After his release from prison at the age of 46, Wilde suffered a bad case of meningitis following an ear infection which led him to his deadly demise. A man often ridiculed by the papers, but a believer in art for art's sake was ahead of his time and died after a short and often harsh life. After his death, a letter he sent to Douglas was published which seems to highlight the way prison broke him. He stated
"Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods and chronicle their return. With us, time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain. The paralysing immobility of a life every circumstance of which is regulated after an unchangeable pattern, so that we eat and drink and lie down and pray, or kneel at least for prayer, according to the inflexible laws of an iron formula: this immobile quality, that makes each dreadful day in the very minutest detail like its brother, seems to communicate itself to those external forces the very essence of whose existence is ceaseless change. "