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While I am staying with you at Salisbury you are terribly alarmed at a threatening communication from a former companion of yours: you beg me to see the writer and help you: I do so: the result is Ruin to me[27a]. I am forced to take everything you have done on my own shoulders and answer for it. When, having failed to take your degree, you have to go down from Oxford, you telegraph to me in London to beg me to come to you. I do so at once[27b]: you ask me to take you to Goring, as you did not like, under the circumstances, to go home: at Goring you see a house that charms you: I take it for you: the result from every point of view is Ruin to me[27c]. One day you come to me and ask me, as a personal favour to you, to write something for an Oxford undergraduate magazine, about to be started by some friend of yours, whom I had never heard of in all my life, and knew nothing at all about. To please you — what did I not do always to please you? – I sent him a page of paradoxes destined originally for the Saturday Review. A few months later I find myself standing in the dock of the Old Bailey on account of the character of the magazine. It forms part of the Crown charge against me. I am called upon to defend your friend’s prose and your own verse. The former I cannot palliate; the latter I, loyal to the bitter extreme, to your youthful literature as to your youthful life, do very strongly defend[27d], and will not hear of your being a writer of indecencies. But I go to prison, all the same, for your friend’s undergraduate magazine, And “the Love that dares not tell its name.” At Christmas I give you a “very pretty present,” as you described it in your letter of thanks, on which I knew you had set your heart, worth some ￡40 or ￡50 at most. When the crash of my life comes, and I am ruined, the bailiff who seizes my library, and has it sold, does so to pay for the “very pretty present.” It was for that the execution was put into my house. At the ultimate and terrible moment when I am taunted, and spurred-on by your taunts, to take an action against your father and have him arrested, the last straw to which I clutch in my wretched efforts to escape is the terrible expense. I tell the solicitor in your presence that I have no funds, that I cannot possibly afford the appalling costs, that I have no money at my disposal. What I said was, as you know, perfectly true. On that fatal Friday instead of being in Humphreys’s office weakly consenting to my own ruin, I would have been happy and free in France, away from you and your father, unconscious of his loathsome card, and indifferent to your letters, if I had been able to leave the Avondale Hotel[27e]. But the hotel people absolutely refused to allow me to go. You had been staying with me for ten days: indeed you had ultimately, to my great and, you will admit, rightful indignation, brought a companion of yours to stay with me also: my bill for the ten days was nearly ￡140. The proprietor said he could not allow my luggage to be removed from the hotel till I had paid the account in full. That is what kept me in London. Had it not been for the hotel bill I would have gone to Paris on Thursday morning.
当我在索尔兹伯里同你在一起时，你被一封过去的一个同伴写的恐吓信吓坏了，求我去见那个写信人帮你说说。我去了。其结果是我遭殃[27a]，被迫负起你所作所为的全部责任。 当你没拿到学位，不得不从牛津下来，这时你打电报到伦敦，求我过来一下。我二话没说就去了[27b]：你要我带你去戈灵，因为在那种情况下你不想回家。 在戈灵你看上一处房子，我为你租了下来，其结果不管怎么看对我又是一场灾难[27c]。有一天你来找我，以个人名义求我帮忙，给一份牛津本科生杂志写点东西，该杂志即将由你的哪个朋友出版发行，此人我从未听说，也丝毫不知道他的背景。为了让你高兴—— 为了让你高兴我什么没做过? ——我把原来要给《周六评论》的一页悖语寄给了他。几个月后就发现自己因为该杂志的性质而站在了伦敦中央刑事法院的被告席上。这又成了刑事庭指控我的一部分罪状。我被传去为你朋友的文章和你本人的诗辩护。对前者我无从辩解；至于后者，出于对你羽毛未丰的文学和年轻气盛的生命恪守不渝的忠诚，我苦辩力辩到底[27d]，绝不承认你会写出有伤风化的文字。可到头来我照样进了监狱，就因为你朋友的本科生杂志和那首《不敢说出自己名字的爱》。在圣诞节时我给你一份用你在致谢信中的话说是“非常漂亮的礼物”，我知道你本来就看上它了，那礼物最多大约值四五十英镑。等到我遭了难，破了产，法警封了我的藏书，要卖了来抵买那份“非常漂亮的礼物”所欠的钱。正因为此庭令是在我家执行的。在那可怕的最后关头，我被你抢白，被你的抢白所激，对你父亲采取行动，申请将他逮捕了，在我万般无奈之中能抓住让我脱身的最后一根稻草，就是那可怕的费用。我当着你的面告诉过律师，我没钱，付不起那吓人的费用，我手头一点钱也没有。我所说的，你晓得，句句是实话。在那个致命的星期五，如果我能从阿汶代尔旅馆脱身的话，本可以不用在汉弗雷斯的办事处有气无力地同意宣告破产，而是逍遥自在地呆在法国，远离你和你父亲，他那令人恶心的明信片可以不管，你的来信也可以不理[27e]。可是旅馆的人绝对不让我走。你同我在那里住了十天，后来竟带了你的一个友伴来与我同住，这令我大为生气，你会承认我生气是有道理的。 那十天的旅馆费用差不多是140英镑，旅馆说要是不把账付清，就不让我把行李提走。这就把我困在伦敦了。要不是这笔账，我早就在星期四去了巴黎。
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