The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde

by Neil McKenna

  John Gray's rise was so meteoric that it was almost miraculous - so miraculous that the question has to be asked, was he helped? Had he met an older, wealthier man - or indeed, a series of men - who had helped him on his way, smoothing away the cockney vowels, teaching him the perfect manners that were remarked upon throughout his life, educating his eye, directing his taste, choosing his clothes and generally overseeing the transformation from cockney lad to cultured exquisite? For many young working-class Victorian men, finding a wealthy older man to look after them was highly desirable. It offered them almost the only way out of poverty, a chance to escape the burden of their birthright. John Gray's exceptional looks would have guaranteed any number of wealthy admirers, and he was certainly intelligent enough to allow himself to be courted only by men who showed that they were willing to help him along the way, to smoothe his passage. Even though his wages as a lowergrade civil servant would have been better than any he might have earned in the metal-turning workshop, they would not have been enough to buy him the expensive clothes, the books and the other trappings of a young man about town. There is no firm evidence of such a patron, or indeed, patrons, but John Gray's later career suggests that there was always a wealthy older man who was his protector and his patron. It was a role filled by Oscar for nearly three years until Gray turned to Andre Raffalovich, whose enormous wealth and endless devotion were then placed at his service.

  Some time after their first meeting in the studio of Ricketts and Shannon, Oscar and John Gray were at a dinner party together `at one of those Soho restaurants that furnish private rooms for supper parties'. According to Frank Liebich, a pianist who wrote a short, unpublished memoir of Oscar, there were five men present. Besides Oscar and John Gray, there was Liebich himself and the poets John Barlas and John Davidson. Barlas, himself a lover of men, had `hinted, rather vaguely', Liebich recalled, `of the (alleged) intimacy between Wilde and Gray, so that I was really rather curious about the latter, an extraordinarily good looking youth not much older than myself'. The dinner was not a success, and John Gray made a poor impression on Frank Liebich. `John Gray and I talked but little,' he remembered. Gray seemed `bored and tired' and moody. `I found nothing memorable in his speech nor in his manner,' wrote Liebich, `which seemed tinged with condescension. I thought him a thoroughly blase worldling.'

  `Bored', `tired' , `blase', condescending and worldly. Was this the same John Gray, the poet and writer, whose intelligence, perfect manners and flawless clothes had charmed the ladies of the Vale and captivated Oscar? The truth is that John Gray was all these things. He was, as Oscar once described his fictional counterpart, Dorian Gray, a `complex multiform creature', capable of multiple and fascinating moods. He could be frivolous or deeply serious; charming or petulant; intelligent, engaging and articulate; or haughty and condescending. He could also be loyal and loving.

  Oscar paid John Gray the greatest possible tribute when he immortalised him in his first novel, The Picture ofDorian Gray. In August 1889, shortly after his first meeting with John Gray, Oscar had dinner with J.M. Stoddart, the managing editor of the American Lippincott's Magazine. It was Stoddart who had brought out Rennell Rodd's Rose Leaf and Apple Leaf and who had taken Oscar to meet Walt Whitman at his house in Camden, New Jersey five years earlier. Arthur Conan Doyle was also present at Stoddart's dinner, the purpose of which was to persuade Oscar and Conan Doyle to contribute a story each to Lippincott's. Oscar accepted the commission and the result was The Picture of Dorian Gray.

  There could be no doubt in the minds of Oscar's friends and contemporaries that John Gray was the model for Dorian Gray; that Oscar had fashioned his exquisite amoral hero from the exquisite reality of John Gray. It was an open secret among the confraternity of poets in London: Ernest Dowson told Arthur Moore how `Dorian' Gray had read `some very beautiful and obscure versicles in the latest manner of French Symbolism' at a meeting of the Rhymers' Club. Lionel Johnson told Campbell Dodgson that `I have made great friends with the original of Dorian: one John Gray, a youth ... with the face of fifteen'. And Arthur Symons recalls meeting Oscar at a private view in the New Gallery. `As I came downstairs,' Symons wrote:

  I came on Wilde in the midst of his admirers, showing more than ever his gift of versatility. Seeing me he made a gesture, and as I went up he introduced me to John Gray, then in what is called `the zenith' of his youth ... I was not aware he was supposed to be the future Dorian Gray of Wilde's novel.

  A single letter from John Gray to Oscar survives, in which he signs himself `Dorian'. And Oscar was in the habit of referring to him as `Dorian' in conversations with Ada Leverson and others.

  Oscar had taken John Gray's surname, changing his Christian name to the suggestive Dorian - a name replete with implicit paiderastia. The Dorians were a tribe of ancient Greece, inhabiting the major cities of Sparta, Argos and Corinth. They were famous for their custom of institutionalised paiderastia, by which an older man became the lover and the teacher of a youth. The Dorians were generally held responsible for the spread of paiderastia throughout ancient Greece. In his privately printed and cautiously circulated A Problem In Greek Ethics, John Addington Symonds wrote:

  The Dorians gave the earliest and most marked encouragement to Greek love. Nowhere else, indeed, except among the Dorians, who were an essentially military race, living like an army of occupation in the countries they had seized, herding together in barracks and at public messes, and submitting to martial drill and discipline, do we meet with paiderastia developed as an institution.

  Oscar began writing his novel in the late autumn of 1889, at the same time as he was laying amorous siege to John Gray, and much of the novel reflects their relationship. Dorian Gray, like John Gray, is a young man of `extraordinary personal beauty', `a young Adonis' who `looks as if he were made out of ivory and rose-leaves', a veritable `Narcissus'. And like John Gray, Dorian looks much younger than his years. He is `little more than a lad, although he is really over twenty'. Throughout the original manuscript of the novel, Oscar described Dorian Gray as a `boy', changing this word to the more neutral `lad' later, along with dozens of other mutings of the more obvious homoerotic passages. Basil Hallward, an artist in paint, falls in love with Dorian at first sight, just as Oscar, an artist in words, fell in love with John Gray at first sight. At a crush at Lady Brandon's (a thinly disguised portrait of Speranza and her at-homes), Basil suddenly becomes conscious that someone is looking at him:

  I turned half-way round and saw Dorian Gray for the first time. When our eyes met, I felt that I was growing pale. A curious sensation of terror came over me. I knew that I had come face to face with someone whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself ... Something seemed to tell me that I was on the verge of a terrible crisis in my life. I had a strange feeling that Fate had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows. I grew afraid, and turned to quit the room.

  The `exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows' that Basil Hallward anticipates from his relationship with Dorian are identical to the `terrible joy and no less terrible despair' that Shakespeare experienced in his relationship with Willie Hughes.

  This was the paradox of l'amour de l'impossible, the love of the impossible. For Basil to possess Dorian sexually, to penetrate him anally, just as, perhaps, Oscar had penetrated Clyde Fitch, would be to despoil `the white purity of his boyhood', to taint and destroy the very purity he worships. In the moral forest of Oscar's fauns, Basil follows the song, not the shadow, and pursues selfless love, not sex. Basil's yearning, aspiring, unrequited love for Dorian is a paradox. It exists merely because it cannot exist. In its realisation lies its destruction.

  Dorian Gray, like John Gray, was `made to be worshipped'. Basil Hallward eventually confesses his feelings to Dorian:

  From the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. I quite admit that I adored you madly, extravagantly, absurdly. I w
as jealous of every one to whom you spoke. I wanted to have you all to myself. I was only happy when I was with you. When I was away from you, you were still present in my art.

  Basil's only respite is to pour his unquenched and unquenchable love into the portrait he paints of Dorian. It was a work of `idolatry', Basil tells Dorian. `There was love in every line, and in every touch there was passion.' Oscar's fictionalised portrait of John Gray is equally a work of idolatry, a hymn of praise, and, like Basil's portrait of Dorian, there is love in every line, and in every touch, passion. And Oscar's portrait of John, just like Basil's portrait of Dorian, betrays `the secret of his soul', the secret of his sexuality, the only difference being that while Basil seeks to conceal his love, Oscar seeks to proclaim it, wanting those who read The Picture of Dorian Gray to understand the true nature of his sexuality.

  There are other echoes of Oscar's relationship with John Gray when Basil tells his friend Lord Henry Wotton - another autobiographical aspect of Oscar - of his relationship with Dorian. `He likes me,' Basil says. `I know he likes me':

  Of course I flatter him dreadfully. I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I know I shall be sorry for having said. As a rule, he is charming to me, and we sit in the studio and talk of a thousand things. Now and then, however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me pain. Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to some one who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's day.

  In her unpublished reminiscences, Andre Raffalovich's sister, Sophie, commented on a slightly less savoury side of John Gray's character during the early years of his later love affair with Andre. She claimed that John took Andre's kindness and generosity too much for granted, that he was `selfish, over-concerned for his own comfort, inclined to be greedy, and not always polite'. Did Oscar flatter John Gray dreadfully? And was John as a rule charming, but at the same time vain, self-centred, sometimes thoughtless, if not downright cruel? Oscar's greatest act of flattery was to immortalise John Gray as Dorian, to hymn in prose the boyish poet he had fallen in love with.

  While Basil follows Dorian's song of love, his friend Lord Henry pursues Dorian's sensual, sexual shadow. One day when Dorian is sitting for Basil in his studio, Lord Henry Wotton arrives and is dazzled by Dorian's perfect beauty, just as Dorian is dazzled by Lord Henry's `beautiful voice', his worldly wisdom, his sophistication, wit and intelligence:

  Dorian ... could not help liking the tall, graceful young man ... his romantic olive-coloured face and worn expression interested him. There was something in his low, languid voice that was absolutely fascinating. His cool, white, flower-like hands, even, had a curious charm. They moved, as he spoke, like music, and seemed to have a language of their own.

  Was this scene a barely disguised fictional counterpart of the scene in the studio of Ricketts and Shannon, when Oscar was dazzled by John Gray's beauty, and John Gray was seduced by Oscar's beautiful voice, his wit and wisdom? Certainly the description of Lord Henry could be a convincing selfportrait of Oscar, who was thirty-five when he met John Gray. Like Lord Henry, Oscar was married. And like Lord Henry, he was tall, six foot tall, with pale olive skin, a low, languid voice that was deservedly famous for being fascinating, and hypnotically expressive hands.

  Lord Henry preaches a strange and compelling gospel to Dorian. `The aim of life is self-development,' he says. By self-development, Lord Henry of course means sexual development, specifically the acknowledgement and acceptance of one's true sexual nature:

  To realise one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self... their own souls starve, and are naked.

  Lord Henry argues that it is society and religion which have conspired to suppress by fear men's true sexual nature:

  Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion - these are the two things that govern us ... the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself.

  Self-denial, sexual denial is a form of emotional and bodily mutilation, a marring of lives which could otherwise be beautiful, perfect and happy. `We are punished for our refusals,' Lord Henry tells Dorian:

  Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.

  `Desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful' is a not-so-coded reference to the ancient laws against sodomy and the passing, four years earlier in 1885, of the Labouchere Amendment, which outlawed oral sex and mutual masturbation between men. If men who love men are to realise themselves, are to arrive at their erotic destiny, then morality, law, religion must all be thrown aside. They were prophetic words. Oscar would deliberately cast them all aside in the quest to fulfil his own erotic destiny.

  The compelling gospel according to Lord Henry Wotton is also the gospel according to Oscar Wilde. Sexual self-repression is a canker, which eats away the body and the soul. The only true cure is to admit and acknowledge who one is and what one is. It is not enough merely to be a lover of young men, one must proclaim one's love for young men. It was a devastating and daring philosophy, and when Oscar first expounded his gospel to John Gray, he thrilled to its call for erotic revolution. Lord Henry Wotton throws down an erotic gauntlet to Dorian:

  You, Mr Gray, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame.

  `Stop!' Dorian falters, in a Damascene moment of erotic self-revelation. The nature of these waking and dreaming passions has been revealed to him and revealed to us by the use of the word `shame' - that resonant Uranian codeword meaning love and sex between men. `Of all sweet passions,' Bosie was to write after reading Dorian Gray, `Shame is loveliest.'

  Lord Henry Wotton's interest in Dorian is far from avuncular. His powerful speech has disclosed to Dorian his `life's mystery', has `revealed him to himself. It is a kind of forcible coming out, an erotic epiphany. Lord Henry's words have `touched some secret chord that has never been touched before, but that Dorian feels is now vibrating and throbbing to curious pulses'. The sexual imagery is deliberate and obvious. Lord Henry has touched the `secret chord' of Dorian's anus, and he experiences a kind of spiritual and penile erection in consequence. Twenty years later, E.M. Forster would experience a similar and equally intense revelation of his true sexual nature on a visit to Edward Carpenter's cottage at Millthorpe, near Sheffield. Carpenter's lover, the working-class George Merrill, `touched my backside,' wrote Forster:

  The sensation was unusual and I still remember it, as I remember the position of a long-vanished tooth. It was as much psychological as physical. It seemed to go straight through the small of my back into my ideas, without involving my thoughts.

  Indeed Oscar takes the metaphor of anal sex and penetration even further in Dorian Gray, when Lord Henry considers what he would like his relationship with Dorian to be. It involves a kind of spiritual sodomy:

  To project one's soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume; there was a real joy in that - perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own.

 
Lord Henry wants to ejaculate the very essence of his soul into Dorian's gracious form like `a subtle fluid', just, perhaps, as Oscar wanted to inseminate John Gray with his own combination of subtle intellect and seminal fluid.

  Scarlet threads

  `There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.'

  The Picture ofDorian Gray is an exploration and a celebration of the nature of sexual desire and sexual pleasure between men. With the help of Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian seeks to gather up `the scarlet threads of life, and to weave them into a pattern; to find his way through the sanguine labyrinth of passion through which he was wandering'. Dorian's purpose is Oscar's purpose, as it is, indeed, the wider purpose of the novel. Oscar had been wandering in a sexual labyrinth and was seeking to somehow `gather up the scarlet threads', gather up the different, conflicting and confused sexual strands of his life and weave them into a coherent pattern.

  Oscar lived in an age when the only intellectual and historical justification for love and sex between men was the tradition of Greek paiderastia. But the trouble with Greek love was its emphasis on love rather than on sex. Sex was a conditional, subsidiary part of love. This was not enough for Oscar. He was interested in the shadow, not the song, in the body not the soul, in lust and sex, not love. Dorian Gray is an immoral fable; it is Oscar's attempt to explore and legitimise the powerful dynamics of sex and lust between men; to divine a meaning and a pattern; to articulate a new natural philosophy for what were seen as unnatural desires and satisfactions of the flesh.