The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde

by Neil McKenna

  We think he fell when a boy at Oxford and has never had the force of will or character to emancipate himself from his degrading submission to Wilde. It may be hoped that if Wilde be convicted and Douglas be thus forcibly separated from him there may be a chance of his abandoning his present course of life.

  Cuffe's assessment of the situation flew in the face of even the most cursory examination of the evidence stacked against Bosie. That Bosie was guilty of sexual crimes - with Oscar, with Wood and Parker and almost certainly with others - was not in doubt. But he was a victim, more sinned against than sinning, Cuffe maintained. Cuffe's assessment was remarkably similar - suspiciously similar - to Queensberry's view of the relationship between Oscar and his son. Queensberry believed that Bosie had been `corrupted' by Oscar and could be `cured' of his acquired vices if only Oscar's influence was forcibly removed. Cuffe was nevertheless alive to the interpretation that might be put on any decision not to press charges against Bosie. `Irresponsible persons,' Cuffe warned Asquith, `very likely will say that he goes unprosecuted because of his position in life.' Gill's letter and Cuffe's memorandum were kept secret until 1999. Why? Was the decision not to prosecute Bosie yet another of Queensberry's demands? Oscar was to be sent to prison, and Bosie was not to be prosecuted - or else Queensberry would make public what he knew about Rosebery and other senior Liberals. Queensberry got his own way again.

  Bosie was completely unaware of the secret discussions about whether or not to prosecute him. He lived, he wrote, `in daily and momentary expectation of being arrested' and sent for trial. Every day he received `letters of warning imploring me to go and save myself'. Oscar was also fearful that Bosie would be arrested. He begged and pleaded with Bosie to go abroad, to save himself while he still could. Oscar could not bear to think that Bosie might be arrested, tried and sent to rot in prison. He knew, too, that any charges brought against Bosie might well include sodomy, which would mean a minimum sentence of ten years, and a maximum of life. But Bosie still hesitated. He could hardly bear to think of leaving Oscar in his wretched plight. He certainly did not lack courage and was fully prepared to face arrest and imprisonment. It was only at the `urgent request' of Sir Edward Clarke, who assured him that his presence in the country could only do Oscar `harm' and `destroy what small chance he had of acquittal', that Bosie finally and with a heavy heart agreed to go abroad. `I am so happy that you have gone away!' Oscar wrote to Bosie. `I know what that must have cost you. It would have been agony for me to think that you were in England when your name was mentioned in court.'

  Bosie delayed his departure until the last possible moment, leaving England for France at 11am on 27 April, the day after Oscar's trial began at the Old Bailey.

  'Misfortunes one can endure - they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suer for one's own faults - ah! - there is the sting oflife.'

  Every available seat in the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey was occupied on Friday 26 April when Oscar and Alfred Taylor stepped into the dock. Oscar looked `haggard and worn', and his long hair was `dishevelled'. As the charges against them were read out, there was, according to Andre Raffalovich, a clap of thunder and a flash of lightning, and many of those present must have wondered if these were rumblings of divine discontent, a modern-day hail of fire and brimstone, at the moral disobedience of the new Sodom.

  The indictment contained no less than twenty-five counts, eight of them relating directly to acts of gross indecency committed by Oscar with Charles Parker, Alfred Wood and Edward Shelley, as well as with a boy or boys unknown at the Savoy Hotel. Oscar could count himself fortunate that he was not charged with sodomy, though there were plenty who believed that he should have been. 'Many people are asking why the indictment has been drawn under the Act involving the minor penalties,' Mr Dike of Whitehall wrote to the Star on 23 April, dropping a heavy hint as to the true reason. `If rumour is but tinged with truth the reason is a good one - and as bad as it could be.' Ironically, while Bosie and others were convinced that Oscar was being made the scapegoat to save the careers and reputations of Lord Rosebery and other senior figures in the Liberal Party, Mr Dike and many of the general public were equally convinced that he was being treated leniently because Lord Rosebery's name had been mentioned in connection with the case. This interpretation gained an even wider currency when it emerged that the single charge of sodomy against Taylor had been dropped before the case came to court.

  With or without the sodomy charges, it was still a devilish indictment. Oscar and Taylor were jointly charged with eight counts that they `did conspire combine confederate and agree together unlawfully' to procure acts of gross indecency. If the jury failed to convict Oscar on the straightforward counts of gross indecency, they could always convict him on the counts of conspiring to commit an act of gross indecency. The different charges carried different burdens of proof: conspiracy to procure an act of gross indecency did not require the act to have taken place, merely that it was the intention of the conspirators that it should take place. Oscar was damned if he did have sex with the boys and, seemingly, damned if he did not. Sir Edward Clarke protested vigorously at the conspiracy charges, to no avail.

  Charles Gill opened the case for the prosecution with a long resume of the facts. Unlike Edward Carson, Gill was no orator, and his opening speech seemed to drag on interminably. Oscar `looked terribly bored', and `many of the spectators began to rustle papers, shuffle their feet, and cough loudly', causing the usher to make several calls for silence. The case for the prosecution lasted for three days, and the witnesses called were the same who had testified during the committal proceedings at Bow Street: Charles and William Parker, Alfred Wood, Fred Atkins, Jenny Mayor and Edward Shelley, along with an assortment of waiters, housekeepers, chambermaids and landladies. The only surprise was Charlie Parker's claim that Oscar had `committed the act of sodomy on me' the first night they met in the Savoy. Oscar sat in the dock and listened attentively to the evidence, betraying `a great deal of nervous anxiety, now and again heaving deep sighs as some especially incriminating evidence was brought out'.

  In his cross-examinations, Sir Edward Clarke managed to significantly damage the credibility of the boys. Charlie Parker, Alfred Wood and Fred Atkins were all exposed as blackmailers who had demanded money with menaces from the men they slept with. And thanks to some anonymous notes sent to him at the Old Bailey, Clarke was also able to prove that Fred Atkins had lied through his teeth under oath. Edward Shelley came across as neurotic, a young man who had been arrested for assaulting his father and who admitted to not being in his right mind at the time of the assault.

  By the time the prosecution had finished presenting its case against Oscar and Taylor, it was clear that the evidence for the eight counts of conspiracy was extremely flimsy. The prosecution's best hope had been jenny Mayor's detailed account of how Taylor had arranged for him to meet Oscar at dinner, and Taylor's celebrated remarks on that evening, `I'm glad you've made yourself pretty. Mr Wilde likes nice clean boys!' But Mayor's insistence that no improprieties had ever taken place between Oscar and himself took the wind out of the prosecution's sails. On the morning of the fourth day of the trial, Charles Gill rose and told the judge that the prosecution was withdrawing the charges of conspiracy. Gill's announcement caused a sensation in court. A third of the charges had been withdrawn against Oscar and Taylor.

  Clarke opened the case for the defence and announced that he would call Oscar as his first witness. It was a bold and unexpected strategy. It was widely assumed that, after Oscar's bruising encounter with Carson, Clarke would not risk putting his client in the witness box again. Having damaged the credibility of the boys, Clarke set out to present Oscar as a man who had behaved with consistent probity and openness. If Oscar was guilty of the offences alleged against him, Clarke asked the jury, why had he bothered to prosecute Queensberry in open court - especially after he had seen Queensberry's Plea of Justification: `Gentlemen of the jury,' asked Clarke, `do you believe
that had he been guilty he would have stayed in England and faced those accusations?':

  Men guilty of such offences suffer from a species of insanity. What, then, would you think of a man who, knowing himself to be guilty and that evidence would be forthcoming from half-a-dozen different places, insisted on bringing his case before the world? Insane would hardly be the word for it.

  The only one rational explanation, said Clarke, was that Oscar was innocent. Clarke's arguments were compelling.

  When Charles Gill rose to cross-examine Oscar, he turned to Bosie's Uranian poem `Two Loves', which had been published in the Chameleon. - - - - - - - - - - - - -- --

  `Is it not clear that the love described relates to natural and unnatural love?' asked Gill.

  `No,' replied Oscar.

  `What is the "Love that dare not speak its name"?' Gill demanded with a sneer in his voice.

  Gill's question was the opportunity Oscar had been waiting for. It was his chance to justify and explain the nature of the great love that he and Bosie shared. `The "Love that dare not speak its name",' Oscar replied:

  in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep, spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as the `Love that dare not speak its name,' and on account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so the world does not understand. The world mocks at it and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.

  Oscar's speech was electrifying. There was a loud and spontaneous outburst of applause from the public gallery, mingled with a few boos and hisses. `If there is the slightest manifestation of feeling,' said Mr Justice Charles testily, `I shall have the court cleared. There must be complete silence preserved.' Few who heard the speech could fail to be moved by the dignity and power of Oscar's words, and by the depth of passion with which he spoke them. `Oscar has been quite superb,' Max Beerbohm wrote to Reggie Turner:

  His speech about the Love that dares not tell his name was simply wonderful, and carried the whole court right away, quite a tremendous burst of applause. Here was this man, who had been for a month in prison and loaded with insults and crushed and buffeted, perfectly self-possessed, dominating the Old Bailey with his fine presence and musical voice. He has never had so great a triumph.

  Oscar himself seemed to draw strength and courage from his apologia. It was a calculated act of defiance, rather than of defence. The night before, he had written to Bosie in the full expectation that in a few hours `all will be over', and `prison and dishonour' would be his destiny. `Our love was always beautiful and noble,' he told Bosie, `and if I have been the butt of a terrible tragedy, it is because the nature of that love has not been understood.' Oscar's speech to the jury was a proud proclamation of the beauty and nobility of his love for Bosie. It was to be his last speech as a free man before his incarceration. He did not seek to deny that there was an erotic as well as a spiritual element to his love for Bosie, saying only that it was pure, it was perfect and that there was nothing unnatural about it. When Oscar pleaded `Not guilty' to the charges levelled against him, he was speaking the truth; not the literal, lawbound truth of the courtroom, but the higher truth, the truth that told him that something so pure, something so perfect as love and sex between men could not be unnatural, could not be a crime.

  Mr Justice Charles began his lengthy summing up on 1 May, the fifth day of the trial. It lasted three hours and was scrupulously fair to both the defendants. There were, Mr Justice Charles said, four questions for the jury to consider:

  1. Do you think that Wilde committed indecent acts with Edward Shelley and Alfred Wood and with a person or persons unknown at the Savoy Hotel or with Charles Parker?

  2. Did Taylor procure or attempt to procure the commission of these acts or any of them?

  3. Did Wilde and Taylor or either of them attempt to get Atkins to commit indecencies?

  4. Did Taylor commit indecent acts with Charles Parker or with William Parker?

  The jury went out to consider their verdict at twenty-five minutes to two. It was widely assumed that their deliberations would be brief and to the point, and that Oscar and Taylor would be found guilty on most, if not all the remaining counts. But the minutes turned into hours, and there was still no sign that the jury had reached a verdict. Just after five, the jury filed back into court. `Hoscar stood very upright when he was brought up to hear the verdict and looked most leonine and sphinx-like,' Max Beerbohm told Reggie Turner.

  The jury were all agreed that Oscar and Taylor had not attempted to persuade Fred Atkins to commit indecencies, but they were unable to agree on the three remaining questions. Consequently they were unable to return a verdict. The next morning a newspaper published what purported to be the voting of the jury. Ten of the twelve jurors believed that Oscar had had sex with Edward Shelley and Charlie Parker, and eight of them believed he had had sex with Alfred Wood. Again, ten jurors believed Taylor was guilty of procuring boys for Oscar to have sex with. Rather surprisingly, only two jurors believed Taylor had had sex with both the Parker brothers.

  Under normal circumstances, it was not absolutely certain that there would be a fresh trial. The newspapers were quick to call for justice to be seen, to be done. `Ought the prosecution to stop?' asked the Morning:

  That is a very grave question. Whatever may be the truth as regards Wilde and Taylor, the evidence given at the Old Bailey seems to affect more reputations than those that have been openly impugned. What are these mysterious names written on slips of paper and passed between counsels' table, the witness-box, and the Bench? If there is a widespread canker in our midst, as the authorities seem to believe, it cannot too soon be thoroughly cauterised.

  The message of the Morning's editorial was clear. If a fresh trial failed to materialise, it would be because of political interference. A second trial and a verdict of guilty would, according to Sir Edward Hamilton, `remove what appears to be a wide-felt impression that the judge & Jury were on the last occasion got at, in order to shield others of a higher status in life'. Hamilton returned to the same theme again, referring to a widespread suspicion that the government was trying to `hush up' the case. Edward Carson spoke to Sir Frank Lockwood, the Solicitor General, on the subject. `Cannot you let up on the fellow now?' he asked Lockwood. `He has suffered a great deal.' `I would,' Lockwood replied, `but we cannot: we dare not: it would at once be said, both in England and abroad, that owing to the names mentioned in Queensberry's letters we were forced to abandon it.' Lockwood was not telling Carson the whole truth. Not only had he been a party to the original decision taken by senior members of the government to prosecute Oscar, a decision which Bosie and others alleged was taken under the duress of Queensberry's threats, but he was also related to Maurice Schwabe, whose name had been so carefully and so frequently concealed during the trials.

  After some complicated legal manoeuvres, Oscar was finally freed on 7 May. He knew that his freedom was temporary. It had already been announced that there was to be a new trial in a fortnight, this time to be led by Sir Frank Lockwood. It was a quite extraordinary turn of events. For the SolicitorGeneral to undertake the prosecution of what was a misdemeanour, rather than a felony, revealed the lengths to which the government was prepared to go to secure a conviction.

  Oscar was released on bail from Bow Street. A suite of rooms had been engaged for him at the Midland Hotel, a gothic fantasy next t
o St Pancras Station. But no sooner had Oscar settled in than the manager of the hotel appeared and asked him to leave. It was the same story in half-a-dozen other hotels. Queensberry had had Oscar followed, probably by Littlechild and Kearley again, and a quiet word with the hotel manager was enough to have Oscar sent away like a pariah. At midnight, having shaken off his pursuers, Oscar arrived at 146, Oakley Street, Chelsea, where Lady Wilde lived with Willie and his new wife, Lily. `Give me shelter, Willie, or I shall die in the streets,' he moaned as he stumbled across the threshold like, as Willie put it, `a wounded stag'.

  Oakley Street was a far from ideal refuge. Oscar said the house was `depressing', and Willie made things worse by his insensitive and ill-timed comments. `Willie makes such a merit of giving me shelter,' Oscar said. `He means well, I suppose, but it is all dreadful.' Oscar was profoundly depressed. `I am not well today. I have nervous prostration,' he told Ada Leverson shortly after his arrival at Oakley Street. To assuage his misery, he was drinking heavily. Sherard turned up from Paris to find him lying on a narrow camp bed, his face flushed and feverish, and smelling strongly of drink. `Why have you brought me no poison from Paris?' Oscar moaned to Sherard melodramatically. `As for Hosker,' W.E. Henley wrote to a friend with evident satisfaction:

  the news is that he lives with his brother, and is all day steeping himself in liquor and moaning for Boasy . . . They say he has lost all nerve, all pose, all everything: and is just now so much the ordinary drunkard that he hasn't even the energy to kill himself.

  Ada Leverson, Oscar's devoted friend, stepped in and offered to receive him at her home in South Kensington, where the nursery floor was given over to him. At the Leversons, Oscar regained his equilibrium and his dignity. There were fresh flowers in his rooms daily, and Oscar would come down for dinner each evening, dazzling and dominating the dinner table as of old. Ada was more than sympathetic to Oscar's sexual tastes, she was an enthusiast, and Oscar could breathe a freer air in Courtfield Gardens than he could almost anywhere else. There was much discussion of Uranian matters, and some of Oscar's time was spent in attempting to convert and convince his friends of the joys of Uranian love. Oscar told Robert Sherard that he considered `men who did not like boys for bestowing sexual caresses on were abnormal'. And, according to Sherard, when the journalist and translator Teixeira de Mattos called on him, Oscar repeatedly asked him `whether truly and honestly he could declare that he had never liked young men, had never wished to fondle and caress them, and seemed almost to doubt Tex's sincerity when he emphatically repudiated the very concept of such a thing'.