Oscar Wilde was the first modern celebrity. He made his name in London without actually doing anything by dressing outrageously and saying outrageous things and being seen in the right places at the right times. Unlike most of those who follow in his footsteps, he followed this up with conversation, lectures, essays, poetry, fairy tales, a novel and most famously his four great plays, the last of which “The Importance of Being Earnest” is still acclaimed as one of the greatest comedies in the language, which revealed his wit, his philosophy and, dare I say it, his genius. He was in his prime, forty-one years old, on the brink of who knows what, when he landed in prison for two years of hard labour, a sentence which broke him, leaving him to produce only two more major works, a poem and a letter, both produced largely while in prison, before he died at the age of forty-six, homeless, broke and exiled. Most astonishly, Wilde was largely the most responsible for bringing this disaster on. How someone so intelligent and perspicacious could do something so stupid is the subject of much speculation.
Wilde was convicted of “Gross Indecency” a euphemism in law for homosexual sex. The evidence against him, perhaps procured unethically and illegally, was overwhelming. Only one of his partners, Alfred Wood, ever stood in the dock for the same charge. To his credit, he never gave evidence against Wilde, and suffered the same sentence. But it was Wilde who started the majesty of English Law on its path when he sued The Marquess of Queensbury for Libel.
John Sholto Douglas was the father of Wilde’s lover Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas, and it was his attempts to break up their relationship that made him send letters and make scenes and write the fateful postcard. The argument has been made that one could almost sympathise with him – his oldest son had died in doubtful circumstances, possibly as a result of a homosexual affair, and so he did not want to lose another. But his paternal concern was limited at best. Queensberry was abusive to his wife and children, a philanderer, violent and a drunkard. He sanity was often in question, and his mania for pursuing his aims was frightening. Bosie too was capable of violence and madness, threatening to shoot his father, sending provoking letters telegrams and cards, meanwhile treating his lover as convenient source of funds. To a modern eye, the relationship between Wilde and Douglas, despite both their protestations, looks an abusive one, one man debasing himself entirely to the whims of the other who might respond with love or hate, kindness or fury, depending on his mood. In this maelstrom of emotion, fear and family, driven by so many factors, Wilde sued Queensberry over an almost illegible card left at Wilde’s Club which said, “For Oscar Wilde – posing somdomite” or “posing as somdomite” depending on who you read.
Wilde’s grandson, Merlin Holland, has published Irish Peacock and the Scarlet Marquess: The real trial of Oscar Wilde, the first unexpurgated publication of the transcript of the libel trial. The famous exchanges between Wilde and Queensberry’s barrister, Edward Carson are here in full and we can almost hear Wilde’s voice, witty and precise. Wilde was always said to be even more dazzling in conversation than in print, and this is the nearest we will ever get to hearing that.
We also hear Edward Carson, a brilliant barrister . In cross-examining Wilde, he often seems obtuse and flat-footed, yet he draws Wilde into one of the most notorious missteps in legal history: “He was a particularly plain boy.” Read that in context, and you can almost feel the shudder through the public benches. Then Carson’s opening speech for the Defence is devastating. Where you think Wilde has been scoring points off him, Carson has been paying close attention and he marshalls revealed facts, large and small, into a damning indictment. Is it any wonder Wilde agreed to drop the suit before the speech had even finished?
But we get no nearer to the central mystery of Wilde, why he embarked on this predictably disastrous course. Indeed, Holland in his excellent introduction to the book says the one question he wants to ask his grandfather would be “Why?” W. A Auden, in an essay on Wilde’s De Profundis brings it down to Wilde’s unadmitted, perhaps unknown weakness, his need to be accepted by London society. He loved outraging society but as an insider, and Queensberry’s continued provocation meant that members of society could no longer pretend not to see. And once they all admitted what they knew, they would be forced into one of their “periodic fits of morality.” Perhaps his doom in one way or another was unavoidable, as the best dooms are.
There is a website devoted to the poetry of Lord Alfred Douglas, relieved that at last his poetry is emerging from the shadows of his role in Wilde’s downfall, and saying his poetry will be remembered long after his other role is forgotten. Fat chance. Douglas is at best a minor poet, mannered and arch. (To be fair, Wilde’s poetry is not much better.) His role as the instrument of Wilde’s fate was ongoing, one neither he nor the public were prepared to forget. In one trial (he was a serial litigant) he called Oscar Wilde the most evil influence in Europe on the young for the last hundred years. Yet one biographer called his love for Oscar truer than Oscar’s for him.
No, we remember Douglas only because of his role as Dark Angel in Wilde’s life. Would we remember Wilde as much if not for his downfall? Possibly not but he would not be forgotten. “Earnest” would still be playing, and his fairy tales at their best are beautiful. (My first Wilde was an LP recording of ‘The Happy Prince’ with Orson Welles narrating and Bing Crosby as the Prince, music by Bernard Hermann. You can start enjoying it below. My copy is still at Mum and Dad’s and I still love it.) Perhaps Wildean scholars and enthusiasts only would know his epigrams and essays and earlier plays. As it turned out, they found a wider and continuing audience. Aren’t we lucky then he suffered such a thunderous fall?
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