On Valentine’s Day in 1895, the most famous
playwright in the English speaking world,
Oscar Wilde, presented his new play, The
Importance of Being Earnest, in London at
St. James Theatre. The audience was packed with
celebrities, aristocrats and famous politicians,
eagerly awaiting another triumph from
a man universally heralded as a genius.
At the end of the performance, there was a
standing ovation. Critics adored the play
and so did audiences, making it Wilde’s
fourth major success in only three years.
Yet, only a few short months later, Wilde
was bankrupt and about to be imprisoned.
His reputation was in tatters and his life
ruined beyond repair. It was, as everyone
then and now agreed, a tragedy, the swift fall
of a great man due to a small but fateful slip.
The story of how Oscar Wilde went
from celebrity playwright to prisoner,
in such a short space of time, has much to
teach us about disgrace and infamy. We don’t
have to be acclaimed to understand that Wilde’s
poignant tragedy urges us to abandon our normal
moralism and have sympathy for those who
stray, it calls for us to extend our love
not just to those who obviously deserve
it but precisely to those who seem not
to. We talk a lot of what a civilised world
should be like. We might put it like this: a
civilised world would be one in which Oscar Wilde
could have been forgiven – and in which those who
make errors of judgement could be treated with
high degrees of sympathy and, even, of kindness.
It would be a world in which we could remember
that good people can at times do bad things –
and should not pay an eternal price for them.
Wilde’s tragedy began several years earlier,
when he was introduced to a beguiling young
man named Lord Alfred Douglas. Douglas,
known to family and friends as ‘Bosie’,
was extremely handsome, charming and
arrogant.
By 1892, a year after they had met, the two men
had fallen profoundly in love. Although Wilde
was married with two children, he spent much of
his time with Bosie: there was a sixteen year age
gap, Douglas was twenty-four, Wilde forty. They
travelled together, stayed in hotels and
hosted large dinners for their friends.
By 1894, the pair were constantly seen together
in public and rumours of their love affair had
spread as far as Bosie’s father, the Marquess
of Queensbury. The Marquess was a cruel,
aggressive character, known for inventing
the ‘Queensbury Rules’ of amateur boxing.
Having decided that Wilde was corrupting his son,
he demanded that the pair stop seeing each other.
When Wilde refused, Queensbury began to hound
him across London, threatening violence against
restaurant and hotel managers if they
allowed Wilde and Bosie onto the premises.
Queensbury booked a seat for the opening
night of The Importance of Being Earnest.
He planned to throw a bouquet of rotting
vegetables at Wilde when he took to the stage.
When Wilde heard about the stunt, he had
him barred from the theatre and Queensbury
flew into a rage. He tried to accost Wilde
after the performance at the Albemarle Club
in Mayfair. When the porters refused to let
him in, he left a calling card which publicly
accused Wilde of having sex with other men.
Since homosexuality was illegal and deeply
frowned upon in Victorian society this was a dangerous accusation.
Seeing no end to Queensbury’s bullying behaviour,
Wilde decided to take legal action. By suing
Queensbury for libel, Wilde hoped to clear
his name and put an end to the harassment.
When the trial began, Wilde was confident.
He took the stand and gave witty, distracting
answers during his cross-examination.
Within a few days, however,
the tide had turned against him.
It became clear that Queensbury’s lawyers
had hired private detectives to uncover an
uncomfortable truth: that both Wilde and Bosie had
hired male prostitutes. Some had even blackmailed
Wilde in the past, successfully extorting
money from him in return for their silence.
The trial was hopeless and Wilde withdrew his
case, but events had spiralled beyond his control.
Queensbury’s lawyers forwarded their evidence to
the Director of Public Prosecutions and Wilde
was soon arrested on charges of gross indecency.
The legal costs left him bankrupt and
theatres were forced to abandon his plays.
Wilde’s criminal trial began at the Old Bailey
on April 26. He faced twenty-five charges,
all of which surrounded his sexual
relationships with younger men.
Wilde continued to deny the allegations
and the jury could not reach a verdict,
but when the prosecution were allowed to try Wilde
a second time he was eventually found guilty.
The judge said at his sentencing, “It is the worst
case I have ever tried. I shall pass the severest
sentence that the law allows.
Wilde was sentenced to two years’ of hard labour.
Inmates in London’s Pentonville Prison, where
he was sent, spent six hours a day walking on
a heavy treadmill or untangling old
rope using their hands and knees.
For someone of Wilde’s luxurious background, it
was an impossible hardship. His bed was a hard
plank which made it difficult to fall asleep.
Prisoners were kept alone in their cells and
barred from talking to one another. He suffered
from dysentery and became physically very frail.
After six months, he was transferred
to Reading Gaol. As he stood on the
central platform of Clapham Junction, with
handcuffs around his wrists, passers-by began
to recognise the celebrity playwright. They
laughed and mocked. Some even spat at him.
‘For half an hour I stood
there,’ he wrote afterwards,
‘in the grey November rain surrounded by a
jeering mob. For a year after that was done to me,
I wept every day at the same hour
and for the same space of time.’
During his last year in prison,
Wilde wrote an anguished essay, De Profundis:
‘I once a lord of language, have no words in
which to express my anguish and my shame…
Terrible as was what the world did to me,
what I did to myself was far more terrible still….
The gods had given me almost everything. But I let
myself be lured into long spells of senseless and
sensual ease…I allowed pleasure to dominate me.
I ended in horrible disgrace. There is only
one thing for me now, absolute humility… I
have lain in prison for nearly two years… I have
passed through every possible mood of suffering…
The only people I would care to be with now
are artists and people who have suffered:
those who know what beauty is, and those who
know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.’
In May 1897, Wilde was finally released. He set
sail for Dieppe in France the very same day.
His wife, Constance, had changed her name
and moved abroad with their two sons,
Vyvyan (now 11) and Cyril (12). Wilde would never
see his children again; he missed them every day.
Constance agreed to send him money on the
condition that he end his relationship
with Bosie, but only a few months later,
the pair reunited and the money stopped.
They moved to Naples and Wilde began using
the name Sebastian Melmoth, inspired by
the great Christian martyr Saint Sebastian
and a character from a Gothic novel
who had sold his soul to the devil.
They hoped to find privacy abroad, but the scandal
seemed to follow them wherever they went. English
patrons recognised them in hotels and demanded
they be turned away. After Constance stopped
sending money, Bosie’s mother offered to pay their
debts if he returned home and the pair once again
parted ways; it proved equally impossible.
Scorned by many of his former friends,
Wilde moved to Paris where he lived in relative
poverty. He spent most of his time and money in
bars and cafes, borrowing money whenever
he could and drinking heavily. His weight
ballooned and his conversation dragged. He
was slowly inebriating himself to death.
When a friend suggested he try to write another
comic play, he replied: “I have lost the
mainspring of life and art […] I have pleasures,
and passions, but the joy of life is gone.”
His final piece of writing, a poem, The Ballad of
Reading Gaol, was published in 1898. The author’s
name was listed as ‘C.3.3.’ – Wilde’s cell block
and cell number from his time in the prison.
Towards the end of 1900, Wilde developed
meningitis and became gravely ill.
A Catholic priest visited his hotel
and baptised him into the church.
He died the following day at the age of 46.
More than a century later, in 2017, a law was
passed to exonerate those who had been convicted
due to their sexuality and Oscar
Wilde received an official pardon
from the UK government. ‘It is hugely important,’
declared a government minister, ‘that we pardon
people convicted of historical sexual offences
who would be innocent of any crime today.’
Our society has become generous towards
Wilde’s specific behaviour – but it
remains moralistic towards a huge number of other peoples
and ways of life
Many of us would – across the ages – want to comfort and befriend Oscar Wilde. It’s a touching hope,
but one that would be best employed in extending
understanding to all those less talented and less
witty figures who are right now facing grave difficulties
and still, deserve compassion. That
would be true civilisation and a world in which
Wilde’s horrifying downfall had not been in vain.
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