I sent Oscar the clothes and a cheque, and shortly after his release got a letter[7] thanking me.
A little later I heard on good authority a story which Oscar afterwards confirmed, that when he left Reading Gaol the correspondent of an American paper offered him L1,000 for an interview dealing with his prison life and experiences, but he felt it beneath his dignity to take his sufferings to market.

He thought it better to borrow than to earn.
He is partly to be excused, perhaps, when one remembers that he had still some pounds left of the large sums given him before his condemnation, by Miss S----, Ross, More Adey, and others.

Still his refusal of such a sum as that offered by the New York paper shows how utterly contemptuous he was of money, even at a moment when one would have thought money would have been his chief preoccupation.

He always lived in the day and rather heedlessly.
As soon as he left prison he crossed with some friends to France, and went to stay at the Hotel de la Plage at Berneval, a quiet little village near Dieppe.

M.Andre Gide, who called on him there almost as soon as he arrived, gives a fair mental picture of him at this time.