The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde

by Neil McKenna

  Long after the trials, Oscar would blame Bosie, Bosie would blame Robbie, and Robbie would blame Bosie for the decision to enter into the disastrous prosecution of Queensberry. In truth, all three were more or less equally responsible. Robbie and Oscar sat up in the Avondale Hotel until the early hours of the morning talking over what to do. Though he later denied it, Robbie was convinced that Queensberry had to be stopped and that a prosecution for criminal libel was the only course open to Oscar. Oscar was not so sure. At one particularly low point, he seriously considered fleeing to Paris where he would at least be safe and where he could think clearly. But there was the question of the hotel bill of £ 148. With no money to pay the bill, the hotel would not have allowed him to take his luggage. When Bosie arrived the next morning and saw Queensberry's card, he fell into a fury. He was adamant that his father must be prosecuted, that he must be sent to prison for the insult he had offered to Oscar. Egged on by Bosie, white with anger and indignation, and supported by Robbie, equally determined that prosecution was the only course, Oscar agreed to go and see Charles Humphreys immediately. That Queensberry's insult was more or less true, and its publication justifiable in law, seemed to have occurred only to Robbie. When he suggested that it might be sensible to inform Charles Humphreys and Percy Douglas that Queensberry's allegations were substantially true, neither Oscar nor Bosie would-hear-of it.

  Oscar wrote later that he had been more or less driven into the action against Queensberry against his better judgement. `Blindly I staggered as an ox into the shambles,' he wrote. Oscar was certainly in no fit state to stand up to Bosie. `My judgement forsook me,' he said. `My will-power completely failed me.' Since first reading Queensberry's card with hideous words, Oscar had not stopped thinking about it and not stopped talking about it - painfully with Constance, and exhaustively and exhaustingly with Robbie. He had been drinking heavily and had barely slept. Physical, mental and emotional prostration were bound to affect the clarity of his judgement. A further clouding factor could have been the narcotic effects of any drugs he was taking to relieve the discomfort of the gonorrhoea he may have contracted in Algiers.

  And so the three of them - Oscar, Bosie and Robbie - drove to Holborn on the Friday morning to see Charles Humphreys, who listened gravely to what Oscar had to say and carefully examined Queensberry's card with its hideous words. With evidence such as this, he told Oscar, it would be possible to mount a prosecution against Lord Queensberry for criminal libel. But, before he could proceed, he needed to ask a very important question. Could Oscar swear on his solemn oath that there was absolutely no truth in the libel? Oscar assured him that there was not. It was the first of many lies that Oscar and Bosie would tell to solicitors and barristers. `What is loathsome to me,' Oscar told Bosie later:

  is the memory of interminable visits paid by me to the solicitor Humphreys in your company, when in the ghastly glare of a bleak room you and I would sit with serious faces telling serious lies to a bald man, till I really groaned and yawned with ennui.

  There was only one other question to be resolved: money. When Oscar told Humphreys that he had no money to pay for the prosecution, Bosie interposed at once with an offer of financial support. `You said that your own family would be only too delighted to pay all the necessary costs,' Oscar later reminded Bosie:

  that your father had been an incubus to them all: that they had often discussed the possibility of getting him put into a lunatic asylum so as to keep him out of the way: that he was a daily source of annoyance and distress to your mother and to everyone else: that if I would only come forward to have him shut up I would be regarded by the family as their champion and their benefactor: and that your mother's rich relations themselves would look on it as a real delight to pay all costs and expenses.

  Humphreys consented to this arrangement, and Oscar found himself hurried to the police court to swear out a warrant for Queensberry's arrest. `If you are innocent,' Humphreys had assured Oscar, `you should succeed.' But Oscar knew only too well that he was not innocent. He realised with a sudden shudder that he had unwittingly walked into what Queensberry boasted of as his `booby-trap'.

  Raking Piccadilly

  `One should never make one's debut with a scandal. One should reserve that to lend an interest to one's maturer years.'

  On the morning of Saturday 2 March, just two days after Oscar had received the `card with hideous words', two detectives arrived at Carter's Hotel to arrest Queensberry. Although there was very little danger that the event would pass unnoticed by the newspapers, Bosie was not taking any chances. He drafted a hasty press release about his father's arrest and sent it to James Nicol Dunn, editor of the Morning Post. `Dear Mr Dunn,' he wrote. `Is this any use to you?':

  The Marquis of Queensberry was arrested on a warrant this morning at nine o'clock at Carter's Hotel, Albemarle Street by Inspector Greet and Detective-Sergeant George Shaddock. The warrant was issued in consequence of information sworn in connection with the alleged publication on the 18th Feby last by the Marquis of Queensberry of a defamatory libel on Mr Oscar Wilde. The Marquis of Queensberry who was in bed when the detectives called was taken to Vine Street Police Station. He will be brought up today at Marlborough Street.

  Detectives Greet and Shaddock were taken up to Queensberry's room and knocked on the door. `Are you the Marquis of Queensberry?' Greet asked him as he entered the room.

  `I am,' growled Queensberry.

  `I am a Police Officer and hold a warrant signed by R.M. Newton Esq. of Marlborough Street Police Court for your arrest,' said Greet, proceeding to read the warrant aloud to Queensberry.

  `Yes,' said Queensberry. `I have been trying to find Mr Oscar Wilde for eight or ten days-- this thing has been going on for over two years.'

  Queensberry dressed quickly and was taken to Vine Street Police Station where he was formally charged with `publishing a certain defamatory libel of and concerning one Oscar Wilde, at Albemarle Street, on February 18, 1895, at the Parish of St. George'. Queensberry made no formal reply to the charge, but asked to be allowed to send for his solicitor, Sir George Lewis.

  Shortly afterwards, Queensberry - described as `fifty years of age, no occupation' - appeared before the sitting magistrate, Mr R.M. Newton, at Marlborough Street Police Court. A group of Queensberry's sporting friends had gathered and were present in court. Charles Humphreys was there with Oscar. A beaming Bosie sat in the public gallery, delighted at finally seeing his father in the dock. The hearing was short and to the point. Humphreys opened the case for the prosecution, laying great stress on the normality and respectability of Oscar's family life. Mr Oscar Wilde, he said, was a married man living on the most affectionate terms with his wife and family of two sons. Humphreys briefly outlined the history of Queensberry's `most cruel persecution' of Oscar, which had culminated in Lord Queensberry leaving his card for Oscar scrawled with `epithets of the foulest nature' at the Albemarle Club.

  Humphreys called Sydney Wright, hall porter at the Albemarle, to give evidence. Wright testified that the words on Queensberry's card, `For Oscar Wilde ponce and somdomite', were `written in my presence'. At this point, Queensberry interposed loudly and claimed that the words he had written were `posing as sodomite'. Whether Queensberry had written `ponce and somdomite' or `posing as somdomite' is a moot point. When Queensberry called on Oscar at Tite Street six months earlier, he had accused Oscar of posing as a sodomite, and he had told Bosie that `to pose as a thing is to be as bad as to be it'. But the word on the card does look suspiciously like `ponce'. Between leaving his card at the Albemarle and his arrest, Queensberry had had nearly a fortnight to think about what he had written and to discuss it with Sir George Lewis. To accuse Oscar of `posing' as a sodomite was a much more defensible position than calling him a ponce and sodomite. Ponce was and is a slang word with a range of meanings, all of them offensive. A ponce was akin to a pimp, not just a man who lived off the earnings of prostitutes, but also a procurer and supplier of young flesh for the purpo
ses of prostitution. Ponce was also a slang term for an obvious, effeminate man, who might also be involved in prostitution. To justify the original wording of his libel, Queensberry would have to prove that Oscar was an habitual associate of prostitutes, that he had lived off their immoral earnings and that he had procured boys to act as prostitutes.

  After Detective-Inspector Greet had given a perfunctory account of his arrest of Lord Queensberry, Sir George Lewis rose to speak. `I venture to say that when the circumstances of this case are more fully known, you will find that Lord Queensberry acted as he did under feelings of great indignation and -'. `I cannot go into that now,' the magistrate, Mr Newton, snapped, adjourning the case for a week's time. Bail was set at £1,500, and a smiling Queensberry left the court with his friends.

  Seeing the ape-like Queensberry squirming and writhing in the dock boosted Oscar's confidence that by prosecuting him he was doing the right thing. His initial hesitations and reluctances were forgotten. Humphreys had assured him that he would win the case. For months, Queensberry had been persecuting Oscar consistently, and now had libelled him foully. Here was an opportunity to bring Queensberry's persecution to an end and silence his foul mouth. Bosie and Robbie were both agreed that prosecution was the only course. Besides which, there were distinct dramatic possibilities in the prosecution. If Oscar won - and there seemed little doubt that he would - he would be the hero of the hour, the David who had taken on Goliath, the slayer of the dragon Queensberry. `Temporarily exalted' was how Robbie Ross described Oscar's state of mind at this time. It was, Robbie wrote, `an unfortunate condition which induced him to think that his personality would triumph over scandal and the forces of law'.

  If Oscar felt any pique at seeing his former friend Lewis in court acting now for his deadliest enemy, he did not show it. It was Lewis who felt decidedly uncomfortable and not a little shamefaced. Six months earlier he had promised Oscar that he would never act against him. Now he was not only appearing in court for Queensberry, he had also grossly betrayed Oscar's trust by revealing to Queensberry the details of Bosie's Oxford blackmail, as well as telling him about Alfred Wood's attempted blackmail of Oscar over his `madness of kisses' letter. But immediately after the police court hearing at Marlborough Street, Lewis returned his brief to Queensberry. He would no longer act for him.

  Queensberry was due to appear again at Marlborough Street in a week's time and needed to find another solicitor urgently. It was Saturday and the only solicitor's offices he found open that afternoon were those of Messrs Day and Russell. Queensberry saw Charles Russell who, after hearing his account of his feud with Oscar and the reasons that lay behind it, agreed to act for him. That night, back at Carter's Hotel, Queensberry held a press conference about his arrest. He had been drinking and was, as a reporter from the New York Herald tactfully put it, in `a somewhat nervous and excited condition'. Queensberry was defiantly open about why he was persecuting Oscar. `I sent that card to Wilde,' he told the Herald reporter, `to bring matters to a head':

  For the past two years I have been hunting for him in order that I might have an opportunity of assaulting him in consequence of what I believe to be well founded rumours in connection with persons in whom I am interested. I wished to assault him so that he should be forced to bring an action against me and thus give me an opportunity of stating what I believe to be the truth about the matter. I am delighted at the result of my action in leaving that card, and I feel much easier in my mind now.

  Oscar's friends were shocked when they heard about Queensberry's arrest. `Poor, poor Oscar!' Max Beerbohm wrote sorrowfully from Chicago to Reggie Turner:

  How sad it is. I cannot bear to think of all that must have happened - the whisperings and the hastenings hither and thither - before he could have been seduced into Marlborough Street. I suppose he was exasperated too much not to take action. I am sorry he has not got George Lewis, wonder if Bosie has returned, what evidence will be brought in for the defence - and so forth.

  Beerbohm was right to wonder what evidence Queensberry might bring forth in his defence. Oscar, Bosie and Robbie had gone ahead with the prosecution in the conviction that they could win a resounding victory. Queensberry was charged with the offence of `defamatory libel', part of Lord Campbell's Libel Act of 1843. As far as Oscar, Bosie and Robbie were concerned, the case against Queensberry was already proved. He had admitted to writing `epithets of the foulest nature' on the card, admitted to leaving it at the Albemarle Club for Oscar and admitted that both these actions were undertaken deliberately. It was an open and shut case. Without a shadow of a doubt Queensberry had defamed and libelled Oscar. The only question now was what his sentence would be. Under the provisions of the Libel Act, defamatory libel carried a maximum sentence of one year's imprisonment. But, if it could be proved that the accused knew the libel to be false, the statutory maximum penalty was two years' imprisonment. Oscar, Bosie and Robbie were confident that Queensberry would be found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison - or forced to flee abroad to escape incarceration. Either way, there would be jubilation.

  To defend himself, Queensberry had to justify the libel. He had to prove that what he had written was true and that it had been published and promulgated for the public good. Oscar, Bosie and Robbie must have known that Queensberry would seek to justify his libel, but they gambled that such evidence he might be able to come up with in court would pale into insignificance when set against the enormity of the insult. There would of course be a literary side to the case: old chestnuts about Mr W.H. and Dorian Gray would be rehashed and reheated and served up in court. But these were pitiful doings. Oscar had confronted and confounded his critics before and could do so again.

  The only real danger would be if Queensberry had solid evidence that Oscar had habitually associated with sodomites or that he had indeed had sodomitical sexual relations with men. And where could Queensberry possibly find that sort of evidence? The very murkiness of the penumbral realm of sex between men in London was Oscar's best defence. Few who moved in that shadowy world betrayed its secrets to outsiders, and few outsiders could ever penetrate its beguiling veils. Ironically, it was the oppressive weight of society's `monstrous laws' against men who loved men that was the best guarantee of Oscar's secrecy and safety. Oscar was supremely confident that no one would dare to come forward and admit to having had sex with him - for if they did, they would be opening themselves up to prosecution.

  It was true that there had been two or three rather unfortunate incidents of blackmail. But it was unlikely that anyone other than the blackmailer and the blackmailed would know about them - and blackmailers were hardly likely to come forward and testify in court to their crimes. Sir George Lewis, of course, knew about the blackmail. Seeing him in court representing Queensberry caused Oscar some momentary pangs of unease. But surely Sir George Lewis would be bound by professional vows of secrecy, if not by ties of ancient friendship. Besides which, Oscar had been clever. He had persuaded Pierre Lout's to translate the `madness of kisses' letter into a prose poem in French for publication in the Spirit Lamp.

  With less than a week until his next appearance at Marlborough Street Police Court, it was imperative that Queensberry find a barrister to represent him in the proceedings. Charles Russell, on the advice of his illustrious father, Lord Russell of Killowen, the recently appointed Lord Chief Justice of England, approached a brilliant Irishman, Edward Carson, a Member of Parliament and Queen's Counsel at both the English and the Irish Bar. Carson hesitated. The case was an extremely unsavoury one, involving a father and a son, and seemingly based on hearsay and gossip. And apart from that, he knew Oscar personally. They had met and played together as small boys. In the summer of 1859, when Oscar was four years old, the Wilde family had been on holiday at Dungarven in County Waterford. The children had been looked after by a fifteen-year-old girl who also looked after Edward Carson. And when Oscar went up to Trinity College, Dublin in 1871, Carson had been a fellow student. They were friends,
good friends, at Trinity, he said. At the time of the trials, Oscar told Bosie that Ned Carson `used to walk about with him' at Trinity `with his arms around his neck'. Carson always vehemently denied that there was anything more between himself and Oscar than mere acquaintance, claiming that he had always disapproved of Oscar's flippancy.

  Their paths had crossed once more a few years before Oscar's trial. Carson was walking towards the House of Commons when a fine carriage pulled up beside him and a stout, elaborately dressed, effeminate-looking man with a huge white buttonhole in his overcoat jumped out. `Hullo, Ned Carson, how are you?' said Oscar. `Fancy you being a Tory and Arthur Balfour's right-hand man. You're coming along, Ned. Come and dine with me one day in Tite Street.' Oscar never did follow up his invitation and fix a date for Ned Carson to dine. Had he done so, things might have turned out very differently, as Carson made a point of never accepting briefs involving friends or people from whom he had received hospitality.

  Carson initially rejected the brief. Though Oscar was not quite a friend, he was not exactly a stranger. They had known each other at Trinity, and Oscar was, when all was said and done, an Irishman, a Dubliner like himself. But Russell was undeterred. A day or so later he went back to Carson and apparently showed him some convincing evidence that Oscar had indeed had sex with young men. When Carson discovered Oscar had not merely posed as a sodomite, but was a practising sodomite, `deep moral indignation boiled up inside him', as his friend and biographer, Edward Marjoribanks, wrote. When Oscar heard that Carson was representing Queensberry and would be crossexamining him in court, his only response was to say, `No doubt he will perform his task with all the added bitterness of an old friend.'