The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde

by Neil McKenna

Ironically, having once found his true sexual self through the medium of the Sonnets, the narrator loses his faith in the Willie Hughes of the Sonnets. He tells Erskine of this loss of faith. Erskine, however, in a double irony, has rediscovered his own belief in Willie Hughes and determines to commit suicide, just like Cyril Graham, in an attempt to convince the narrator of the truth of the `cause'. In his suicide note, he writes:

  I still believe in Willie Hughes; and by the time you receive this I shall have died by my own hand for Willie Hughes' sake: for his sake, and for the sake of Cyril Graham, whom I drove to his death by my shallow scepticism and ignorant lack of faith. The truth was once revealed to you, and you rejected it. It comes to you now, stained with the blood of two lives - do not turn away from it.

  Finally, in a triple irony, the narrator discovers that Erskine has not, in fact, taken his own life but has died rather more pedestrianly of consumption in a hotel in Cannes, bequeathing him the forged portrait of Willie Hughes.

  There is a strong element of autobiography in The Portrait of Mr W.H. Oscar always boasted that he resembled Shakespeare. When the socialite Margot Tennant first encountered him at a garden party given by Lady Archibald Campbell, Oscar `was explaining why he thought he resembled Shakespeare; and ended a brilliant monologue by saying he intended to have a bronze medallion struck of his own profile and Shakespeare's'. But for Oscar, there was more to it than mere physical similarity. There were many parallels in their lives. Like Shakespeare, Oscar was a married man with children. Oscar was, of course, also a poet and a playwright. And both of them had fallen in love with seventeen-year-old boys. Falling in love with a boy had filled Shakespeare's soul `with terrible joy and no less terrible despair', a reflection, perhaps, of the doubts and self-loathing Oscar had experienced in coming to terms with his sexuality. Shakespeare had fallen in love with Willie Hughes, and Oscar had fallen in love with Robbie Ross. Willie Hughes was a 'fair-haired English lad' picked up in one of London's `hurrying streets', just as Robbie Ross was a fair-haired Scots-Canadian lad, picked up in one of London's hurrying streets or busy cottages. And just as Willie Hughes had been Shakespeare's inspiration, so Oscar's affair with Robbie had helped liberate and realise his artistic potential. Of course Oscar's affair with Robbie had not been filled with anything like the same degree of passion, pain and loss as Shakespeare's affair with Willie Hughes. And Oscar had had love affairs with young men before and after Robbie. That there were strong parallels between Shakespeare's life and his own can hardly have failed to strike a chord with Oscar and, indeed, the readers of Mr W.H.

  There is also a curious element of autobiographical prefiguration in The Portrait ofMr W.H., a subconscious articulation of Oscar's deepest wishes and desires. Just as Shakespeare had one great life-affirming, life-changing, immortal love affair with a beautiful boy, his ideal boy, so Oscar wanted to scale those impregnable heights of great love and great passion. His search for that ennobling love, for an inspiring love, for a love that could transcend the mundane and enter the sphere of immortality, began at about the time he was writing The Portrait ofMr W.H.

  At another level, The Portrait of Mr W.H. is a barely concealed paean of praise to `the ambiguity of the sexes', the joys ofpaiderastia, the love of an older man for a youth. Writing Mr W.H., publishing Mr W.H. was nothing more and nothing less than a manifesto of paiderastia, a closely argued dissertation designed to give cultural and historical legitimacy to sex between men and youths. Oscar wrote, and always intended to publish, an expanded and even more explicit version of the story which explored `the soul' of what he called `neo-Platonism' or, put more plainly, the rediscovery of Greek love in the Renaissance and its subsequent dissemination:

  It is only when we realise the influence of neo-Platonism on the Renaissance that we can understand the true meaning of the amatory phrases and words with which friends were wont, at this time, to address each other. There was a kind of mystic transference of the expressions of the physical world to a sphere that was spiritual.

  Oscar goes on to explore the historical transmission of this higher, neoPlatonic love, invoking an apostolic succession of great lovers: Michelangelo and Tommaso Cavalieri, Shakespeare and Willie Hughes, Winckelmann and the `young Roman' who initiated him into the secrets and mysteries of Greek love - an apostolic succession which continues to Cyril Graham, Erskine, the anonymous young narrator and, by the `kind of mystic transference' associated with Greek love, to the psychologically attuned readers of Mr W.H. Just as reading the Sonnets had revealed the secret truth of his sexuality to the narrator, so The Portrait ofMr W.H. would reveal to its readers the inner truth of their sexuality. It was an audacious and insidious act of literary insemination.

  Oscar would use this argument of a kind of spiritualised sodomy - sanctified by antiquity, tradition, great art and great artists - to justify and defend `the love that dare not speak its name' many times, invoking Michelangelo and Shakespeare as among its greatest exponents, most memorably during his trials. He was not alone. Many passionate advocates of the social and legal emancipation of men who love men would invoke the argument, almost word for word, on many occasions. John Addington Symonds had already invoked it in his writings on Uranian love, and Andre Raffalovich would invoke it in his treatise on sex between men, Uranismne and Unisexualite, as would Havelock Ellis in Sexual Inversion.

  At its deepest level, The Portrait ofMr W.H. is an essay about sex as religion, about `the soul, the secret soul' and the `soul's romance'. It is a parable about sexual revelation and sexual conversion; about sexual faith lost and sexual faith rediscovered; and about sexual martyrdom. All the protagonists experience the revelation of love between men and boys, all experience their conversion to such love, some lose their faith in it, only to rediscover it. Finally, some, like Cyril Graham, die for their sexual faith, martyrs to a cause. Like early Christian martyrs, fired with the ecstatic zeal of the convert, they seek to profess their sexual faith with the mantra `I believe in Willie Hughes'. They seek to live and, if necessary to die, in the sexual faith. In his suicide note, Erskine speaks of the `cause'. It was the first time Oscar had linked the politics of sexuality with its pleasures. Soon the word would become capitalised, and `the Cause' would become the rallying cry of men who loved men, and men who loved boys, to come together to seek social, legal and political reform.

  Oscar submitted the story initially to Frank Harris's Saturday Review, where an assistant to Harris summarily rejected it. Oscar then turned to the renowned Blackwood's Magazine, which agreed to publish it. The reaction was rather more muted than Oscar had perhaps imagined. There were some severely critical voices, voices which seized upon the pederastic overtones of the story. The World commented that Oscar's rapture on `the golden hair' and the `tender, flower-like grace' of Willie Hughes, on his `dreamy, deep-sunken eyes', his `delicate, mobile limbs, and white, lily hands' was `unpleasant', `peculiarly offensive' and `scarcely what one would have expected' in Blackwood's. Oscar was undeterred and determined to press ahead with the expanded, even more explicit version of Mr W.H. `Our English homes will totter to their base when my book appears,' he predicted.

  Frank Harris later wrote that The Portrait of Mr W.H. `did Oscar incalculable injury':

  It gave his enemies for the first time the very weapon they wanted, and they used it unscrupulously and untiringly with the fierce delight of hatred. Oscar seemed to revel in the storm of conflicting opinions which the paper called forth. He understood better than most men that notoriety is often the forerunner of fame and is always commercially more valuable.

  Oscar was well aware of the potential impact of The Portrait ofMr W.H. and that inferences about his own sexuality might be drawn from the story. Before he had written, let alone published it, Oscar had outlined the elements of the story to various friends, including Arthur Balfour and H.H. Asquith, respectively Tory and Liberal politicians, who were both destined to become Prime Minister. Both men advised him not to publish, pointing out the danger to his
reputation. Oscar refused to listen. To deny the world the truth of Willie Hughes, to deny the wonder of the love, spiritual and sexual, between a man and a youth because of any possible repercussions on himself was a denial of truth revealed, a species of betrayal, a recantation of his sexual faith. Like Cyril Graham, Erskine and the anonymous young narrator, Oscar wanted to live in his sexual faith, to profess and promulgate his sexual faith and, if necessary, to become a martyr to it.

  Shadow and song

  'My weakness is that I do what I will and get what I want.'

  If The Portrait of Mr W.H. was a manifesto of Uranian love, it nevertheless signally failed to deal with Uranian lust, preferring instead a series of classical allusions, nudges and winks. Oscar argued that the rediscovery of Greek love in the Renaissance meant that sex, or `gross bodily appetite', as he preferred to call it, had somehow been subsumed into a higher philosophy, a higher purpose:

  Love had, indeed, entered the olive garden of the new Academe, but he wore the same flame-coloured raiment, and had the same words of passion on his lips.

  It was a beautifully written passage which nevertheless was an uneasy compromise. Sexual desire, or what Oscar had once poetically described as `the quenchless flame, the worm that dieth not', was still in the bud of perfect friendship, even in the sunlit `olive garden of the new Academe'. However cleverly he argued, however exquisite his phraseology, however carefully he papered over the cracks, everything still boiled down to love and to lust - and how on earth to synthesise the two? It was a tension, a contradiction, a confusion that Oscar had already confronted in his marriage and would confront again in his relationships with young men. He loved Constance, but he lusted after young men. Now, increasingly, he had to try and resolve the tensions between the feelings of love he had experienced with people like Harry Marillier and Robbie Ross, and the powerful lust he had for young men like Fred Althaus. Even on those rare occasions when Oscar had felt love for a young man, it lasted only as long as he felt lust. Oscar's lust rarely lasted longer than a few days, or a few weeks. When his lust withered, his love withered with it.

  The contradictions and tensions between love and lust were exemplified in June 1889. At the very same time as he was trying to extricate himself from the cloying `heavenly sunlight' of his affair with Fred Althaus, Oscar was embarking on another intense love affair, this time with someone rather more couth, rather more socially acceptable. Indeed, Oscar's professions to Fred of being `out of sorts' were white lies, more to do with finding time to fall in love with Clyde Fitch, a twenty-three-year-old American playwright and aspiring poet. Clyde had met Oscar and Constance the previous summer when he and his mother had been travelling around Europe. They were probably introduced to the Wildes by Andre Raffalovich, who had entertained them at the home he rented every summer on the Thames at Weybridge.

  Clyde was an extraordinarily handsome and engaging young man, `very aesthetic and romantic looking'. Witty, kind and well-educated, he was, according to his friend Robert Herrick, `as whimsical as a child, loving, loveable, gay, witty and gracious'. Clyde was `slight, dark, with black hair brushed back in a wave from his forehead, over which ... he would pass his hand' when excited or enthusiastic, which he very often was. Like Robbie Ross, Clyde seems to have come to terms with his sexuality at a comparatively early age. But unlike Robbie at Cambridge, Clyde had managed to survive the bullying at university in America unscathed. Clyde was, to use an oldfashioned phrase, rather `obvious'; not exactly effeminate, but certainly not an overtly rugged specimen of masculinity. He had `many of the more charming qualities that we used to call feminine, without being effeminate', was how his friend Herrick tactfully phrased it.

  Clyde became the target for bullying and abuse at Amherst College as a result of his eccentric taste in clothes and interior design. One of his first tasks when he arrived was to decorate his rooms with a highly unusual and artistic frieze of pink apple blossoms against a Pompeian scene. He was sophisticated, intelligent and very well-dressed, wearing a beautifully tailored bright blue suit, a blue gillyflower in a sea of sombre browns and blacks and loud checks. It was this blue suit which seemed to enrage his fellow students. He received an anonymous note, threatening him with `dire consequences if he was ever seen again in broad daylight in such a garb'. Clyde showed his professor the anonymous letter. `Well?' Professor Cowles demanded, handing back the note. `What would you advise me to do about it?' Clyde asked. Professor Cowles paused and replied: `What do you think you had better do about it?' Clyde thought a moment. `I don't see why I should let them dictate to me,' he said. `I think I'll stick it out.' Which is exactly what he did, enduring the bullying `heroically, silently', until his persecutors seemed to lose interest.

  When Oscar and Clyde had first met in the summer of 1888, they were immediately attracted to each other, but there had been no opportunity to take things further. Clyde was travelling with his over-protective and domineering mother, and there was little or no chance to pursue a relationship with Oscar. But there were no such restrictions the next year when Clyde returned to London, alone and ready to fall in love with Oscar. And he did fall in love: deeply, passionately, consumingly. For Clyde, Love with a capital L was paramount. In a letter to a friend, he proclaimed his belief in its power:

  I believe myself that the Romance of life which is Love, is the best and most precious thing in it, supreme, most to be desired! That all the colour and music of the world are in it, and its Throne the only one worth reigning on.

  Although nearly all their correspondence is lost, most likely destroyed in the aftermath of the scandal that engulfed Oscar, a few fragments survive in the form of some passionate love letters from Clyde to Oscar, written at the height of their love affair in the summer of 1889.

  The affair seems to have begun almost immediately after Clyde's arrival in London in May. Clyde was quite ready to commit himself to Oscar, to declare and swear his undying love for him. For his part, Oscar seemed to be holding back. `What a charming day it has been,' he telegraphed with deliberate understatement to Clyde on 22 June. Two weeks later, Clyde was reading the newly published Portrait ofMr W.H. `You precious maddening man,' he wrote to Oscar, reproaching him for not turning up for a meeting and sending a letter instead. `Your letters are more than you - because they come and you don't.' The story of Willie Hughes had gripped him like a vice, he wrote. He could not stop reading:

  Last night when I came home I flung myself in the best evening clothes and all with my Blackwood. `I will just look at it' I thought. But I could not leave it. I read, unconscious of the uncomfortability of my position and of the fact that one arm and two legs were asleep, fast.

  Oh! Oscar!

  The story is great - and - fine!

  I believe in Willie Hughes: I don't care if the whole thing is out of your amazing beautiful brain. I don't care for the laughter, I only know I am convinced and I will,

  I will believe in Willie H.

  `I will, I will believe in Willie H.' It was an ecstatic profession of sexual faith, just as Cyril Graham and Erskine and the anonymous young narrator had professed their sexual faith in the story. Clyde's letter was also a declaration of love, a love that overwhelmed him, bewildered him, consumed him. He could not, he told Oscar, find the right word to express his feelings, but it was something close to `adoration'. `Invent me a language of love,' he pleaded. `You could do it. Bewilderedly, All yours, Clyde.'

  The affair continued apace. Constance was herself away for the summer, staying in a rectory in the North York Moors with her friend Emily Thursfield, so Oscar and Clyde were able to meet frequently, and Oscar for once did not have to lie about what he was doing and who he was seeing. Clyde continued to pour out extravagant professions of love. `Nobody loves you as I do,' he wrote. `When you are here I dream. When you are away, I awake.' Clyde was prepared to do anything, be anything, sacrifice everything for the sake of his love for Oscar. `Make me what you will,' he begged, `only keep me yours forever.' Clyde's abjec
t devotion and his adoration were mingled with a devout belief in Oscar's genius: `You are a great genius,' he told Oscar:

  And Oh! such a sweet one. Never was a genius so sweet so adorable. Plod thro' yr history you will find no other. And I - wee I - am allowed to loose the latchet of your shoe . . . Am bidden tie it up - and I do, in a lover's knot!

  Oscar was flattered by such extravagant praise of his genius and not a little overwhelmed by the intensity of Clyde's feelings for him, feelings which tumbled out over each other in a raging torrent of love:

  You are my poetry - my painting - my music - You are my sight - and sound, and touch. Your love is the fragrance of a rose - the sky of a summer - the wing of an angel. The cymbal of a cherubim. You are always with me ... Time ... stopped when you left. All, always, in every weather.

  Gloriously, absorbingly Yours Clyde

  Clyde's love for Oscar was consuming him, and consuming Oscar. It was hard to be the object of such intense love, hard to live up to the ideal Clyde had constructed, and harder still to match Clyde's seemingly insatiable feelings. Oscar must have felt besieged by the sheer intensity of Clyde's love, which far outweighed his own feelings. Oscar and Clyde were lovers only in the sense that they had sex together, though probably not as often as Clyde would have liked. Oscar liked Clyde. He was fond of him. But he did not love him. With the experience of Fred Althaus's cloying, clinging, suffocating love fresh in his mind, Oscar wanted to keep some emotional distance between himself and Clyde.

  Oscar was not faithful to Clyde. He was rarely faithful to anyone. Apart from the pleasure of variety, infidelity was a useful tool to ward off unwelcome emotional entanglements. In July he met a Cambridge friend of Robbie's, Frederic Wisden, whom he clearly found very attractive. `Wisden is obviously Willie Hughes in reincarnation,' he told Robbie. `That is why he is so delightful. He is very honey-coloured and charming.' And a week or so later, when Oscar was in Germany, in connection with his play The Duchess o f'Padtui, he wrote to Robbie to say that he was returning by way of Wiesbaden and Ostend, adding: `Somebody I used to like is at Ostend, and I have promised to stay a day.'