Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Pages in good condition. Some light tanning and marking due to age. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> My friendship with Douglas was unbroken during the last twenty five years of his life so that although I had opportunities of hearing from him and those about him a certain amount of past history I have been dependent for most of it on research in which I have received the most generous assistance. In spite of my affection for Doaglas I had more than a suspicion that this research would reveal weaknesses and perhaps demerits in his behaviour at the time of the Wilde scandal to justify the popular and persistent abuse of him which initiated by Robert Ross has continued ever since the publication of Arthur Ransome’s book and the libel action which followed it in 1913. I have found though that all the evidence shows that Douglas’s conduct at the time however impulsive and ill-advised was honour- able and courageous in a degree scarcely to be expected of a young man of twenty-four faced with a tragic and dangerous situation and having only his own initiative his own sense of loyalty his own idea of right and wrong to guide him. The selfish youth who goaded Wilde to his doom and afterwards abandoned him is an artfully created myth for which however Douglas by his feverish protesta- tions and his abominable book Oscar Wilde and Myself must be held partially to blame. The truth was that alone among Wilde’s friends he (SP)