Dear Oscar,

My state of wonderment is not at the effect of all that surrounds me, is not the appreciation of all of the elements of being, nor is it any form of sensory overload – it is all about wondering.

If you had lived.

If you had never got into so much bother.

If some level of tolerance and understanding could have saved you from persecution.

Today such levels of supposed tolerance and understanding do exist, but the same parade of characters and caricatures populate popular consciousness, are displayed within the media, all doing what they have been doing certainly since your time, and probably a lot longer. Women simpering around men, gay men kept in the background, or allowed to perform, to reveal levels of absurdity, make everyone laugh.

Things have moved on, things have not moved on at all – it is a constant theme of mine, Oscar dear, because I just keep on being reminded, and I do not have to wonder for very long, how things would be if …. because they never are.

The dominant order asserts itself, and reasserts itself.

I remember that when you were in prison they put you on a treadmill, and do you know, Oscar, that in the United Kingdom the use of the treadmill as a punishment for misdemeanours was outlawed by the Prison Act of 1898 – one year after your release. Ah, the hands of fate ……

Only ever variations on a theme.

Best wishes to you,

Algernon B. Duffoure

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