Rupert Croft-Cooke > Quotes

“IT was a sad if not an altogether broken young man who came to live in London after Wilde’s death. He could not yet realize that people, and particularly people in what was still called Society, had an uneasy conscience about their treatment of his friend and would fasten on him as a convenient scapegoat. We did not kill the man’s genius, they said in effect, we did not encourage a conspiracy to imprison him by means of a preposterous law, we are not to blame for his barren last years and early death; it was all the fault of this young man who bewitched him into a disastrous attack on his father, who is still free, rich, handsome, as we are not.”
― Rupert Croft-Cooke, Bosie: Lord Alfred Douglas, His Friends and Enemies

“He thought it exceedingly unlikely that he would ever have married any girl, however many millions she had, if he had not loved her, and this was probably true enough, for what it is worth. Love and a million dollars is obviously a more attractive proposition than love without it, especially to a young man whose only skills were sonneteering and riding, who had been brought up to the idea of wealth and who had just run through most of his inheritance.”
― Rupert Croft-Cooke, Bosie: Lord Alfred Douglas, His Friends and Enemies

“...I found in them the qualities I looked for in professional writers and artists of all kinds, a total dedication to their work, not necessarily obvious but discernible all the same, compassion, intelligence rather than intellect, and that peculiar attitude to the world in general, half of mockery, half of deep concern...”
― Rupert Croft-Cooke, The caves of Hercules

“I have found, though, that all the evidence shows that Douglas's conduct at the time, however impulsive and ill-advised, was honourable 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.”
― Rupert Croft-Cooke, Bosie: Lord Alfred Douglas, His Friends and Enemies