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I am told by More Adey in his letter that last summer you really did express on more than one occasion you desire to repay me “a little of what I spent” on you. As I said to him in my answer, unfortunately I spent on you my art, my life, my name, my place in history[161a], and if your family had all the marvellous things in the world at their command, or what the world holds as marvellous, genius, beauty, wealth, high position and the like, and laid them all at my feet, it would not repay me for one tithe of the smallest things that have been taken from me, or one tear of the least tears that I have shed. However, of course everything one does has to be paid for. Even to the Bankrupt it is so. You seem to be under the impression that Bankruptcy is a convenient means by which a man can avoid paying his debts, a “score off his creditors” in fact. It is quite the other way. It is the method by which a man’s creditors “score off” him, if we are to continue your favourite phrase, and by which the Law by the confiscation of all his property forces him to pay every one of his debts, and if he fails to do so leaves him as penniless as the commonest mendicant who stands in an archway, or creeps down a road, holding out his hand for the alms for which, in England at any rate, he is afraid to ask. The Law has taken from me not merely all that I have, my books, furniture, pictures, my copyright in my published works, my copyright in my plays, everything in fact from The Happy Prince and Lady Windermere’s Fan down to the stair carpets and door-scraper of my house, but also all that I am ever going to have. My interest in my marriage-settlement, for instance, was sold. Fortunately I was able to buy it in through my friends. Otherwise, in case my wife died, my two children during my lifetime would be as penniless as myself. My interest in our Irish estate, entailed on me by my own father, will I suppose have to go next. I feel very bitterly about its being sold, but I must submit.
听穆尔?艾迪在信中说，去年夏天你当真不止一次表示过，有意偿还我在你身上“花的一些钱”。我在给他的回信中说，不幸的是我在你身上花掉的是我的艺术、我的生命、我的名声、我的历史地位[161a]，而你的家庭即使占尽天下宝物，或世人视之为宝的东西，才华、美貌、财富、地位，等等，全拿出来摆在我跟前，也还不清我被拿去的万分之一，补不了我流的泪中最小的一滴。然而，人做的每一件事当然都要偿付的。甚至破了产也一样。你似乎觉得，有谁想要欠债不还，破产是快捷方式一条，实在是让“债权人丢分”的事。事实却是另一回事。这是让他的债权人使他“丢分”的办法，如果还用你喜欢的这个话说；而且判了破产，法庭通过没收他的一切财产，逼得他是有债必还，要是仍然还不清，就叫他身无分文，穷得像最卑贱的叫化子，或在拱道里站着，或在路上爬着，伸手要着那至少在英国他还羞于开口乞讨的施舍。法庭拿去的，不单是我所有的一切：书籍、家具、图画、所出版的书的版权、剧本的版权，说实在的是上至《快乐王子》和《温德米尔夫人的扇子》，下至楼梯的地毯和门前的擦鞋垫，无一剩下；就连我今后会得到的什么，也全都不能幸免。比如我在婚姻财产契约中的份额，也变卖了。幸好我能通过朋友又买了回来。否则的话，我妻子万一去世，我那两个孩子在我有生之年也会像我一样穷得一文不名。我家在爱尔兰的庄园，里头我父亲传给我的份额，猜想下次就该卖这个了。这让我非常痛心，可也只能认了。
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