The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde

by Neil McKenna

  Think of their loathsome joy, of the delight they would have in dragging you down, of the mud and mire they would plunge you in. Think of the hypocrite with his greasy smile penning his leading article, and arranging the foulness of the public placard.

  `Yours is a very nasty scandal,' Mrs Cheveley tells Sir Robert. `You couldn't survive it.' Oscar's evocation of the miring of Sir Robert Chiltern in scandal accurately reflected what he knew might have happened to him, had an incriminating letter - his `madness of kisses' letter - been made public. Oscar's recent experiences of blackmail - first by Alfred Wood, and then by Allen and Cliburn - are reflected in the fictional blackmail of Sir Robert Chiltern. And like Chiltern, Oscar's blackmailers did not merely hold in their hands the power to destroy his career and his reputation, they could also destroy his marriage.

  In both Oscar's life and in Sir Robert's life, the blackmailer is sexually attractive, charming and delightful - as well as decidedly dangerous. Oscar recognised, in his life and in his fictions, that there is an essential bond of commonality between blackmailer and victim. Mrs Cheveley says of Sir Robert: `He and I are closer than friends. We are enemies linked together. The same sin binds us.' The same sin, sex between men, bound Oscar and Bosie and their blackmailers together. Blackmail is `the game of life as we all have to play it sooner or later', Mrs Cheveley tells Sir Robert. Oscar had already played the game, and won. Eventually, with luck and the help of his good friend Lord Goring, Sir Robert Chiltern too wins the game. In a morally ambiguous ending, the incriminating letter is tricked away from Mrs Cheveley, and Sir Robert and his reputation do not merely survive, but prosper. Sir Robert is offered a seat in the Cabinet, ironically because of his perceived `high character, high moral tone, high principles'.

  But it is not the blackmail, nor even its happy resolution, which gives An Ideal Husband its force and vigour. The power of the play lies in its interrogation of what is truly moral and truly immoral, especially when it comes to sex and marriage. There are many parallels between the situations of Sir Robert and Lady Chiltern and Oscar and Constance. Like Oscar, Sir Robert has committed a terrible sin and hides a terrible secret from his wife and the world. That Oscar's sins are plural and sexual, as opposed to Sir Robert's single, financial sin, makes little difference. Sir Robert speaks of his single sin as if it were, in fact, plural and sexual. He describes his sin as `my secret and my shame', evoking the Uranian meaning of shame as love and sex between men, and defends his conduct to his greatest friend, Lord Goring, in terms that Oscar might have used to defend the courage of his sexual convictions: `Do you really think that it is weakness that yields to temptation?' Sir Robert demands of Lord Goring:

  I tell you that there are terrible temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to. To stake all one's life on a single moment, to risk everything on one throw, whether the stake be power or pleasure, I care not - there is no weakness in that. There is a horrible, a terrible courage. I had that courage.

  Sir Robert's strength and courage in yielding to temptation are counterpointed by his wife's inflexible and overwhelming sense of moral certainty. Gertrude Chiltern is `pitiless in her perfection', `cold and stern and without mercy'. When Mrs Cheveley, who happens to have been at school with Gertrude Chiltern, reads one of her letters she exclaims: `The ten commandments in every stroke of the pen, and the moral law all over the page.'

  Much of the drama of An Ideal Husband is pivoted on Sir Robert's reluctance to disclose his terrible secret and his wife's accidental discovery of that secret. Gertrude Chiltern confronts her husband and demands to know if there is any truth in the aspersions cast by Mrs Cheveley - 'any secret dishonour or disgrace', any `act of shame' or any `horrible secrets' in his life. If there were, then the inevitable consequence would be that their lives would `drift apart', that they would become `entirely separate'.

  Oscar had any number of horrible secrets and numerous acts of Uranian shame in his life. Although Constance may not have come right out and asked him about his relationships with young men, especially his relationship with Bosie, she knew that she had lost her husband to a man. Had Oscar and Constance drifted apart? Were they leading almost separate lives? Certainly, the couple had seen very little of each other during 1893. Constance had been in Florence for the early part of the year. When she returned, Oscar was ensconced at the Savoy with Bosie, and then in his rooms at St James's Place or at the Albemarle Hotel, before taking the Cottage at Goring. Oscar did spend some time at Tite Street, but it must have been measured in days, rather than weeks. And Constance's four brief visits to Goring with the children suggest that she and Oscar were in effect separated, spending time together for the sake of the children.

  Although Sir Robert and Oscar are far from ideal husbands, the play ends with a heart-felt plea for forgiveness, for understanding. `Women are not meant to judge us, but to forgive us when we need forgiveness,' Lord Goring tells Lady Chiltern. The unconditional, unequal love of a woman for her husband holds within itself the power of redemption. It was as if Oscar was asking Constance for her forgiveness and for her understanding. Sooner or later, he knew he would have to seek redemption in the love of his wife. And Constance would not fail him.

  A pugilist of

  unsound mind

  `The basis of every scandal is an absolutely immoral certainty.'

  Though much of An Ideal Husband appears to refer to Oscar himself, Oscar rather more sensationally may have been alluding to a real Liberal politician. The character of Sir Robert Chiltern, a rising Liberal politician and UnderSecretary of State for Foreign Affairs, may have been based on Archibald Philip Primrose, fifth Earl of Rosebery, who had just been appointed Foreign Secretary for the second time when Oscar was writing the play.

  Like the forty-year-old Sir Robert Chiltern, the forty-six-year-old Lord Rosebery belonged to the younger, coming generation of Liberal politicians who were waiting for the passing of Gladstone to realise their ambitions. Rosebery was a rising star of the Liberal Party and had already been talked about as a future Prime Minister, just as Sir Robert had been told by Lord Caversham that `we shall have you Prime Minister, some day'. Oscar wrote a particularly detailed description of Sir Robert Chiltern as `a man of forty, but looking somewhat younger' who was `clean-shaven, with finely-cut features, dark-haired and dark-eyed'. Oscar's description of Sir Robert chimes remarkably with contemporary portraits of Rosebery. Like Sir Robert, Rosebery was a man in early middle age, and he was unusually clean-shaven in an era of whiskers, moustaches and beards. Rosebery's features were also finecut, and his hair was dark. Only their eyes differed: while Sir Robert's were dark, Rosebery's were a piercing blue. Sir Robert was possessed of `a nervous temperament, with a tired look'; there was, Oscar wrote, `nervousness in the nostrils, and in the pale, thin, pointed hands'. Rosebery suffered from chronic exhaustion and was renowned for his nervous temperament, which often manifested itself in prolonged bouts of insomnia so severe that doctors feared for his sanity, if not his life.

  Many of the traits of character ascribed by Oscar to Sir Robert could equally well have been attributed to Rosebery. Sir Robert was, Oscar wrote:

  A personality of mark. Not popular - few personalities are. But intensely admired by the few, and deeply respected by the many. The note of his manner is that of perfect distinction, with a slight touch of pride.

  Rosebery was also a personality of mark, intensely admired by his supporters, and widely respected both inside and outside the Liberal Party. Queen Victoria particularly admired him as Foreign Secretary and regarded him as a safe pair of hands to succeed Gladstone when he stepped down as Prime Minister in 1894. But Rosebery was also seen as proud, aloof and disdainful. Throughout his political career he had been torn between ambition and ennui, between his sense of duty and his dilettantism. As a peer of the realm and a man of almost immeasurable wealth, Rosebery never had to face the judgement of the electorate or the harsh realities of earning a living. Oscar was perhaps thinking o
f the dualities and contradictions in the personality of Lord Rosebery when he described how Sir Robert Chiltern's `firmly-chiselled mouth and chin contrast strikingly with the romantic expression in the deep-set eyes':

  The variance is suggestive of an almost complete separation of passion and intellect, as though thought and emotion were each isolated in its own sphere through some violence of will-power.

  Many of those who knew Rosebery as a colleague, as a politician and even as a friend sensed the paradoxes in the man. Lord Acton, the celebrated historian and grandee of the Liberal Party, warned Sir George Murray, Rosebery's private secretary when he became Prime Minister in March 1894, to be on his guard against what he called Rosebery's `peculiarities', by which he meant the `undisciplined temper and the strong self-consciousness' which lurked under `the excessively agreeable surface':

  What one can hardly exaggerate is his exceeding sensitiveness, combined with a secretiveness, that easily makes him suspicious. For he does not easily think very well of people, and his likings are not predominant. One has to be careful not to be duped by his cordiality, for he can be both very obstinate and very hard.

  Sensitive, secretive, suspicious. Did Rosebery, like Sir Robert Chiltern, have a `secret' and a `shame'? And did Rosebery, like Sir Robert, possess the same strength and the same `horrible, terrible courage' to yield to temptations, to stake his all `on a single moment, to risk everything on one throw, whether the stake be power or pleasure'? The gambling metaphors in Sir Robert's famous speech are entirely appropriate. Rosebery was noted for his lifelong love of horseracing as both an owner and a punter. He is supposed to have said that he had three great ambitions in life: to win the Derby, marry an heiress and become Prime Minister. He achieved all three. Rosebery did indeed have a secret, a shameful secret. And it was a secret of which Oscar was only too well aware, a secret with which he could sympathise only too well. Lord Rosebery, Foreign Secretary and future Prime Minister, had a secret lover who was none other than Bosie's older brother, Francis, Viscount Drumlanrig.

  Drumlanrig was twenty-four when he met Rosebery, a tall, dark-haired and dashingly handsome young man. He struck many people as shy on first acquaintance, but charmingly so. He was universally liked by all those who met him, `an excellent, amiable young man' radiating `brightness and good temper'. According to Trelawny Backhouse, he was `cultured, charming and generous to friend and foe'. Sir Edward Hamilton, a senior civil servant and close friend of Rosebery's, confided to his diary that `there was something very winning' about Drumlanrig, `he was much liked by everybody'. The Liberal MP Arthur Ellis summed up Drumlanrig's special qualities when he wrote that he was `the most loveable youth I ever met'.

  Rosebery and Drumlanrig's love affair had begun in 1892, not long after Bosie and Oscar had fallen in love after the attempted blackmail of Bosie in Oxford. Drumlanrig was Lord Queensberry's oldest son and was educated at Harrow, where, according to John Addington Symonds, `every boy of good looks had a female name, and was recognised either as a public prostitute or as some bigger fellow's "bitch".'

  After school, Drumlanrig had taken a commission in the Coldstream Guards and was, in 1892, living with his grandfather, Alfred Montgomery, at his house in Hertford Street, less than five minutes' walk from Lord Rosebery's `little bandbox' of a house at 2, Berkeley Square. There was a family connection between Rosebery and the Montgomerys. Rosebery's sister Constance was married to Drumlanrig's great-uncle, and the two families would have been on visiting terms. Drumlanrig was Alfred Montgomery's favourite grandchild. According to Bosie, Montgomery was `devoted' to Drumlanrig and was no doubt anxious to use his political and social contacts to further his grandson's career.

  It was probably Montgomery who introduced Drumlanrig to Rosebery in the spring of 1892 with a view to opening up a political career for his grandson. The two men took an immediate liking to each other, and Rosebery, exactly like Lord Illingworth with Gerald Arbuthnot in Oscar's A Woman of No Importance, invited Drumlanrig to become his private secretary. Indeed, it is possible, perhaps even likely, that the idea of a wealthy aristocrat with political ambitions inviting a young and handsome man to become his private secretary - with all the ambiguities that surrounded such an invitation - was based on Rosebery's invitation to Drumlanrig. Oscar wrote A Woman ofNo Importance in the summer and early autumn of 1892 and would have known about Drumlanrig's appointment, certainly from Bosie, and perhaps even from Drumlanrig himself. Though no letters survive, there is evidence that Oscar was well acquainted with Drumlanrig, and that they corresponded and met frequently at Sybil Queensberry's family gatherings at the Hut and in Cadogan Square, and on other, less formal occasions.

  Exactly how and when the secret sexual relationship between Rosebery and Drumlanrig began is impossible to know. Rosebery, like Lord Illingworth and Sir Robert Chiltern, and, indeed, like Oscar himself, was ostensibly heterosexual. He had married Hannah de Rothschild, heiress to a fabulous fortune, in 1878, and they appear to have been very happily married up until Hannah's early death in 1890. Trelawny Backhouse's unpublished memoirs contain a wealth of detail about Rosebery's sexuality and the course of his love affair with Drumlanrig. According to Backhouse, Rosebery told him that it was some months after the death of his wife when he experienced a sudden and intense Damascene conversion to the desirability of sex with men. While he was staying near Naples, Rosebery told Backhouse, he visited the famous Blue Grotto in Capri and:

  became attracted, `a l'instar de Tibere', to an Italian `ephebus' who was disporting himself in utter nakedness at that historical post sacred to love and lust. He then for the first time revelled in the beauty of the masculine posterior which was to become his dominant passion, perhaps not even yielding place to his bookloving propensities which were literally his second nature.

  Backhouse, who claims to have had sex with both Rosebery and Drumlanrig, as well as with Oscar and Bosie, says that Rosebery was an expert in the art of anal intercourse:

  Like the Arabs and the Ottomans (today called Turks) Lord Rosebery was fortunate in his ability to perform a lingering and protracted copulation equally agreeable to both parties; it was his custom to prolong the action of sex for some twenty minutes if not more, retaining his large, thickset organ stationary and fixed in the patient's rectum.

  By the early 1890s, rumours about Lord Rosebery's sexual preferences were beginning to seep out. Rosebery was notoriously secretive about his private life and insisted on opening all his own letters. Lewis `Loulou' Harcourt, son and private secretary to Sir William Harcourt, Rosebery's great rival to inherit Gladstone's crown, wrote in his diary that he was not in the least surprised by this, `considering some of the things which, to my knowledge, some of them must contain'. But Rosebery seemed to have some sort of protection. The disgruntled actor, Charles Brookfield, who was to help the Marquis of Queensberry find damning evidence of Oscar's sexual relationships with young men, was warned off when he tried to find incriminating material about other men who loved men, especially Rosebery. In the 1940s, the actor Seymour Hicks, who knew Oscar, Brookfield and the Metropolitan Commissioner of Police of the time, told Harford Montgomery Hyde that:

  Brookfield's zeal in the pursuit of homosexuals was so great that he continued his enquiries into the activities of others much more highly-placed than Wilde, with the result that he was sent for by the Commissioner of Police and warned in his own interest that if he persisted in what he was doing, his dead body might be found floating in the Thames one morning, face downwards.

  In The Intersexes, his study of sex between men, written in the late 1890s after Rosebery had retired to spend much of his time in Italy, but not published until 1908, the pseudonymous `Xavier Mayne' makes a not-so-coded reference to Lord Rosebery's sexual interests:

  One eminent personage in British political life, who once reached the highest honours in a career that has appeared to be taken up or thrown by with curious capriciousness or hesitancy, is a constant absentee in his beautiful home in Sout
hern Europe, whence only gentle rumours of his racial homosexuality reach his birth-land.

  After Rosebery's death in May 1929, George Ives confided to his diary that Rosebery was:

  said by almost everybody to have been a homosexual. I was told by a deputy coroner, that one of the chiefs of the CID, Dr McNaughton, told him that the Hyde Park Police had orders never to arrest Lord R. on the principle that too big a fish often breaks the line.

  Although some of the wilder claims in the memoirs of Trelawny Backhouse are dubious, he appears to have been extremely and convincingly wellinformed about the course of the tragic love affair between Rosebery and Drumlanrig. Backhouse first met Drumlanrig at a small `soiree' of a distinctly Uranian character at Rosebery's house in the autumn of 1892 where the guests included `the very eccentric' Professor Ray Lankaster and the famous John Addington Symonds -'homosexual to the finger tips', as Backhouse described him. Ray Lankaster was an eminent biologist and zoologist and was also a Uranian: he was arrested and subsequently acquitted over sexual offences concerning young men in 1895. And John Addington Symonds was certainly in London up until September 1892. It was to be his last visit to the city. He died the following year.

  Backhouse and Drumlanrig fell naturally into conversation. Backhouse had been at Winchester with Bosie and, by his own admission, had been Bosie's catamite on many occasions. `Lord Douglas', as Backhouse calls Drumlanrig, appeared to be very curious about Backhouse's sexual experiences with Bosie:

  Lord Douglas took me aside and asked me many pointed questions regarding my Winchester days and my intimacies with his brother. I neither dissembled nor cloaked the facts and Douglas listened with interest.