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

By the time Harold Child favorably reviewed Masques and Phases in the Times
Literary Supplement, Ross had begun to enjoy some prominence as an expert
on modern art.⁷₁ Margot Asquith, spouse of the recently elected prime minister,
invited Ross into her influential circle, which in turn led to his acquaintance with
high-ranking officials whose clout ultimately resulted in Ross’s appointment as
a trustee of the Tate Gallery in 1917. Since Crosland and Douglas, as they put it,
could not stand “the tee-total, socialistic, and wild-cat Premier,” the battle lines
with Ross became sharply defined.⁷² In these hostile circumstances, Ross decided
to bequeath the complete manuscript of De Profundis to the British Museum; the
director, Sir Frederic Kenyon, accepted Ross’s gift on 15 November 1909. Under
the terms of this bequest, the museum agreed to keep the document sealed for
fifty years. Moreover, as Maureen Borland discloses, the director and his colleagues
acknowledged that in parting with this manuscript Ross was making
considerable financial sacrifice. Furthermore, the trustees understood that Ross
wished to ensure that no members of Douglas’s family would be hurt by the
contents.⁷³ In the manuscript, after all, Wilde mercilessly attacks Douglas for
supposed negligence: “Why did you not write to me? Was it cowardice? Was it
callousness? What was it?” (Complete Letters, 725). Nowhere does Wilde appear
to have understood that Douglas might have been legally compromised had this
aristocrat sent any mail to the prison authorities, who as a matter of course vetted
incoming and outgoing correspondence with inmates.⁷⁴ In the process of
berating Douglas for his incomprehensible silence, Wilde heaps praise upon
Ross for writing at twelve-weekly intervals “real letters”—ones that “have the
quality of a French causerie intime” (something greater, it seems, than any of
Douglas’s literary efforts) (726). Yet no matter how flattering Wilde’s comments
are toward Ross, it is strange to think that Ross assumed authority over a manuscript
that ostensibly takes the form of a personal letter that begins “Dear Bosie.”
To the end of his days, Douglas protested (perhaps rightly) that the document
initially placed in Ross’s hands, and then handed over to the museum, was his.⁷₅
In any case, Ross, in his role as Wilde’s literary executor, had been entrusted
with a manuscript that he seems not to have handled with due caution. In 1909,
a German translation edited by Meyerfeld presented an extensively annotated text
of a larger portion of the document than had previously appeared. This edition
opens with a long, complimentary letter from Ross to Meyerfeld, dated 31 August
1907, in which Ross discloses who has been privy to the complete manuscript:
“With the exception of Major Nelson [governor of Reading Gaol], myself, and
Introduction 21