The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde

by Neil McKenna

  Shelley's account of his `seduction' by Oscar was made three years after the event. It deliberately presented Oscar in an extremely unfavourable light as a man who set out to seduce him, who turned his head with dinner and drinks and literary talk, before manipulating him, drunk with champagne and whisky and sodas, into bed. In the three years that had elapsed since his affair with Oscar had petered out, Shelley had suffered a series of reversals of fortune; he had lost his job, suffered a severe nervous breakdown and had been arrested. He had also become a fervent Christian. When he gave his evidence against Oscar in court, it was evident that he was still labouring under some sort of mental illness. As he gave his testimony, he had what Oscar's counsel, Sir Edward Clarke, called `a peculiar sort of exaltation in and for himself', suggesting that he might be `the victim of delusions'.

  Edward Shelley was not however deluded about the sexual substance of his allegations against Oscar. They had certainly had sex, and, indeed, had sex more often than Shelley claimed. But the nature and the course of the relationship was almost certainly very different to the bald account of seduction he presented to the court. There is a question mark over whether Oscar was the first man to have sex with Shelley. Under cross-examination, Shelley equivocated and seemed to suggest that he was not entirely innocent when it came to sex between men. Speaking about the first night he had sex with Oscar, Shelley said `I was entrapped ... he took advantage of me, of my admiration, and of- I won't say my innocence - I don't know what to call it.'

  `I won't say my innocence.' Edward Shelley could not swear to his sexual innocence under oath. Had he had sex with other men before he slept with Oscar? Quite possibly. It is hard to cast Shelley in the role of the outraged virgin he later constructed for himself. There was, for instance, the ugly rumour doing the rounds about John Lane's sexual interest in his junior clerk. And Shelley used to go to work dressed in a frock coat and wore evening clothes to the premiere of Lady Windermere's Fan. It would have been extremely hard for a working-class boy earning just fifteen shillings a week to afford evening dress. Was Edward Shelley following the time-honoured route of many working-class youths and taking advantage of the protection, the financial favours of an older, wealthier man?

  At its height, Oscar's affair with Edward Shelley lasted from February to May 1892, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that he enjoyed his status as Oscar's newest boy enormously. The day after the premiere of Lady Windermere's Fan, after they had had sex for the third time, Shelley sent a gushing, rather gauche, letter to Oscar. `What a triumph was yours last night!' he wrote:

  The play is the best I have seen on the stage, with such beauty of form and wit that it adds a new phase of pleasure to existence. Could Lady Blessington live anew the conversations would make her jealous. George Meredith might have signed it. How miserably poor everything else seems beside it! Except, of course, your books - but then your books are part of yourself.

  Oscar presented Shelley with copies of his books, inscribing a copy of Dorian Gray: `To Edward Shelley, poet and friend, from Oscar Wilde, poet and friend.' Oscar took Edward Shelley up. They went to restaurants together, to Kettner's and to the Cafe Royal, and to the Lyric Club. Oscar took him to the Earl's Court Exhibition, and they went several times to the theatre together. Shelley was one among the `suite of young men wearing the vivid dyed carnation' at the premiere of John Gray's translation of The Kiss. Shelley was also taken to Tite Street on at least two occasions, where he dined with Oscar and Constance. Oscar and Shelley spent several nights together at the Albemarle Hotel, and, up to the time Oscar was arrested, Edward Shelley always acknowledged Oscar's kindness to him. `I have longed to see you all through the week,' he wrote to Oscar:

  I have much to tell you. Do not think me forgetful in not coming before, because I shall never forget your kindness to me and am conscious that I can never sufficiently express my thankfulness to you.

  Shelley's favours were not confined to Oscar. He had sex with several of Oscar's disciples, almost certainly with Bosie and with John Gray, both of whom he had been introduced to at the premiere of Lady Windermere's Fan. Later that year, Gray wrote to his new friend, Pierre Lout's, in terms which proclaimed his erotic interest in Shelley: `I saw Edward Shelley two or three days ago. His eyelashes are still very long, almost those of a poet.' Lout's had met both John Gray and Edward Shelley when he came to London in June. Gray and Lout's quickly got into the habit of writing rather arch and suggestive letters to each other, and it seems likely that they had discussed Shelley's obvious erotic attractions. Although Pierre Lout's is usually regarded as a redblooded heterosexual, there seems to be some evidence that he experimented sexually with men, perhaps even with Edward Shelley.

  Edward Shelley was never going to be anything more to Oscar than a pleasing and attractive young man, a pleasant companion and desirable bed partner. There were times when Oscar must have felt that the relationship was a re-run of his affair with Fred Althaus, from which he had managed to extricate himself only with great difficulty. As Oscar's interest in Fred had started to wane, Fred had become neurotic and bombarded him with letters. Now with Shelley history was repeating itself. As Oscar's interest started to wane, Shelley became increasingly demanding, increasingly neurotic. Oscar was still kind, offering him money to buy books, money to pay for a tutor. But he could not offer him what he needed most: love, affection and attention. Shelley lost his job at Vigo Street. He said he had left because of the `intolerable' situation he found himself in when his fellow clerks called him names like `Mrs Wilde' and `Miss Oscar'. But it later emerged that John Lane had paid him off because of his association with Oscar. Shelley subsequently described John Lane to Oscar as `that viper'. Lane, he said, `had hurt me too much. I despise him, but I cannot forget.'

  Things went from bad to worse. Shelley's father somehow found out about his son's friendship with Oscar and temporarily threw him out of the house: `I have had a very horrible interview with my father and been told to leave the house,' Shelley told Oscar. `I am on the verge of despair. I am sick and tired, body and soul, of my harsh existence.' Shelley started to experience mental problems. `I am most anxious to see you,' he told Oscar. `I would have called on you this evening but I am suffering from nervousness, the result of insomnia, and am obliged to remain at home.' In another, later letter, he wrote, `I am afraid sometimes Iam not very sane. I feel so nervous and ill.'

  Certainly, Shelley's behaviour became increasingly erratic. He started sending Oscar letters in which he announced that he had become a devout Christian. `I am determined to live a Christian life,' he wrote, `and I accept poverty as part of my religion.' `Shelley was in the habit of writing me many morbid, very morbid letters which I tore up,' Oscar said later. `In them he said he was a great sinner and anxious to be in closer touch with religion.' Eventually Shelley assaulted his father and was arrested and taken into custody, sending for Oscar to bail him out.

  Edward Shelley's story was tragic. When he testified in court, it was clear that he attributed his downfall, the problems with his father, his mental instability and all his other woes to his seduction, to what he called his `entrapment', by Oscar. Certainly, at the time he appeared to believe what he said, even though it emerged that he was being paid handsomely by the Marquis of Queensberry, and then by the Crown, to testify against Oscar. Andre Raffalovich, who had met Shelley at the premiere of Lady Windermere's Fan, and who got to know him through John Gray, called him `a foolish young man' whose head had been turned by Oscar. It was a just assessment. Shelley was a foolish, impressionable and altogether sad young man. Oscar had picked him up and charmed him into bed, just as he had already picked up and charmed many other young men into bed. It was not the premeditated, calculated act of corruption presented at Oscar's trials, but nor was it a marriage of two true minds, a love affair of equals.

  Edward Shelley was undoubtedly damaged by his love affair with Oscar. And Oscar was damaged by Shelley. His brief and inconsequential affair with Shelley w
ould be presented to the court and the public as an act of calculating and unspeakable corruption of an innocent youth, seemingly the only innocent among a ragtag and bobtail pack of ruffians, rent boys and blackmailers. It did Oscar incalculable harm in court. Later, after he came out of prison, Oscar expressed his regret over some of his love affairs and the consequences they had for the boys concerned. `I used to be utterly reckless of young lives,' he told Reggie Turner:

  I used to take up a boy, love him `passionately' and then grow bored with him, and often take no notice of him. That is what I regret in my past life.

  Oscar was, perhaps, thinking about Edward Shelley.

  Hyacinth and Narcissus

  `In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worse, the last is a real tragedy.'

  In the late spring of 1892, much to his consternation, Bosie Douglas found himself the victim of blackmail. He turned for help to his older brother Francis, Viscount Drumlanrig, who wrote `a very pathetic letter' to Oscar, appealing for his help. Drumlanrig's letter spoke of the `terrible trouble' Bosie was in. It was not an exaggeration. Bosie was facing disaster and he was frightened - frightened to death.

  The Labouchere Amendment of 1885 had quickly been dubbed `The Blackmailer's Charter', and ever since its passage into law an increasing number of men had fallen prey to blackmail. Blackmailers, working singly or in pairs, were quick to cash in on the changes in the law. Blackmail became endemic. In his Recollections, Jack Saul recounts a conversation he had with a young blackmailer called Yonny Wilson, a very handsome youth of sixteen or thereabouts, `very fair and pretty; with chestnut hair, dark blue eyes, and a set of pearly teeth which, combined with the rosy colour of his cheeks, makes him an almost irresistible bait to old gentlemen - or for that matter to young ones too - who are addicted to the pederastic vice'. Yonny Wilson explained to Saul that he had a tried and tested method of extorting money from men. He would never have sex with the men who picked him up:

  Do you think, Jack, I ever let those old fellows have me? No fear, I know a game worth two of that. You see, I never bring them home with me, and in fact always affect the innocent - don't know where to go to; am living with my father and mother at Greenwich or some out-of-the-way part of London, and only came to the West-End to look about and see the shops and swells, etc. If a gentleman is very pressing I never consent to anything unless he asks me to accompany him to his house or chambers. Once got home with him, I say, `Now, sir, what present are you going to make me?'

  `Stop a bit, my boy, till we see how you please me,' or something very like that is the answer I generally get.

  `No; I'll have it now, or I'll raise the house, you old sod. Do you think I'm a greenhorn? I want a fiver. Don't I know too well that little boys only get five or ten shillings after it's all over? but that won't do for me, so shell out at once, or I'll raise the house, and a pretty scandal it will be!'

  That frightens them at once, so I almost always get at least five pounds, and sometimes more, as I take care to write and borrow as much as I can afterwards. There's nothing like bleeding one of these old fellows; and young ones are better still - they are so easily frightened.

  Men who had sex with other men had to learn very quickly how to live with the blackmailers, or perish - literally, in some cases - at their hands. Those unfortunates unable to extricate themselves from the net of especially vicious and determined blackmailers would often be driven to insanity or suicide. John Addington Symonds gave a sobering account of how easy it was for a man to fall `into the hands of some pretty fellow' and have sex with him only to discover that he had slept with a blackmailer. `At that point,' says Symonds, `the subtlest methods of blackmailing begin to be employed':

  The miserable persecuted wretch, placed between the alternative of paying money down or of becoming socially impossible, losing a valued position, seeing dishonour bursting upon himself and family, pays, and still the more he pays, the greedier becomes the vampire who sucks his life-blood, until at last there lies nothing else before him except total financial ruin or disgrace. Who will be astonished if the nerves of an individual in this position are not equal to the horrid strain?

  Finally, says Symonds, `the nerves give way altogether; mental alienation sets in; at last the wretch finds in a madhouse that repose which life would not afford him.' Others, he says, `terminate their unendurable situation by the desperate act of suicide'. - - -- - - -- - - - - -- - - -

  The relationships between the blackmailers and the blackmailed were not, however, always clear-cut. Often, blackmailers and blackmailed enjoyed a symbiotic relationship, feeding off each other. For many Uranians, blackmail was neither more nor less sinister than prostitution, an extension to a codified system of risk and reward, of pleasure and payment. Blackmailers and male prostitutes were both called `renters', a term which has survived to the present day in `rent boy', meaning a male prostitute. There were degrees of blackmail. In a climate of extreme hostility and growing hysteria about sex between men, any relationships between men were likely to be tainted with an element of blackmail. At what point did extracting money turn into extorting money? Was there any real difference between the common or garden blackmailers, who demanded money with menaces, and young men like, for example, Edward Shelley, who wrote morbid letters seeking to extract money from Oscar using phrases like `God forgive the past. Do your best for me now'?

  Oscar understood and accepted blackmail as a natural consequence of his sexual choices. He was fascinated by male prostitutes. He knew and liked many boys who were notorious blackmailers and continued to like them even when they tried to blackmail him. And they, in turn, liked Oscar. He admired and applauded what he called `their infamous war against life'. When Robert Cliburn told Oscar how he had blackmailed the Earl of Euston, who had figured prominently in the Cleveland Street Scandal, Oscar declared that Cliburn's determination, his avarice and his tenacity entitled him to the Victoria Cross.

  Oscar was also fond of the weasly Fred Atkins, who was one of his favourite bed partners. Fred Atkins, alias Denny, and on high days and holy days, St Denis, was by turns a bookie's clerk, a not very successful music hall artiste, a part-time female impersonator, a male prostitute and one half of a notorious and very successful blackmailing duet. With his partner, James Burton, known throughout London's underworld as `Uncle' Burton, Fred Atkins would go out and pick up likely-looking gentlemen at the Empire Promenade, at the back of the circle at the Alhambra, or even in a public lavatory, and take them back to his lodgings. Once they were naked, and usually after sex, Burton would burst in and, claiming to be Fred's uncle, take a high moral tone over the outrage committed on his nephew. The upshot was that the hapless punter would pay up handsomely, glad to escape without the police being called. But things did not always work out like that.

  Once, when Fred had picked up a gentleman from Birmingham, taken him back to his lodgings in Tachbrook Street, Pimlico and done the business, the Birmingham gentleman refused to be intimidated by the arrival of Uncle Burton. He was not an average punter. He demanded the return of his gold watch and chain, which Fred had pocketed, and there was a scene which was interrupted by the arrival of the landlady. Finding a middle-aged man and a youth semi-naked on a bed, and another man shouting at them, the landlady sent for the police. By the time Police Constables 396A and 500A from Rochester Row Police Station arrived, Fred and the Birmingham gentleman were fully dressed. It had all been a storm in a teacup, they said, an argument over a game of cards. Everything was now resolved. All the Birmingham gentleman wanted was his watch and chain and he would be on his way. But the two police constables marched Fred, Uncle Burton and the Birmingham gentleman round to Rochester Row police station where statements were taken - statements that would reappear during-Oscar's- trials.

  There were severe penalties against blackmail, ranging from seven years to life imprisonment. And there were occasional prosecutions. Robert Clibu
rn was convicted of blackmail at Lewes Assizes in 1890 but somehow evaded serving a prison sentence. Seven years later, he was prosecuted again, and it was stated in court that he had been receiving through a solicitor an annuity of £100 a year from a gentleman he had been blackmailing. But few victims of blackmail were willing to risk being prosecuted for gross indecency or sodomy by going to the police and revealing all. There were suspicions that in some large cities throughout the country, the police not only tolerated blackmailers, but actively encouraged them for the information they yielded about more prominent citizens. Uncle Burton himself was alleged to be a police informer.

  Little is known about Bosie's brush with blackmailers at Oxford. There were two of them, at least, as Drumlanrig had written to Oscar of the `people' who were blackmailing his brother. Even less is known about what exactly the blackmailers had on Bosie, except that it was serious enough for Bosie's father, the Marquis of Queensberry, to speak of his son's `infamous conduct at Oxford' and to describe the whole affair as `a horrible story'. Was it a foolish love letter to a boy dashed off in an unguarded moment, all but forgotten until a badly written copy on cheap paper arrived in the post one morning with a demand for money in return for the original? Letters were a favoured weapon of the blackmailer. A passionate, indiscreet love letter addressed to another man or a youth was the equivalent of hard currency. Or was it the threatened testimony of `some pretty fellow' Bosie had picked up and slept with? Bosie had been wildly promiscuous in Oxford and had slept not just with undergraduates, but with servants, grooms and assorted other youths. Or it may have been something worse - much worse.

  Bosie was in a state of panic and despair. His mother could see that he was in trouble and begged him to confide in her, but he did not dare. The only person he could turn to was Oscar. He added his appeals to those of Drumlanrig and wrote to Oscar himself - `a most pathetic and charming letter', Oscar called it - begging him to help. Oscar, he knew, must have come across blackmail before, and had even, perhaps, been a victim. Bosie had read Dorian Gray no less than fourteen times and can hardly have failed to pick up on its scattered references to blackmail. During their several lunches and dinners, they may have talked about it, and Oscar could have recounted the experiences of any number of his friends like Frank Miles and Lord Ronald Gower. Oscar Browning, too, had had problems with several of his workingclass proteges and may have told Oscar about his difficulties.