Oscar

by Sturgis, Matthew;

  The introduction of new evidence opened up the option for Carson to re-cross-examine. It was not a prospect that Wilde relished. At the lunch break he asked his counsel whether he could be examined ‘on anything they choose’. Pressed as to what his anxiety was, he confessed that ‘some time ago I was turned out of the Albemarle Hotel in the middle of the night and a boy was with me. It might be awkward if they found out about it.’ Sir Edward Clarke cannot have been encouraged by the revelation.14 When Wilde failed to resume his place in the witness box after lunch, it was whispered in the courtroom that he must have fled, rather than face Carson again. But the rumour proved false. He appeared at quarter past two, apologizing that the clock in the restaurant where he had lunched was running slow.

  In the event Carson did not seek to cross-examine on the new evidence. Nor did Clarke, as some expected, at this stage call Alfred Douglas as a witness. He preferred to close his case ‘for the present’. Wilde took the opportunity to leave the witness box and the courtroom. He missed the opening of Carson’s assured and devastating address, but had certainly returned in time to hear that Alfred Wood, whom Wilde supposed to be in America, was back in London and would be giving evidence: ‘[He] will describe to you – I am not going to anticipate to you – how time after time Mr Oscar Wilde, almost from the commencement of their acquaintance, adopted filthy and immoral practices with him.’ A ‘gasp of amazement’ went round the courtroom at this announcement. But it was only one among many. Carson had already indicated that Charles Parker would also be appearing, and that witnesses from the Savoy would prove ‘up to hilt’ the allegations about Wilde’s ‘immoralities’ at that hotel. When the court rose, Carson was not yet halfway through his remarks.15

  Wilde retired to the nearby Holborn Viaduct Hotel, where he was staying for convenience. He – together with Bosie – telegraphed to Ada Leverson, crying off dinner that evening: ‘We have a lot of very important business to do,’ they explained. ‘Everything is very satisfactory.’16 But ‘satisfactory’ it was not. Although they could perhaps convince themselves that most of the witnesses Carson was threatening to produce were accomplices and self-confessed criminals, whose testimony might be discredited, to fight on such ground was extremely dangerous and uncertain.

  Sir Edward Clarke sought a conference with Wilde the following morning. He had considered the matter overnight, and thought that, on what they had already heard, the jury would be bound to acquit Queensberry, and that the only sane course of action was for Wilde to withdraw from the prosecution, and to allow Clarke to consent to a verdict of ‘not guilty’ as regards the lesser charge of ‘posing’ as a sodomite on the basis of his literary works. Otherwise, there was a real risk that, if the case ran to its end, with the full parade of evidence being given, and the jury found for the defendant, the judge would order Wilde’s arrest in open court. The junior counsel, Willie Mathews, did offer a counter-view: he thought that the credibility of Queensberry’s witnesses could be impugned and the case might still be won. But Wilde had grown doubtful on the point.17 He was, apparently, moved by Clarke’s opinion that the case might run for another three or four days; the expense would be more than he could afford. It seems, too, that Clarke thought he had secured a private agreement with Carson that if the case were dropped now ‘nothing more would be heard of the matter’.18 At all events Wilde accepted Clarke’s advice.

  He was relieved to learn that his own further presence in court would not be necessary. While his counsel entered the courtroom, where Carson had already picked up the thread of his remorseless opening address, Wilde left the building by a side entrance and drove the short distance to the Holborn Viaduct Hotel. There he was soon joined in conference by Alfred Douglas and his brother, Percy, as well as by Robbie Ross and (most probably) Reggie Turner.19

  His case had failed. This great shock was soon followed by others. Wilde was informed that Clarke had been unable to limit Queensberry’s victory merely to the ‘posing’ element of the charge, that the marquess had been awarded costs, and that no indication had been given that ‘matters’ would now be dropped. When a reporter from the Sun arrived, seeking an interview, Percy came out to answer his questions, asserting that Bosie had been eager to go into the witness box, but Wilde had forbade it. He stressed, however, that he – ‘and every member of our family, excepting my father’ – refused to believe the allegations against Wilde made by the defence, and claimed that ‘with Mr Wilde’s full authority he could state that Mr Wilde had no thoughts of immediately leaving London, and would stay to face whatever might be the result of the proceedings’. Wilde dispatched a letter along the same lines to the London Evening News.

  * In discussing Wilde’s correspondence, Carson was delighted to reveal that he had been totally unaware of ‘the madness of kisses’ letter before it was brought up in court and elaborately explained away. Nevertheless Wilde had been right to suspect that Queensberry’s side had got hold of one of his letters: it was a marginally less compromising missive that he had sent to the ‘Dearest of all boys’ from the Savoy, regretting Bosie’s tendency to ‘make scenes’: ‘They wreck the loveliness of life. I cannot see you, so Greek and gracious, distorted by passion – I cannot listen to your curved lips saying hideous things to me. Don’t do it. You break my heart. I had sooner be rented all day than have you bitter, unjust, horrid.’

  † Rosebery, just then, was beset with cares. On 19 February he had tried to resign as prime minister, feeling that he lacked the support of his cabinet colleagues. He had been dissuaded. But his health had then collapsed. He was left almost incapacitated by an unspecified nervous affliction that affected his digestion and destroyed his sleep. His illness continued throughout March and April (and into May). Given the rumours about Rosebery’s sexual interest in young men, there were those who were ready to draw damaging connections. On 21 April 1895 Lord Durham informed Reginald Esher that ‘the Newmarket scum [the racing set] say that R[osebery] never had the influenza, and that his insomnia was caused by terror of being in the Wilde scandal. Very charitable.’

  4

  Regina Versus Wilde

  ‘All trials are trials for one’s life.’

  oscar wilde

  It was not the only letter written that afternoon. Wilde, it seems, scribbled a note to Constance, urging her to let no one enter his ‘bedroom or sitting-room’. Queensberry’s solicitor, Charles Russell, meanwhile, wasted no time in writing to the Crown’s director of prosecutions, Hamilton Cuffe, enclosing ‘a copy of all our witnesses’ statements’ together with the trial transcript, in order that ‘justice’ might be done.1 Cuffe, besides seeking an immediate interview with Russell, also sent the particulars round to the House of Commons for the attention of Asquith, the home secretary, and the law officers Sir Robert Reid (attorney general) and Sir Frank Lockwood (solicitor general).

  This high-level consultation is certainly suggestive: the case had acquired a political dimension. Clarke’s decision to read out Queensberry’s letters had had unintended consequences. The fact that the names of Rosebery and Gladstone had been mentioned (however obliquely) in court placed the Liberal establishment in an awkward position. They needed to be seen to be acting without fear or favour in their dealings with Wilde, lest it be claimed that they were involved in some sort of cover-up. Wilde’s three erstwhile Eighty Club colleagues – Asquith, Reid and Lockwood – swiftly agreed that a warrant should be applied for, and Asquith gave instructions that Wilde should be stopped ‘wherever he might be found’.2

  The marquess, for his part, had stepped out of the Old Bailey to be greeted as a conquering hero by cheering bystanders and supporters. It was reported that he had sent a message to Wilde, declaring, ‘If the country allows you to leave, all the better for the country, but if you take my son with you I will follow you wherever you go and shoot you.’3 To the reporters who gathered at Carter’s Hotel that afternoon he suggested, however, that, rather than being allowed to flee, Wilde ‘ought to be placed where h
e can ruin no more young men’.4

  If Wilde had decided to leave England for the continent that afternoon, it is probable that he would have been allowed to go, despite the stated hopes of Asquith and Queensberry that he be apprehended.5 But, as Percy’s statement – and his own letter – made clear, Wilde had resolved to stay. Quite why is less obvious. Ross had urged him to go to France. There was perhaps a touch of defiance in his refusal, but inertia probably played a greater part. Wilde was stunned by his reversal; ‘With what a crash this fell!’, he later lamented to Ada Leverson. ‘Why did the Sibyl [Mrs Robinson] say fair things?’6 Disappointed by fortune tellers, he seems to have surrendered himself to his fate, and become almost an observer of his own catastrophe.7

  He did make one last small effort to face the crisis, calling at the offices of Messrs Lewis & Lewis, in nearby Ely Place. But his old friend Sir George was unable to help. ‘What is the good of coming to me now,’ the lawyer exclaimed. ‘I am powerless to do anything. If you had had the sense to bring Lord Queensberry’s card to me in the first place, I would have torn it up and thrown it in the fire, and told you not to make a fool of yourself.’8 Wilde had made more than a fool of himself.

  Uncertain what to do next, he took his brougham and, having called at his bank in St James’s, went on to the Cadogan Hotel, where Bosie had been staying for the past week. His progress across town was tracked by a troop of journalists and by Queensberry’s hired detectives. As Wilde drove through St James’s he may have noticed his name being removed from the playbills outside the Haymarket and the St James’s Theatres. Over the three days of the trial it had been remarked that attendances at both theatres has ‘fallen off’.9*

  Installed in Bosie’s rooms at the hotel by the middle of the afternoon, Wilde sat and waited with his trio of friends. He drank hock-and-seltzer with a steady determination. Already the evening papers were predicting his arrest. Ross was dispatched to take the news of Queensberry’s victory to Constance, who was staying with her aunt in Lower Seymour Street. She had Vyvyan with her; Cyril had been taken out of Bedales and sent to relatives in Ireland. Through her tears, she pleaded with Robbie to encourage Wilde to go ‘away abroad’.10 Wilde, however, remained unmoved and immovable. He deflected all suggestions of flight, with the assertion – quite untrue – that ‘the train has gone… it is too late’. There were, in fact, regular boat-trains from Victoria until quarter to ten in the evening. Bosie, unable to bear the strain of waiting, took himself off to the House of Commons to consult his cousin, George Wyndham, about the government’s plans to prosecute. While he was absent, a reporter from the Star arrived and informed Ross that he had seen confirmation on the news ‘tape’ that a warrant for Wilde’s arrest had indeed been issued. The authorities had acted with almost unexampled speed. When Ross relayed the news, Wilde’s face turned ‘very grey’.11

  At around half past six came the knock on the door. Two plainclothes policemen entered. ‘Mr Wilde, I believe?’ Wilde rose to his feet. He would give no trouble. Pausing only to put on his overcoat, gather his gloves, and pick up a copy of Pierre Louÿs’s latest novel, he was led down to the waiting ‘growler’. He was driven first to Scotland Yard, where the arrest warrant was read, charging him under Section 11 of the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act with ‘committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons’. From there he was taken to Bow Street police station, where he was booked and taken down to a cell for the night. Neither Douglas nor Ross was allowed to see him.

  At ten o’clock the following day the committal proceedings began, heard before the magistrate, Sir John Bridge, in the small – and crammed – ‘upper’ courtroom at Bow Street Police Court. Wilde found himself joined in the dock by Alfred Taylor, who had been arrested that morning at his lodgings in Pimlico. They greeted each other with a bow. Charles Gill – Carson’s junior in the Queensberry trial – acted as the prosecutor for the Crown. He began to lay out the case against Wilde and Taylor with slow deliberation. The witnesses mentioned by Carson began to be produced: the Parker brothers, Alfred Wood, Fred Atkins, Sidney Mavor and – in due course – Edward Shelley. The dangers and difficulties facing Wilde became horribly vivid. Ready to implicate themselves, it was apparent that the witnesses had been granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony. It became clear, too, that they had received – or were receiving – financial support from Queensberry’s solicitors. Edward Shelley had, it was said, received 20 guineas for his two days’ attendance during the libel trial, despite the fact that his weekly wage, when at the Bodley Head, was a modest 15s. Charles Parker appeared resplendent in a new suit paid for by the prosecution.12

  Wilde had to listen as they detailed their various encounters with him: the dinners at Kettner’s, the nights at the Savoy, the parties in Taylor’s rooms, the assignations in rented lodgings, the clandestine visits to Tite Street and St James’s Place – and the sex. William Parker claimed that Taylor had told him and his brother that Wilde would like them to behave ‘the same as women’. Charles Parker described how he and Wilde had undressed and got into bed naked at the Savoy (before Gill interposed with ‘I don’t propose to take this further, in any detail’ – for the present). Alfred Wood’s account of what occurred between him and Wilde at Tite Street was so graphic as to be ‘unreportable’, even by the downmarket Reynolds’s Newspaper.13 After them came the first of a succession of hotel employees, lodging-house keepers, waiters and servants who had seen Wilde in more or less compromising circumstances. There was the masseur and the chambermaid at the Savoy who had noticed a ‘common’ boy in Wilde’s bed; the same maid had also been shocked by the ‘peculiar’ staining of Wilde’s bed sheets and night shirt, apparently smeared with Vaseline, semen and ‘soil’.14

  Wilde was supported by the same legal team that had handled his unfortunate prosecution of Queensberry. Sir Edward Clarke – regretting, it seems, having advised Wilde to withdraw from that case – insisted that he and his juniors would give their services without charge.15 Humphreys, too, ceased to send in his bills (Taylor was represented by his own barrister, J. P. Grain). At the first hearing at Bow Street, one small victory was achieved. When Sidney Mavor was called to give evidence, he provided a full account of his visit to Wilde at the Albemarle Hotel but then – to the surprise of the prosecution (who had his very full statement to the contrary) – he flatly denied that any improprieties had occurred. The credit for this unexpected coup was claimed by Douglas; he had encountered Mavor in the corridors of the police court and told him, ‘For God’s sake, remember you are a gentleman and a public school boy. Don’t put yourself on a level with scum like Wood and Parker. When counsel asks you the questions, deny the whole thing, and say you made the statement because you were frightened by the police. They can’t do anything to you.’16 Mavor’s volte-face left the prosecution without its most outwardly ‘respectable’ witness, and also the one who linked Wilde most closely to Taylor.

  The defence still faced many obstacles. The prosecution had determined that Wilde and Taylor should be tried together, an arrangement likely to be detrimental to Wilde’s chances. One day was not enough for the Crown to produce all its witnesses; two further hearings would be required, on 11 and 19 April. In the meantime an application for bail was denied, owing – it was stated – to the ‘gravity of the case’. Sir John Bridge, going considerably beyond his judicial discretion, suggested that ‘there is no worse crime than that with which the prisoners are charged’ – this, in spite of the fact, that ‘gross indecency’ was, technically, not a crime at all, but a misdemeanour.

  The prejudice was typical. Queensberry’s victory and Wilde’s arrest had called forth an extraordinary outpouring of self-righteous vituperation from press and public alike. Among the sheaf of telegrams that the victorious Queensberry had received was one stating, ‘Every man in the City is with you. Kill the bugger!’17 George Wyndham noted that such hostility was common to ‘all classes’.18 Frank Harris thought it fiercest among the
‘puritan middle class, who had always distrusted Wilde as an artist, an intellectual and “a mere parasite of the aristocracy”’.19 Many old friends turned their backs.† In all quarters Wilde’s guilt was generally assumed. The Echo was living up to its name in announcing that ‘Mr Oscar Wilde is “damned and done for”.’ It was expected – and hoped – that more arrests might follow. Hooting mobs gathered outside Bow Street to greet Wilde’s arrival at his subsequent hearings. The more salacious details revealed by the witnesses were circulated in hastily produced pamphlets.20 Street songs of ‘questionable, if not infamous character’ relating to the case were sung ‘in many of the public thoroughfares, particularly in South London’.21

  Condemnation, however, was not only personal but also artistic. Lucien Pissarro, writing to his father, described the hatred unleashed against Wilde, as less an attack on ‘sodomisme’ than an assault upon the artist and the human spirit. Wilde’s fall would mark the end of the Aesthetic movement in England, just at the moment when the rest of Europe was coming to admire it. ‘L’Anglais,’ Pissarro declared, ‘déteste l’Art.’22 The ‘English’ press certainly did now detest Wilde’s artistic vision. The National Observer, though no longer edited by Henley, announced, ‘There is no man or woman in the English-speaking world possessed of the treasure of a wholesome mind who is not under a deep debt of gratitude to the Marquess of Queensberry for destroying the High Priest of the Decadents.’ He looked forward to the ‘legal and social sequels’ of Queensberry’s victory: ‘There must be another trial at the Old Bailey, or a coroner’s inquest – the latter for choice; and of the Decadents of their hideous conceptions of the meaning of Art, of their worse than Eleusinian mysteries, there must be an absolute end.’23