Octave Mirbeau’s searing 1895 essay on Oscar Wilde’s brutal imprisonment and hard labour sentence. A powerful critique of Victorian England’s barbaric justice system and the hypocrisy of civilised society’s treatment of prisoners.
A few days ago, Le Gaulois published an account of the horrifying daily torment that poor Oscar Wilde endures in his prison. The report—though hardly designed to stir emotion, possessing all the dry, impersonal brevity of a police record—haunts you like Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum.” It evokes the same terror, made worse by the knowledge that this isn’t literary fiction but cold reality. Never has any crime, however heinous, filled me with such shuddering horror. This account transports you beyond our century to some distant, barbarous age—to that dark medieval era whose masterpieces could never erase the bloodstains of torture or dispel the stench of burning flesh. The vision obsesses me like a ghastly nightmare: this unfortunate man and a thousand other nameless martyrs turning the treadmill, constantly terrified that if exhaustion or despair makes them pause for even a moment, death awaits.
Nothing is missing from this medieval tableau—not even the shifty, clean-shaven face of the clergyman, standing in for the hooded monk, who daily visits these suffering souls to speak of human justice and divine mercy. Oh, that clergyman! You will find him wherever blood and tears flow. He is the same one who presides over colonial massacres, Bible in hand, sanctifying torture, legitimising depravity, covering with his greasy pedant’s coat the work of savage destruction and vile conquest that will later become the shame of our times. The monks of Cortés and Pizarro haven’t changed—they have merely swapped their rough habits for the shiny frock coats of shopkeepers.
How is it possible that physical tortures like those inflicted on Oscar Wilde are still tolerated in today’s judicial practices? When you think about it, it’s appalling that in this dark corner of social life, none of the progress that has transformed so many less essential aspects of human liberation has yet penetrated. In England especially, this seems more shocking than anywhere else. Walk through London, for instance, and you are struck more than elsewhere by the tangible reality of progress. There, the modern movement towards individual liberty is most apparent. No soldiers dragging their sabres through the streets; the obliging, polite constables show none of the surly manner, intolerance, or brutality of our policemen. They carry only harmless truncheons, just as the rare soldiers you encounter carry nothing but small canes. Authority keeps itself hidden; at any rate, it doesn’t present itself in violent form, marked by some threatening attribute of force or coercion. Nowhere else in the world is urban life more respected. Which makes the contrast between this freedom and this violent barbarism all the more glaring and infuriating.
One day, as I was philosophising with an Englishman about these matters, he told me:
“You marvel at our civilisation and our deeply rooted sense of individual liberty. Yes, that’s the general impression visitors take away from London, having seen only its surface. These qualities that strike you stem from our racial character, not from any consciously superior social system. Do you know what this really means? ‘We haven’t time to waste on all those demonstrations, parades, and military clutter that you still honour, any more than on cabmen’s quarrels and the thousand petty disturbances of the street that hinder and delay business.’ The laws have nothing to do with it. What you admire in us is merely a manifestation of our selfishness. We’re no better than other peoples, and our political institutions aren’t essentially superior to yours. They’re all the same, really—which is to say they’re worthless, crushing humanity with the same weight whether in North or South, East or West… As for Oscar Wilde and his sentence, yes, even here it caused a moment of shock. We were largely ignorant of what hard labour actually entailed. There was only one opinion: ‘It’s abominable! A relic of old barbarous customs that must be changed at all costs for the honour of civilisation!’ And then, having paid this tribute to pity, we thought no more about it and won’t think of it again until another incident reminds us that hard labour really exists and must be abolished. Alas! Hard labour exists everywhere—in Russia, land of bloody caprice, as much as in Germany, France, or Italy. The form of torture varies by country, but human suffering loses not a single cry nor drop of blood, believe me. And what’s curious is that we’ve reformed everything except the machinery of justice! Every social organ has been more or less patched up and improved, except the judicial organ, where the soul of barbarous times and the madness of ancient violence against humanity remain intact and respected… Tell me, in France, isn’t the examining magistrate, with his sovereign powers and formidable authority unchecked by any control or responsibility, a monstrosity, a permanent affront to the very Justice he embodies? Aren’t the methods he uses to extract confessions from those he suspects or wants to convict almost always either clear offences or actual crimes? Don’t they preserve the memory of old tortures, aren’t they in reality an application—always moral, but often physical—of the abolished rites of the Inquisition? We must have the courage to say it and say it again. Judge though he may be, a judge is a man like any other. Perhaps more so than others, and more subject through his profession to temptations and manias that deform him into a monomaniac, a delinquent, as the philosophers say. A friend of mine, a very distinguished scientist, had occasion to study the brain of a judge who during his lifetime was considered admirable in his profession, of superior integrity and lucid intelligence. Well, he found profound lesions of the kind observed only in the most hardened criminals: he discovered traces of dangerous madness. Think of all the crimes, all the violence this man could commit with impunity! But of course! How could it be otherwise? Everyone agrees on this! And nothing is done! And nothing can be done! Perhaps centuries more will pass before the necessary reforms are attempted, before our judicial system is completely overhauled in line with the new conditions of life…”
And when I asked specifically for his opinion on Oscar Wilde, the Englishman replied simply:
“Oscar Wilde will serve his sentence, his full sentence… For what he committed wasn’t a crime, not even an offence… It was a sin.”
1895.
This is one of 50+ rare French literary texts translated into English for the first time on this site.
Léon Hennique Novel 