The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde

by Neil McKenna

  When his servant told him that Lord Queensberry and another gentleman were waiting in the library, Oscar was surprised, and not a little taken aback. He immediately went into the library where Queensberry was standing by the window:

  `Sit down!' said Queensberry curtly.

  `I do not allow you to talk like that to me in my house or anyone to talk like that to me in my house or anywhere else,' Oscar replied. `I suppose you have come to apologise for the statement you made about my wife and myself in letters you wrote to your son,' he added. `I could have you up any day I chose for criminal libel for writing such a letter.'

  `The letter was privileged, as it was written to my son,' retorted Queensberry.

  `How dare you say such things to me about your son and me?' Oscar demanded.

  `You were both kicked out of the Savoy Hotel at a moment's notice for your disgusting conduct,' said Queensberry. `You have taken furnished rooms for him in Piccadilly.'

  `Somebody has been telling you an absurd set of lies about your son and me,' said Oscar reasonably. `I haven't done anything of the kind.'

  But Queensberry was not in the mood to be reasoned with. He knew what he knew, he said, and he had evidence.

  `I hear you were thoroughly well blackmailed last year for a disgusting sodomitic letter that you wrote to my son,' he said.

  `The letter was a beautiful letter, and I never write except for publication,' replied Oscar. `Lord Queensberry,' he continued. `Do you seriously accuse your son and me of sodomy?'

  `I don't say you are it,' Queensberry growled. `But you look it and you pose as it, which is just as bad. If I catch you and my son together in any public restaurant, I will thrash you!'

  Oscar was by now thoroughly riled. `I don't know what the Queensberry rules are, but the Oscar Wilde rule is to shoot on sight!' Oscar declared, telling Queensberry to leave his house at once.

  Queensberry was still muttering about disgusting scandals and sodomitic letters.

  `You have to go,' repeated Oscar firmly. `I will not have in my house a brute like you.'

  `I won't stay longer than I can help, I don't want to get the reputation you've got!' Queensberry sneered as he and his burly friend shuffled out into the hall.

  `This,' Oscar told his servant, `is the Marquis of Queensberry, the most infamous brute in London. You are never to allow him to enter my house again. Should he attempt to come in, you must send for the police.'

  Oscar's courtroom account of the scene at Tite Street was an edited version. The actual encounter was much nastier, and there was a much stronger streak of barely suppressed violence and threat. Oscar later wrote how he remembered Queensberry:

  waving his small hands in the air in an epileptic fury ... uttering every foul word his foul mind could think of, and screaming the loathsome threats he afterwards with such cunning carried out.

  After the initial shock of Queensberry's unexpected incursion into Tite Street had worn off, Oscar and Bosie paused to take stock. They were confronted with the disturbing fact that Queensberry knew rather more about their lives than he ought to. He knew that they had both stayed at the Savoy, and he knew something about the existence of Oscar's rooms at St James's Place. Most significantly, Queensberry knew that Oscar had been `thoroughly well blackmailed last year for a disgusting sodomitic letter that you wrote to my son'. This was alarming. Queensberry's information was exact. Oscar had been twice blackmailed the previous year over his `madness of kisses' letter to Bosie. How had Queensberry found this out? Though Oscar and Bosie never did find out, the culprit may have been Oscar's old friend, the solicitor, Sir George Lewis, who had successfully extricated Bosie from the Oxford blackmailing incident in the spring of 1892, and who had intervened when Alfred Wood tried to blackmail Oscar over the `madness of kisses' letter. Queensberry had retained Lewis to act for him in annulment proceedings instituted by Ethel Weedon.

  What to do about the mad, screaming Marquis was the topic of much discussion between Oscar, Bosie and other intimate friends like Robbie Ross and George Ives. Doing nothing was no longer an option. Queensberry was bandying about accusations of sodomy, which were very serious. He had to be effectively gagged before the accusations became common currency and, crucially, before they reached the ears of Scotland Yard. It was agreed that legal advice, and even perhaps legal remedy, should be sought. After all, the good offices of Sir George Lewis had resolved Bosie's Oxford blackmail, and helped to resolve Alfred Wood's attempted blackmail. And Bosie and Oscar knew that Lewis had been involved behind the scenes in trying to settle the stand-off in Bad Homburg between Queensberry and Rosebery. It was worth a try. A stiff solicitor's letter, with a strong threat of legal action, might just be enough to scare Queensberry away.

  It was to Sir George Lewis that Oscar now turned. Bosie was very anxious that Oscar should sue his father for criminal libel. `I am not and never have been ashamed of the fact that I urged Oscar from the very first to take proceedings,' Bosie wrote many years later. `I told him he should go for my father at once.' Oscar wrote to Lewis in the first days of July about the possibility of instituting proceedings against Queensberry. Lewis sent a curt and businesslike reply to say that he was acting for Lord Queensberry:

  Under these circumstances you will see that it is impossible for me to offer any opinion about any proceedings you intend to take against him. Although I cannot act against him, I should not act against you.

  On Robbie Ross's advice, Oscar now consulted the firm of C.O. Humphreys, Son and Kershaw.

  Bosie's family were beginning to be alarmed. Queensberry had caused the family quite enough trouble and involved them in quite enough scandal without the further spectacle of a prosecution in the open courts for criminal libel over an alleged sexual relationship between his younger son and a famous playwright. There was also Drumlanrig and his career to think of. For a junior government minister in the House of Lords, and a close and trusted friend and ally of the Prime Minister, any scandal involving his father could be ruinous to his career. The family made strenuous efforts to calm things down on either side. Alfred Montgomery wrote a cautious, civil letter to Queensberry, suggesting that they should meet to discuss the Oscar and Bosie situation. `I do not see why I should come dancing attendance on you,' Queensberry replied pugnaciously. `Your daughter is the person who is supporting my son to defy me. This hideous scandal has been going on for years':

  I have made out a case against Oscar Wilde and have to his face accused him of it. If I was quite certain of the thing I would shoot the fellow on sight, but I can only accuse him of posing. It now lies in the hands of the two whether they will further defy me. Your daughter appears now to be encouraging them, although she can hardly intend this. I don't believe Wilde will now dare defy me. He plainly showed the white feather the other day when I talked to him - damned cur and coward of the Rosebery type.

  Sybil Queensberry asked Bosie's cousin, George Wyndham - `plausible George Wyndham', as Oscar dubbed him - to dissuade Oscar from launching legal proceedings. Wyndham's intervention was successful. (Wyndham's other piece of advice, that he should `gradually drop' Bosie, was treated by Oscar with the contempt it deserved.) Oscar settled for a solicitor's letter demanding a retraction and an apology. Yet even this was too much for Sybil. She wrote a personal note to Oscar begging him not to send a solicitor's letter.

  Oscar and Bosie disregarded Sybil's entreaties and the solicitor's letter was sent on 11 July. `My Lord Marquis,' the letter ran:

  We have been consulted by Mr Oscar Wilde with respect to certain letters written by your Lordship in which letters you have most foully and infamously libelled him as also your own son Lord Alfred Douglas. In those letters your Lordship has mentioned exalted personages and Mr Oscar Wilde not being desirous of wounding their feelings by a publication of your letters has instructed us to give you the opportunity of retracting your assertions and insinuations, in writing, with an apology for having made them.

  Queensberry's reply was short and to the
point. `I have received your letter with considerable astonishment,' he wrote. `I shall certainly not tender to Mr. Oscar Wilde any apology for letters I have written to my son.' Queensberry said that he was at a complete loss to understand the allusion to exalted personages. `With Mr Wilde's horrible reputation,' he concluded, `I can afford to publish any private letters I have written to my son, and you are quite at liberty to take any steps you please.'

  According to the statement he made to his solicitors before his trial for criminal libel, Queensberry was determined to confront Oscar and Bosie in public:

  I now made up my mind to have a public row with them, if I met them together. I went about all the cafes they usually frequented hoping to find them but I was not fortunate enough to do so. I told the manager at the Berkeley, Willis's Rooms and the Cafe Royal what I intended to do.

  Bosie was incandescent with rage and dashed off an impetuous note. `As you return my letters unopened, I am obliged to write on a postcard':

  I write to inform you that I treat your absurd threats with absolute indifference. Ever since your exhibition at OW's house, I have made a point of appearing with him at many public restaurants such as the Berkeley, Willis's Rooms, the Cafe Royal etc., and I shall continue to go to any of these places whenever I choose and with whom I choose. I am of age and my own master.

  Bosie informed his father that Oscar could prosecute him and have him sent to prison for his `outrageous libels'. He concluded with a threat. If Queensberry attempted to assault either himself or Oscar:

  I shall try to defend myself with a loaded revolver which I always carry; and if I shoot you, or if he shoots you, we should be completely justified as we should be acting in self-defence against a violent and dangerous rough, and I think if you were dead not many people would miss you.

  Bosie was extremely proud of this letter and boasted to Oscar that he could beat his father `at his own trade'. But he was also deadly serious. He did indeed go about with a loaded gun, which once accidentally went off in the Berkeley and shattered a window. It was lucky that neither he nor Oscar, nor indeed anyone else, was injured or killed.

  Bosie's threat further inflamed the situation. Queensberry's response was to pay a personal visit to Oscar's solicitors on 18 July and inform them that unless Bosie stopped carrying a loaded revolver, he would personally inform the police of the fact.

  Later the same day, Queensberry wrote a letter to the solicitors repeating his threat:

  If I am to be openly defied by Mr Oscar Wilde and my son by further scandals in public places, I shall have no other resort but to do as I have threatened and give information at Scotland Yard as to what has happened.

  The wording was ambiguous, perhaps deliberately so. By `further scandals in public places' did he simply mean Bosie's carrying a revolver? Or was his threat altogether broader? Queensberry's letter could be construed as a shot across Oscar and Bosie's bows. If they continued to flaunt their friendship in public, Queensberry would give what information he had to Scotland Yard. It was a credible threat. Queensberry already knew about the `madness of kisses' blackmail and was actively trying to find out more, interrogating Sybil as to whether Bosie had ever stayed at the Savoy.

  For Oscar and Bosie, Queensberry was something between a nuisance and `a maniac'. Neither of them believed that he would really carry out his threat to make a public scandal. They knew he was violent, foul-mouthed and obsessive, but they also knew that over time he tended to lose interest in his vendettas. In spite of all the dramas of July 1894, they still hoped that Queensberry would get bored, go away and leave them alone. But Oscar and Bosie made the mistake of under-estimating their enemy and the extent of his malice and his cunning. It would prove to be a fatal mistake.

  The boys on the beach

  `When you really want love, you will find it waiting for you.'

  The summer of 1894 saw Oscar and Bosie more committed to each other than ever. Paradoxically, the threatening shadow of the Scarlet Marquis seemed to magnify the intensity of their love. Adversity shaped and honed it, defining and giving value to their Uranian passion. Oscar's letters to Bosie are gentler, more tender and more true than his earlier more flamboyant and selfconsciously `poetic' love letters. Bosie was his `own dear boy', his `own dearest boy' and his `dear, wonderful boy'. `I want to see you,' he told Bosie in July, at the height of the Queensberry crisis:

  It is really absurd. I can't live without you. You are so dear, so wonderful. I think of you all day long, and miss your grace, your boyish beauty, the bright sword-play of your wit, the delicate fancy of your genius, so surprising always in its sudden swallow-flights towards north or south, towards sun or moon - and above all, you yourself.

  Two or three weeks later Oscar was writing again to tell Bosie how much he loved him. `You are more to me than any one of them has any idea,' he wrote. `You are the atmosphere of beauty through which I see life; you are the incarnation of all lovely things.'

  Both Oscar and Bosie saw a great deal of George Ives during the summer. Ives had recently moved into the Albany, the exclusive bachelor apartments in Piccadilly, and Oscar and Bosie were in the habit of dropping in for afternoon tea and long discussions about the Cause. Ives's transcendent vision of Uranian love as a love apart, a love superior and a love persecuted appealed to them both at this moment of crisis. As a result of Queensberry's attack they felt themselves to be emblematic of all vexed and persecuted lovers. And their fight for the freedom to love each other was emblematic of the struggle of all men who loved men. It was a noble cause, a call to arms. They were crusaders, not just in a political sense, but in a spiritual, almost mystical sense. They were what Oscar and George Ives, among others, called `the Elect', the chosen Uranian few, predestined for salvation - and perhaps even for martyrdom.

  Ives was by turns dazzled and bewildered by Oscar and Bosie. `Their ideals are so different from mine,' he confided to his diary. Obsessed with secrecy and with his work for the Cause, Ives was a prude and a puritan. He alternately struggled with and submitted to what he called `the beauty side of life', enjoying sex and then feeling guilty after taking his pleasure. Oscar and Bosie's joyous erotic paganism, searching for and seizing sexual pleasure as often as they could, was the antithesis of Ives's anguished idealism. Oscar was, Ives thought, as `brilliant as a shining jewel', but `he either cannot or will not, give the key to his philosophy. Until I get it, I can't understand him.'

  George Ives's interest in Bosie was altogether more earthy. Like many of Oscar's circle, Ives was violently attracted to Bosie, and more than a little in love with him. The previous autumn, just before Bosie's departure for Egypt, Ives had been kept awake by erotic thoughts about him. `Was awake till past 3 and am not sleeping so well as usual lately,' he confided to his diary. `I attribute this to the influence of A.D. about whom I am spinning a friendly web.' He thought Bosie `bright as Apollo' but was not blind to his faults. Ives recognised that Bosie had `a difficult character, swayed by passion, shaken by impulse'. He wanted Bosie to `change his life', to pause `to reflect on himself, to conquer himself and obtain freedom'. If Bosie could be reformed, a bright future lay before them. But if not, there could be nothing between them for `the Cause must not be injured by an individual however charming'.

  George Ives never did succeed in reforming Bosie, but he did manage a snatched night of passion with him in the summer of 1894. Ives recorded in his diary how B', as he called Bosie, `the original of Dorian Gray and a bigger scoundrel', had come to tea at the Albany. Afterwards, Bosie took Ives to his mother's house in Cadogan Place, where Ives played the piano and was introduced to Bosie's older brother, Drumlanrig. They dined together at the Cafe Royal, and Ives's diary coyly records how Bosie `is staying here tonight'. Ives was rather less coy about that single sexual encounter with Bosie in an addendum to his diary entry made a quarter of a century later: `That miserable traitor actually stayed one night and slept with me!' he wrote. It is clear that Bosie wanted a threesome. `He pressed me to ask -- in,
' wrote Ives, adding with unconscious wit, `but I declined as I thought it wouldn't do in the Albany.'

  As a defiant Queensberry continued to stalk them, Oscar and Bosie increasingly turned to the occult: to a series of fortune tellers, clairvoyants and palm readers. Oscar had been weaned on the myths and legends of Ireland and had always been very superstitious. `I love superstitions,' he wrote in January 1894. `They are the colour element of thought and imagination.' When the actor-manager George Alexander asked him if he really believed in palmists, Oscar replied, `Always ... when they prophesy nice things.' Oscar and Bosie wanted to read the runes of their lives, to find out what the future held in store. But they were not in search of the truth. Rather they were seeking comfort and reassurance, and they found it, in large measure, in the person of Mrs Robinson, `the Sibyl of Mortimer Street', as Oscar dubbed her. Mrs Robinson was a fashionable palm reader who numbered several MPs and society ladies among her clientele. Oscar seems to have first visited her in July, at the height of the Queensberry crisis. Mrs Robinson was suitably reassuring, as Oscar told Bosie:

  The only thing that consoles me is what the Sibyl of Mortimer Street (whom mortals term Mrs Robinson) said to me. If I could disbelieve her I would, but I can't, and I know that early in January you and I will go away together for a long voyage, and that your lovely life goes always hand in hand with mine.