Oscar Wilde and Modern Culture - Ohio University Press & Swallow ...

not in his or Douglas’s lifetime. To ensure the preservation of this work, Wilde
gave Ross specific instructions on how it should be copied on that “thoroughly
modern” machine, the typewriter (781). The typed copy, he insisted, should contain
“a wide rubricated margin” in which one could insert all corrections; this directive
suggests that Wilde probably wished to make emendations to the work
at some point in the future (781). Thereafter, as Wilde states in this letter, Ross
should dispatch the original manuscript to Douglas. “There is no need,” Wilde
adds, “to tell A.D. that a copy has been taken” (782). Once this was done, a further
typewritten copy was to be kept in Ross’s hands for safekeeping, while shorter
typewritten sections were to be sent to two cherished friends. Wilde had given
a title to his work: “[I]t may be spoken of as the Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis”
(Letter: In Prison and In Chains) (782). The title certainly accords with the fact
that the document is a letter addressed to “Dear Bosie.” At the same time, the
choice of title shows that this work, in a more general sense, comprises a selfstanding
epistle (one that Wilde believed should be conserved in typewritten
form). Consequently, the careful naming of this lengthy manuscript implies that
its meaning exceeds that of a regular item of correspondence.
In 1897, Ross followed all of Wilde’s directives bar one. In what may or may not
have been an act of disobedience—one that, at any rate, had serious consequences
—Ross held onto the original manuscript; he also may have failed, deliberately or
otherwise, to send a copy to Douglas.⁴³ Although he was not officially recognized
as Wilde’s executor until 1906, Ross assumed responsibility for the maintenance
of the literary estate upon Wilde’s death, and he kept in his hands papers belonging
to Wilde, including several personal letters written by Douglas. Probably
because German culture expressed the greatest interest in Wilde’s work (Max
Reinhardt’s 1902 production of Salomé, which inspired Strauss’s opera, is one
example), Ross released to Max Meyerfeld—who translated several of Wilde’s
writings—a typewritten copy of the prison letter to Bosie. As Horst Schroeder
has explained in detail, Meyerfeld’s tactful selection of excerpts from this work
appeared in Die neue Rundschau in January–February 1905.⁴⁴ Presumably in
compliance with Ross’s wishes, Meyerfeld’s translation makes no mention that
the entire work is addressed to Douglas. Ross later informed Meyerfeld that,
after he first submitted his transcription of the prison document to respected
publisher Algernon Methuen, he “anticipated refusal, as though the work were
my own.”⁴₅ Methuen’s reader, E. V. Lucas, however, had faith in the manuscript
and recommended publication, as well as suggesting that it should be called De
Introduction 13