Oscar Wilde was ill, "When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting." Wilde blamed himself, though, for the ethical degradation of character that he allowed Douglas to bring about in him and took responsibility for his own fall, "I am here for having tried to put your father in prison." The first half concludes with Wilde forgiving Douglas, for his own sake as much as Douglas's. The second half of the letter traces Wilde's spiritual journey of redemption and fulfilment through his prison reading. He realised that his ordeal had filled his soul with the fruit of experience, however
A Conversation with Oscar Wilde that the sculpture "already evokes more favourable response from the public than any other statue I know in London, with the possible exception of Peter Pan" (a much-reproduced statue, the original of which stands in Kensington Gardens). Charles Spencer, chief drama critic of "The Telegraph", while professing his liking for the artist as a person, wrote how he loathed her sculptures. With respect to "A Conversation", he wrote: The sculpture was one of five works or events considered in "The Resurrection of Oscar Wilde: A Cultural Afterlife", along with "the consecration of a window in Wilde's honour in Poet's Corner,