by Neil McKenna
At the beginning of October, Robbie and Claude met and had sex together, most probably at Robbie's rooms in Kensington. Perhaps unwisely, Robbie wrote to Bosie and mentioned the fact that Claude was spending the night with him on his way back to school in Bruges. `The letter contained the word "Boy",' Oscar Browning gleefully recounted to Frank Harris many years later. At the very sight of the word, Browning said, Bosie rushed round to Robbie's and, finding Claude Dansey there, swept him up:
On Saturday the boy slept with Douglas, on Sunday he slept with Oscar. On Monday he slept with a woman at Douglas's expense. On Tuesday he returned to Bruges three days late.
Claude's absence had not gone unnoticed. His late return had caused great anxiety at the English College. When he finally turned up in Bruges, with no adequate explanation, Biscoe Wortham confronted him and demanded to know where he had been and what he had been doing. Eventually Claude confessed that he had stayed with Robbie and while there, as Wortham indignantly recounted to Oscar Browning:
formed the acquaintance of a young man, a friend of Mr Ross's, with whom he afterwards stayed at the Albemarle, and with whom he admits (the boy I mean) that he behaved in an indecent manner.
Max Beerbohm backs up this account. `The schoolboy Helen', he told Reggie Turner, was:
stolen from Bobbie by Bosie and kept at the Albemarle Hotel: how well I remember passing this place one night with Bobbie and his looking sadly at the lighted windows and wondering to me behind which of the red curtains lay the desire of his soul.
In Bruges, Wortham kept `a pretty sharp lookout' on Dansey's letters over the next few days and intercepted one he had written to Robbie which, as Wortham told Oscar Browning, `left absolutely no doubt of the relations which existed between them'. A horrible suspicion now struck Biscoe and Mina Wortham. Had Robbie also behaved indecently with their sons, Philip and Toddy? After talking to his older son, Biscoe sent a copy of his son's statement - `in its naked hideousness' - to Oscar Browning. Robbie had had sex with Philip on his first visit to Mrs Browning's house in Windsor, and then on two subsequent occasions. `I was in his room alone with him early one morning, before breakfast,' Philip confessed:
I was in my night shirt. He was in his pyjamas: he put me on the bed. He had me between the legs. He placed his **** between my legs. He did it on three occasions. When I was staying in London with him on a second occasion. The 3rd time was in his rooms at Church St. It was when I was reading with Mr Edwards. I went to London and spent the night there from Windsor.
`You will be as much horrified as we are, I doubt not,' Wortham told Browning. But Browning did not appear to be unduly horrified. Throughout the tense days of October, Browning was in the eye of the storm, the trusted confidant of both Mina and Biscoe Wortham, and the devoted friend of Robbie Ross. Browning kept closely in touch with Robbie, keeping him informed of developments in Bruges.
In the light of Philip's confession, the Worthams were also worried about Robbie's relations with their second son, Toddy. `I am miserable about poor Toddy,' Mina confided to Browning:
Of course, I have no idea what his relations are with Mr Ross. Up to the last few days I looked upon Mr Ross as Toddy's valued friend and I wrote to Mr Ross last summer and told him how much I valued his friendship for the two boys.
A few days later Mina wrote again to her brother in a state of great relief. Nothing improper had occurred between Toddy and Mr Ross. He had answered all his father's questions entirely to their satisfaction. But Toddy had not been telling the whole truth. He had certainly written to Robbie, and probably had sex with him, but as Robbie's close friend More Adey told Oscar Browning, all Toddy's letters to Robbie had been safely burnt and there was now no evidence to connect them.
Claude Dansey's father, Colonel Dansey, arrived in Bruges on 12 October. After further interrogation of Claude, Biscoe Wortham was in a position to give Oscar Browning more details:
Ross is simply one of a gang of the most absolutely brutal ruffians who spend their time in seducing and prostituting boys and all the time presenting a decent appearance to the world. Two other persons besides himself are implicated in the business.
Those two other persons were Bosie and Oscar. Bosie's name had been blurted out by Claude to his father and Biscoe Wortham, but had he also blurted out Oscar's name? Almost certainly not. Perhaps Claude's encounter with Oscar was extremely brief, and restricted to sexual, rather than social, intercourse. And Oscar may have been introduced to Claude as just `Oscar', with no mention of his surname.
Biscoe Wortham told Oscar Browning that his and Colonel Dansey's first concern was to retrieve any letters from Claude in the possession of Robbie and Bosie, together with any letters from Philip. Oscar Browning duly told Robbie, who in turn told Bosie. Robbie, Bosie and Oscar were in a state of extreme consternation. And none of them could be sure exactly how much the outraged fathers knew. Not one, but two, outraged fathers posed a serious threat. They knew that this time they were not dealing with renters, however dangerous and experienced. Professional blackmailers were not interested in seeing their victims arrested and imprisoned. But outraged fathers generally did want to see the seducers of their sons arrested, tried, punished and shamed. If Max Beerbohm's breathless account of the scandal was correct, private detectives had already been engaged. Were they searching for more evidence to corroborate Claude's account - with a view to instituting criminal proceedings? Or were they employed simply to ensure that the scandal was quietly and effectively suppressed? Robbie, Bosie and Oscar must have spent many agitated hours going over and over their options.
They decided on a bold strategy, not without risk. Oscar Browning had told them that Biscoe Wortham and Colonel Dansey's main concern was to retrieve the compromising letters their sons had written. Robbie and Bosie decided to go to Bruges and see what could be settled. They arrived in Ostend on 15 October, taking rooms in the Grand Hotel du Phare, before travelling on to nearby Bruges and sending a note to Wortham requesting a meeting. 'Biscoe was surprised last evening by a note from Mr. Ross asking for an interview at the Hotel de Flandre - with him was Lord Alfred Douglas, one of his accomplices,' Mina told Oscar Browning. The day after, Robbie reported back to Oscar Browning on their `very unsatisfactory' meeting with Wortham:
He refuses to tell me what he proposes doing. He says he possesses documentary evidence but what he intends doing with this (if it exists) he will not say. He also speaks of `coming to terms' but does not state what those terms are beyond the fact that I have certain letters from the boy Dansey which I must hand over.
On the same day, Bosie wrote to his brother, Lord Percy Douglas, whom he always called `Turts'. `It is frightfully dull here,' he wrote. `Not a soul in the place, and the casino and every place is shut up.' The purpose of Bosie's letter was to explain to his brother why he had come out to Ostend, `in a fearful hurry', and was not in fact at Datchet, as he had said he would be. `What has really happened,' wrote Bosie:
is that Ross, one of my greatest friends, has got into a scrape connected with some people out here, and I have come with him to see him through it. He is one of my greatest friends and is also one of the best fellows that ever lived, and I could not possibly refuse to come out with him. Although he did not ask me to come I saw that he wanted somebody to keep him company etcet. Of course this involves me in nothing, and the thing is sure to come all right as it is not really at all his fault. I cannot explain the affair, so please don't ask any questions.
Bosie's representation of himself as the disinterested friend, offering to travel to dreary Ostend so that he could lend his support to Robbie, is a masterpiece of protesting too much. To be sure, Bosie had only had sex with Claude Dansey, whereas Robbie was accused of seducing both Claude and Philip Wortham, and quite probably Toddy as well. `Please don't let Mamma get in a fuss,' Bosie concluded. `There is really nothing to be excited about, but I have quite determined to stay with Ross-till-the thing is settled.'
Ross and Bosie returned to Lon
don in due course and, on 19 October, at the height of the crisis, George Ives held an intimate Uranian dinner, where Oscar and Bosie were the only guests. Bosie was, according to Ives, `decidedly ruffled, and so lost some of his fascination'. The Dansey crisis was the main topic of conversation. Ives, as usual, occupied the moral high ground: `I felt bound to take a certain line but now I've done my best and must leave matters to take their chance.' Ives amplified these comments later. 'PS: I believe that I had warned Lord A. more than once that he was indulging in homosexuality to a reckless and highly dangerous degree. For tho' I had no objection to the thing itself, we were all afraid that he would get arrested any day.'
Despite the apparent stalemate at the first meeting in Bruges with Biscoe Wortham, clearly there was some room for negotiation. There was some furious diplomatic activity. `The fact is that there are some letters in the possession of Mr Ross and Lord Alfred Douglas which must be had,' Mina wrote to Oscar Browning:
If they would give them up, nothing would be done. Do you think you could get them? Sooner or later Biscoe thinks they will be in the hands of the police, and then of course these compromising letters would be public property.
Oscar Browning agreed to try and broker a deal to secure the return of any compromising letters from Claude and Philip, in exchange for Robbie's letters to them. Robbie also got his close friend, the good-natured More Adey, involved in negotiations. And both sides, as Max Beerbohm indicated in his telegraphic summary of the scandal, may have consulted their solicitors: St John Wontner acting for the outraged fathers; and Sir George Lewis for Robbie, Bosie and, possibly, Oscar. Finally some sort of settlement was agreed on, which involved the return of each side's letters.
But there was a sticking point in the form of Colonel Dansey, who did not want to see the seducers of his son escape scot-free. `Col. D- has been like many "military" men by no means easy to manage,' Biscoe Wortham told Oscar Browning. `His great desire was to punish the culprits, and it was not until the very last moment that he was convinced that he could not punish them, without involving his own son.' Sir George Lewis supposedly told Colonel Dansey that, if Robbie and Bosie were to be prosecuted, `they will doubtless get two years but your son will get six months'.
`At length I am thankful to say we have got to the end of this dreadful case,' Biscoe Wortham told Oscar Browning on 25 October:
The letters have been returned on both sides, and now one feels relieved of a nightmare ... It has been a horrible case, & the details, which I have, and am the only one who knows except the chief actors in the business are beyond everything abominable. We may be thankful that it has ended quietly, but it has been a near thing.
It had been an uncomfortably close shave. Had Colonel Dansey followed his first instinct, Robbie, Bosie and, had his name emerged, perhaps even Oscar might have found themselves having to flee abroad rather than face trial and imprisonment at home.
On a gilded barge
`I don't think England should be represented abroad by an unmarried man ... it might lead to complications.'
Colonel Dansey's decision, taken very reluctantly, not to prosecute Robbie and Bosie was not quite the end of the Bruges affair. There were repercussions. Towards the end of October, Robbie wrote to Bosie from Davos in Switzerland where he was in exile in consequence of the scandal at Bruges. `I am not allowed to live in London for two years,' he told Bosie. As `the purse strings' were in the hands of his family, `and a stoppage is threatened, I have to submit'. More Adey had successfully managed to conceal the worst of the scandal from his family, Robbie said:
but the worthy Rev Mr Squeers wrote a full and particular account of how things were to my brother. It was news to him, as [Adey] had hitherto concealed everything, but the trouble with the noisy military gentleman. My elder brother here gets letters about the disgrace of the family, the social outcast, the son and brother unfit for society of any kind, from people at home. I am sure you will be amused to hear this.
Wackford Squeers was the corrupt and bullying headmaster of Dotheboys Hall in Charles Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby. The `worthy Rev Mr Squeers' had to be a reference to the Reverend Biscoe Wortham, who clearly had taken it upon himself to inform Robbie's older brother, Alec - and presumably their mother, Mrs Ross - of all the sordid details of the Bruges affair. It is clear from Robbie's letter that Colonel Dansey - `the noisy military gentleman' - had already been in some kind of contact with Robbie's family. Was Robbie's sojourn in Switzerland the result of a decision taken by his family, or was it part of the settlement of the scandal? Had Biscoe Wortham and Colonel Dansey demanded that Robbie leave London and live in exile abroad for a time as some kind of punishment? This may have been what Max Beerbohm meant when he told Reggie Turner that Biscoe Wortham was now `blackmailing' Ross.
Rumours of Bosie's part in the suppressed scandal were beginning to seep out. Will Rothenstein told Max Beerbohm that Bosie had been `going in for the wildest folly in London, and, I imagine, will shortly have to take a tour round the world, or something of the kind'. George Ives, who was dazzled by Bosie and more than a little in love with him, continued to fret over his troubles. On 28 October, three days after the affair had been finally resolved, Ives confided to his diary that he had `a long chat with O.W. about private matters'. These private matters principally concerned Bosie, whom Ives with his mania for secrecy referred to simply as `X', only inserting Bosie's name into the manuscript in parenthesis many years later as `Lord A.D. afterwards a traitor':
Was up very late last night, partly working out an attempt to save poor dear X from the effects of a course of the wildest foolishness, if I can - in truth I have pondered many hours on this point having no small regard for X but as things point now, unless some happy change takes place, I see very little hope, but I have done my best from public and private reasons.
Ives was quite specific. He wanted to save Bosie from the `effects', or consequences, of a course of `wildest foolishness', not from the `wildest foolishness' itself. It was too late to turn back the clock. Bosie's liaison with Claude Dansey had already happened. But what were the effects or consequences that Ives was referring to? It may only be speculation, but was Bosie under some kind of injunction to go abroad? If Colonel Dansey and Biscoe Wortham had demanded that Robbie go into exile, were they equally insistent that Bosie should go too? And had Bosie refused, threatening to stay and face whatever consequences his non-compliance might bring?
Eleven days later, Oscar was writing a carefully phrased letter to Bosie's mother, expressing his fears for Bosie's health and for his future. Bosie, Oscar wrote, `is sleepless, nervous, and rather hysterical':
He does absolutely nothing, and is quite astray in life, and may, unless you or Drumlanrig do something, come to grief of some kind. His life seems to me aimless, unhappy and absurd.
Oscar urged Sybil to send Bosie abroad. `Why- not try and make arrangements of some kind for him to go abroad for four or five months, to the Cromers in Egypt if that could be managed?' Oscar told Sybil that he liked to think of himself as Bosie's greatest friend:
so I write to you quite frankly to ask you to send him abroad to better surroundings. It would save him, I feel sure. At present his life seems to be tragic and pathetic in its foolish aimlessness.
Oscar concluded by begging Sybil not to let Bosie know anything about his letter. But, in fact, Bosie knew all about it. Oscar states quite clearly in De Profundis that he wrote to Sybil with Bosie's `knowledge and concurrence'.
Was a six-month sojourn in Egypt the solution that Oscar, George Ives and Bosie had hammered out together to get Bosie out of London until the vengeful instincts of the outraged fathers had subsided? Robbie was certainly convinced that Bosie's hurriedly arranged trip to Egypt was in consequence of the Bruges affair. `Douglas went to Egypt to avoid the consequences of a scandal which he had caused entirely himself,' Robbie told Frank Harris many years later, adding bitterly that `he left others to face the consequences of it.' Robbie was being very unfa
ir. Bosie had indeed slept with Claude Dansey, but only after Robbie had slept with him, and Bosie had never had sex with Philip Wortham. Bosie's chief culpability lay in the fact that he had caused Claude's late return to Bruges - a late return which led to the scandal being exposed.
Sybil Queensberry agreed with Oscar that Bosie should leave the country. She even followed Oscar's prompt that he should go and stay with Lord and Lady Cromer in Cairo. Lady Cromer had been a close friend of Sybil's since they were children. Lord Cromer was a recently created peer who was the British Agent and Consul-General in Egypt. Egypt was theoretically an outpost of the Ottoman Empire, enjoying independent dominion status and governed by a Khedive or `ruler'. But in reality, it was a client state of the British Empire. As recently as 1882, Britain had intervened militarily to reinstate Khedive Tawfik, who was sympathetic to British interests, and who had been overthrown by Egyptian nationalists. Lord Cromer was the ruler of Egypt in all but name and was the most powerful man in the country.
Matters were fixed up with almost indecent haste. Bosie was to depart for Cairo on 30 November, just three weeks after Oscar proposed it, and only five weeks after the settlement of the Bruges affair. It is possible that Sybil was fully aware why Bosie needed to leave the country. Rumblings of discontent from Colonel Dansey and Biscoe Wortham may have reached her. And by now Bosie's older brother, Percy, might have had a clearer understanding of how matters had stood in Bruges and told their mother.
If Oscar's letter to Sybil was written with Bosie's full knowledge and concurrence, then Cairo must have been Bosie's choice. A sojourn at the Agency in Cairo as the guest of the British ruler of Egypt, with all the viceregal privilege and consequence that entailed, would require no sacrifice of comfort, and might conceivably be amusing. There was also the prospect that Bosie might be found a post as an attache in the diplomatic service, providing him with a career fit for an aristocrat, a gentleman and -a poet.