to the Home Secretary, who agreed that I might be allowed the books. Haldane also arranged for my removal from Pentonville to another prison where he hoped the regime might assist me on what he termed my ‘road to recovery’.

His hope was confounded. On 4 July 1895 I was moved from the north of London to the south, from HM Prison Pentonville to HM Prison Wandsworth. It was at Wandsworth that I first encountered Warder Braddle.

Thomas Braddle was one the cruellest men I ever met. He was a man whom I would willingly have murdered and rejoiced in doing so.

3
4 July–18 November 1895
Wandsworth

D
id I murder Thomas Braddle? No. I lacked the courage. And the means. And the opportunity. But that I had the motive cannot be in doubt.

Thomas Braddle was a man of about fifty years of age: tall, sinewy, strong and vicious. His head was large and clean shaven; his skin was pockmarked and sallow; his face had the look of a skull covered by a square of cheesecloth pulled tight and tied behind the neck. His mouth was small; he had no lips to speak of; his nose was like a goblin’s, pointed and bent. It was the shape of nose that is born either of a street fight or a bout of syphilis.

‘Yes, Wilde –’ these were the first words he spoke to me – ‘I am as ugly as I look – and you, it seems, are as pathetic as I’d heard. Take off your cap and stand up straight, man.’ I did as I was ordered. ‘Your hair wants cutting. You’re not in Piccadilly now.’

Warder Braddle was charged with my reception at Wandsworth, as Warder Harrison had been at Pentonville. He read me the prison rules, as Warder Harrison had done. They were the same rules, but he read them with more relish than Warder Harrison had done.

‘Rule 11. “Silence must be observed on all occasions by day and night.” Do you hear that, Wilde?’ I said nothing. ‘Rule 12. “Every prisoner guilty of any of the following offences will subject himself to punishment: talking, shouting, cursing, swearing, singing, whistling, attempting to communicate by signs, by writing, or in any other way.” Do you hear that, Wilde? No writing. There will be no pen and paper for you here.’

‘May I have my books?’ I asked.

‘
Books?
’ Braddle hissed the word contemptuously. ‘
Books?
I saw no mention of “books” on the warrant. It spoke of “hard labour” – that I recall. I don’t believe there was any mention of “books”, Mister Wilde.’

In my distress, I turned my head away.

‘Look at me, Wilde –
look at me
. Where was I? Rule 12 – that’s the one. “Every prisoner guilty of any of the following offences will subject himself to punishment . . . Unnecessarily looking around or about at any time . . .” Have a care, Wilde. “. . . Looking out, or attempting to look out, at window or door of a cell . . . Not folding up clothing in a proper manner . . . Not washing feet twice a week, prior to using water to clean the cell . . .” Do you wash your feet, Wilde? I don’t believe you do. You stink, man.’

‘I have dysentery,’ I murmured.

He took a step towards me and sniffed about me like a dog around a lamp-post. ‘Is that it? Or is it the stench of corruption? I know what you are, Wilde. I followed your case. You’re a sodomite, Wilde. You take boys and you ruin them – for your pleasure.’

‘I deny it.’

‘Silence!’ barked Warder Braddle. ‘Rule 11 – have you forgotten it already? “Silence must be observed on all occasions by day and night.”
On all occasions
. Do you know what happens if you break the rules at Wandsworth Gaol, Wilde? You get beaten. And it hurts.’ He put down the rule book and unbuttoned his jacket pocket to inspect his watch. ‘It’s coming up for ten o’clock. As happy fortune would have it, I can show you how much it hurts right now. Put on your cap, Wilde.’