“You really loved me, I know you did”
The famous author Oscar Wilde was in love with a man named Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas. Homosexuality was illegal at the time, and there was a huge stigma against the LGBTQ community. So they had to have a secret relationship. Alfred’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, found out about their secret love. So Oscar Wilde was put in prison for “gross indecency” for four years because of it, while Alfred served two. During this time, he decided to end their relationship. This letter was Oscar’s response.
“There is, I know, one answer to all that I have said to you, and that is that you loved me: that all through those two and a half years during which the Fates were weaving into one scarlet pattern the threads of our divided lives you really loved me. Yes: I know you did. No matter what your conduct to me was, I always felt that at heart you really did love me.
Though I saw quite clearly that my position in the world of Art, the interest my personality had always excited, my money, the luxury in which I lived, the thousand and one things that went to make up a life so charmingly, and so wonderfully improbable as mine was, were, each and all of them, elements that fascinated you and made you cling to me. Yet besides all this there was something more, some strange attraction for you. You loved me far better than you loved anybody else.
But you, like myself, have had a terrible tragedy in your life, though one of an entirely opposite character to mine. Do you want to learn what it was? It was this. In you, hate was always stronger than love.”