Stephen Gibson

They sold at auction Wilde’s cellblock key, the one for C wing in Reading Gaol— Wilde’s name was his cell number: C.3.3. Wilde was convicted of “gross indecency,” got two years hard labor and the treadwheel— they got £15,000 for Wilde’s cellblock key. Wilde and (his lover), Lord Alfred Douglas (“Bosie”), would pick up “rent […]

  He watches from a field; he’s there to gloat— the video is from a cattle-car point of view; grinning, the boy draws a finger across his throat.   The middle of nowhere—mountains, small, remote; the name of some village no one ever knew— he watches from a field; he’s there to gloat.   A […]

  Two workers were repairing it the day we visited— one worker passing thatch to one on a ladder; our friend Judy, a photographer, said this was a favorite place for her: the dovecote once bred   pigeons and doves for the dinner table: chambers inside—when the manor house was inhabited— filled with squabs and […]

There were graffiti, initials, dates carved everywhere, much of it around doorjambs which had no doors; much also around window frames where the air just passed through—there was no more glass, not even shards, anywhere.   Alice S. and Robert W. visited before the Great War. They carved their initials, in 1912, with great care. […]