The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde

by Neil McKenna

  Oscar was not mad, only bad. It was his bodily health which required attention, not his mind. They informed Sir Matthew Ridley that `with careful treatment and, shortly removal to a Prison in the country, with different work and a greater range of reading there is nothing to indicate that prison will prejudicially affect him'. They also recommended that Oscar `be allowed such association with other prisoners as may be deemed advisable or desirable or convenient'. But Nicholson and Bryan added a caveat to their recommendation:

  It would not however be right to allow a man with his proclivities and with his avowed love for the society of males, to be in association except under the continuous supervision of a warder.

  Ridley and Ruggles-Brise accepted the recommendations of the report. `Oscar Wilde will be removed tomorrow to Reading Prison where suitable occupation in the way of gardening and bookbinding and library work will be found for him,' Ruggles-Brice wrote in a memorandum on 19 November. `I have so informed Mr Haldane privately sending him a copy of the medical report.'

  Reading Gaol was built on the site of a former leper colony and was, perhaps ironically, an appropriate choice for the social and sexual leper that Oscar had become. His first, nightmarish six months in prison were over, and he was to spend the remaining eighteen months of his sentence as prisoner C.3.3, the name taken from the cell he occupied, the third cell on the third-storey gallery of Block C.

  Bitter waters

  `Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.'

  Almost from the day of Oscar's arrest in April, Constance had been determined to divorce him. In June, shortly after her arrival in Switzerland where she had gone to live in self-imposed exile with Cyril and Vyvyan, Constance wrote to her old friend Emily Thursfield to tell her of her plans. `I have to sue for a divorce because the boys must be free,' she wrote:

  and I cannot get a separation. I have not the legal claims for that, and on account of the way he has behaved about money affairs no-one would trust him to look after the boys if anything should happen to me and he got control of my money.

  Despite her determination to end the marriage, Constance's generous and forgiving heart was far from being turned to stone. In the midst of her own misfortunes, she could still feel for Oscar. `I have been quite broken-hearted,' she told Emily. `It is so terrible to be here free in the heavenly air, and to think of those four walls round him.' She planned to return to London towards the end of the year - hopefully, she said, to give evidence in divorce proceedings.

  After three months in prison, Oscar was entitled to receive his first visit, and on 26 August the ever-loyal Robert Sherard -'the bravest and most chivalrous of all brilliant beings', Oscar called him in De Profundis - came to see him. The visiting order was for two people, but Sherard went alone, claiming that he could not find any of Oscar's friends to accompany him. Sherard noticed that Oscar's `hands were disfigured, and that his nails were broken and bleeding; also that his head and face were untidy with growth of hair'. Oscar was, he realised, `greatly depressed, and at one time had tears in his eyes'.

  Sherard tentatively broached the subject of Constance. He had decided to take upon himself the task of bringing about a reconciliation between Oscar and Constance. He had never been able to comprehend Oscar's sexual attraction to young men, and was convinced that he was suffering from a species of insanity. `The only hope of salvation in this world for my friend,' Sherard wrote shortly afterwards, `is in his being able to return to his wife, after the completion of his sentence.' Sherard began his campaign of reconciliation by initiating a correspondence between himself and Constance to try and find out what it would take for her to draw back from the brink of divorce. In his self-appointed mission to save the Wildes' marriage, Sherard was aided - knowingly or unknowingly - by Constance's brother, Otho, who wrote the first letter which Oscar received in prison in late August, at the same time as Sherard's visit. Otho pleaded with Oscar to do everything in his power to avert the threatened divorce. If Oscar `would only write once' to Constance and beg her forgiveness, he was convinced she would cease proceedings for divorce.

  Oscar took Otho's advice and wrote a long letter to Constance, the text of which has not survived. Whatever it was he told her touched her deeply. She was beginning to waver on the question of divorce, but still she doubted whether Oscar's expressions of regret and contrition and his promises for the future were sincere. To resolve the matter, Constance decided she would go and see him in Wandsworth. She had to apply to the Prison Commissioners for exceptional leave to visit him. `My husband, I have reason to know, is apprehensive of my obtaining a divorce from him within a short time,' she wrote:

  As my mind is not however definitely made up to this step, but is dependent on questions which can only be properly discussed between him and me personally, I am most anxious to be allowed to talk over matters with him and discuss the arrangements, business and others of an intimate nature, by which so extreme a step might be avoided.

  Permission was granted, and Constance made the long journey to London in the company of Miss Boxwell, a new friend whom she had met in Switzerland.

  Constance saw Oscar on 21 September and was shocked by what she found: shocked at his state, and shocked by the degrading and grim conditions of the convict prison. Immediately on her return to Miss Boxwell's flat where she was staying, Constance sat down and wrote to Sherard:

  It was indeed awful, more so than I had any conception it could be. I could not see him and I could not touch him, and I scarcely spoke ... When I go again, I am to get at the Home Secretary through Mr Haldane and try to get a room to see him in and touch him again. He says he has been mad these last three years, and he says that if he saw Alfred Douglas he would kill him. So he had better keep away and be satisfied with having marred a fine life. Few people can boast so much.

  Constance's description of Oscar's life as `fine' and her desire to `touch him again' showed she was still, despite everything, deeply in love with him. It is clear from her letter that they had discussed at least some of those questions of `an intimate nature' which Constance needed the answers to before she could rescind the divorce proceedings. Bosie was the main bone of contention between them. Did Oscar still love him? And what guarantees could he give her that he would not go back to Bosie and to his old way of life when he was released from prison?

  Oscar's answers were satisfactory, more than satisfactory. They were music to her ears. Oscar had been insane, the victim of an erotic madness, for which Bosie was to blame. Now in prison, he could see the truth of things and bitterly repented the past. The love between Oscar and Constance, so profound and precious to her, had survived its darkest hour, and the evil Bosie was seemingly vanquished. Oscar promised her that he would not see or communicate with Bosie or Robbie or with any of his former Uranian friends. Back in Switzerland, Constance confided her hopes and fears to Emily Thursfield:

  I do not wish to sever myself entirely from Mr Wilde who is in the very lowest depths of misery. And he is very repentant and minds most of all what he has brought on myself and the boys. It seems to me (and to many others too) that by sticking to him now, I may save him from even worse, and I believe that he cares now for no-one but myself and the children. This is the opinion of the prison authorities and no-one can just now know him so well. At the same time I am quite aware that I am running a certain, possibly a very great risk ... But, dearest Emily, I think we women are meant for comforters and I believe no-one can really take my place now, or help him as I can.

  It is hard to know whether Oscar's visceral expressions of hatred for Bosie and his repudiation of his Uranian past represented a genuine change of heart, or were merely a calculated expedient designed to soothe Constance's righteous indignation and avert a divorce. A divorce would be catastrophic for Oscar. Not only would it mean severing his links with Cyril and Vyvyan, but it would open up the threat of a further - and perhaps more serious - prosecution against him. Con
stance would have to produce grounds for the divorce, and new evidence of sexual liaisons might come to light. Oscar faced the appalling prospect of being released from prison, re-arrested and returned to prison. And if the new evidence included allegations of sodomy, he would most likely-rot-in prison for the rest of his life.

  Oscar's instinct for self-preservation must have had some influence on his changed attitudes. But Oscar was going through a profound and painful change in his feelings for Bosie. Faced with the full horror of prison life, its humiliations, its privations and its mental tortures of loneliness and loss of selfhood, he was beginning to feel irritation and resentment at the idea of Bosie flying free under the blue skies of the Mediterranean - even though paradoxically it had been Oscar himself who, before his trial began, had begged Bosie to flee abroad.

  Robert Sherard's second visit to Wandsworth, which took place three weeks after Constance had visited Oscar, helped to crystallise Oscar's mood of bitter resentment against Bosie. Using the pseudonym Kennedy, Sherard had applied for special permission to visit Oscar as part of his ongoing mission to try and avert Constance's threatened divorce proceedings. Much of the hourlong visit in a private room was taken up by Sherard's news that Bosie had written, and was about to publish, an article on Oscar in the French literary magazine Mercure de France. He had heard rumours that Bosie was intending to quote from some of the love letters Oscar had sent to him during the trials, and that the article was to be `an apology for, and a glorification of, "The Greek Movement"'. He wanted to know if Oscar knew about it, and whether or not he approved of it. Oscar most certainly did not approve. `I was greatly taken aback, and much annoyed, and gave orders that the thing was to be stopped at once,' he wrote angrily in De Profundis:

  You had left my letters lying about for blackmailing companions to steal, for hotel servants to pilfer, for housemaids to sell. That was simply your careless want of appreciation for what I had written you. But that you should seriously propose to publish selections from the balance was almost incredible to me.

  Sherard wrote an indignant and `violent' letter to Bosie telling him to withdraw the article from publication. He also wrote to the editor of the Mercure de France to inform him of Oscar's vehement opposition to the idea.

  Sherard's interference was the first of several wedges driven between Oscar and Bosie by himself and by others. But the action turned out to be more timely than anyone had imagined. Bosie had planned his article as a passionate proclamation that he and Oscar were lovers in both a spiritual and a physical sense: `Let my enemies interpret as they will!' Bosie proudly declared. `I say now quite frankly that our friendship was love, real love - Love, it is true, perfectly pure but extremely passionate.' There was more. Bosie went on to produce a detailed and full-blooded expose of the government conspiracy against Oscar. `What then was the secret of this determination to obtain his condemnation at any cost? Why did the government evince such a thirst for his blood?' demanded Bosie:

  I may perhaps be allowed to advance a theory. I give it for what it is worth, but I can say that it is not merely a hypothesis. I did not invent it; I have heard it on good authority that the Government was intimidated. Mr Wilde's enemies and the Queensberry faction threatened to make new revelations incriminating senior members of the ruling party if Mr Wilde would not be condemned ...

  In short, Bosie thundered, Oscar `was sacrificed to save the reputation of a party'. It was explosive stuff and, if it had ever been published, would have almost certainly dashed any hopes Oscar might have for a remission of his sentence.

  In the days and weeks that followed, Oscar's heart was further hardened against Bosie by various snippets of intelligence about Bosie's private life gleaned from Robbie Ross and More Adey, who had both spent time abroad with Bosie and remained in close contact with him. After several months in prison of almost continuous suicidal thoughts, and suffering from almost constant ill-health in the form of diarrhoea and dysentery, it was galling for Oscar to have to hear the details of Bosie's slow peregrination across Europe, following the sun southwards through France and down to Sorrento, Naples and Capri. It was even more galling for him to make a mosaic from the fragments he heard of Bosie's joyous hedonism and his continuing dedication to the `eternal quest for beauty'.

  Shortly after going over to France, Bosie had spent nearly three weeks in the company of Charlie Hickey, who was by all accounts a delightful young man - `one of the thousand Charlies of London', Oscar had described him, `all flowers of the narcissus kind'. Charlie Hickey was very attractive and very generous with his sexual favours. He had certainly slept with Oscar, with Bosie, with Reggie Turner, and quite probably with Robbie Ross and More Adey as well. After Charlie left France and returned to England, Bosie spent some time with Lionel Johnson and with More Adey, before proceeding to Le Havre where he became embroiled in a little local difficulty over two boys he had hired as deckhands for the small yacht he used to take out. Bosie wrote to his brother Percy, telling him that there had been paragraphs in the local newspaper and that he had received a series of anonymous letters:

  warning me that police and detectives were watching me day and night and that at the smallest chance of an excuse they had they would `desembarguer' me: that is expel me from France and send me back to England!

  Bosie was in Sorrento in August where he wrote his article on Oscar for the Mercure de France. Thankfully, there were some Uranian distractions in the form of cock-sucking boys, one of whom was passed on to Robbie. `Am surprised at not hearing from Bobbie to whom I sent a gourmet of great personal beauty,' he wrote to More Adey. In September Bosie took a small villa in Capri where he wrote a beautiful sonnet, `To Sleep', which spoke of his inner turmoil. Sleep, Bosie wrote, was not `a balm for bruised hearts', but rather a nightmare:

  The poems Bosie wrote during Oscar's imprisonment are among his finest and are replete with mournful images of loss, despair and death. In `Vae Victis!', also written in Capri, Bosie wrote:

  But life in Capri also had its share of lighter domestic incident, as Bosie joyfully told Ada Leverson:

  I have just had a slight domestic tragedy. The boy has complained that the advances of the cook have been insupportable, the cook on the other hand declares that life is insupportable to him without love, both are now weeping. What am I to do? I sympathise with the cook, but I am in a responsible position.

  As he was settling into the villa in Capri, it gradually became clear to Bosie that there was a problem with Oscar. The first inkling came when the Governor of Wandsworth Prison wrote to inform him that Oscar had declined to receive a letter from him. `I can't make it out at all,' he told Ada Leverson on 13 September:

  It appears from the letter that Oscar had the power to correspond with me but that he deliberately preferred not to. Can you throw any light on the question? ... I am so upset and perplexed by it all. It seems impossible to find out what is really happening. I am so afraid that some secret influence has been brought to bear on Oscar, or that he has been told some lie about me. It seems to me quite inconceivable that he should prefer to correspond with his `family' than with me without some very strong reason of which I know nothing. Altogether I am in utter misery and despair.

  Bosie followed this letter up with several others. `I have had frantic letters from Bosie,' Ada Leverson told More Adey five days later. `It seems Oscar had the opportunity of writing to him but reserved the right to correspond with his wife. Bosie is of course much distressed about this. I have just written to him trying to calm him down. I daresay he is very lonely.' And, on 21 September, Bosie wrote to Sherard, unaware that Sherard was intent on breaking up his friendship with Oscar. He included a message for Oscar:

  Tell him from me that I love him and only living to see him again and that if he dies in prison or ceases to love me I shall kill myself too, for I have nothing else to live for, and even as it is the burden of living is almost insupportable ... I wish you could make Oscar know how much I think of him and how I long for him
. I have taken a villa here: tell him his room is all ready and waiting for him.

  Robbie Ross joined Bosie in Capri in November and confirmed all Bosie's worst suspicions. Much to Bosie's fury, Robbie revealed that Oscar's feelings for him had changed and that he was intent on a reconciliation with Constance. `How can he expect anything from his wife?' demanded Bosie angrily in a letter to More Adey on 30 November. `What did she do for him when he was in trouble and how can he have changed so?' Bosie pleaded with Adey to intercede on his behalf with Oscar:

  I am writing to you now, dear More, unknown to Bobbie, to beg you to do what you can for me with Oscar. If only you could make him understand that though he is in prison he is still the court, the jury, the judge of my life and that I am waiting hoping for some sign that I am to go on living. There is nobody to play my cards in England, nobody to say anything for me, and Oscar depends entirely on what is said to him, and they all seem to be my enemies. I won't argue. I will only say one thing and I beg you to believe it, that I shall kill myself if Oscar throws me over ... The only thing that could make his life bearable is to think that he is suffering for me because he loved me, and if he doesn't love me I can't live and it is so utterly easy to die. Do work for me, More, and even if you cut him to the heart and make him unhappy you will really be doing him good if you can only make him love me again and know that he is being martyred for my sake.

  But a thousand miles away, an increasingly bitter and vengeful Oscar saw things slightly differently. In the silence and the solitude of cell C.3.3 in Reading Gaol -'this tomb for those who are not yet dead', he called it - he no longer saw himself as a martyr to the love of Bosie, but rather as Bosie's victim, bullied and cajoled by a beautiful, immoral and scheming boy into suing his hated father. Nor did Oscar any longer see himself as the first martyr to the great Uranian Cause. On the contrary, he now regarded himself as a victim of diseased and debased passions. In July 1896, and again in November, Oscar addressed two long petitions to the Home Secretary for his release. He had been suffering, he wrote, from `monstrous sexual perversion', from `a form of sexual madness', from `the most horrible form of erotomania', which left him `prey of the most revolting passions'. And the `vice' of his sexual lust for young men still infected him like a `strange disease', was still `embedded in his flesh', `spread over him like a leprosy'. Oscar feared that his `sexual madness' would overwhelm him and that he would become permanently insane. He was not hyperbolising or misrepresenting his views in the hopes of securing an early release on medical grounds. Three weeks after he wrote his first petition, More Adey visited him and was convinced Oscar really believed what he was saying. He noted that Oscar has `petitioned HS about 3 weeks ago to be treated as erotomaniac and to be sent somewhere to be cured. Has constant fear of breaking down utterly in brain.'