Oscar

by Sturgis, Matthew;

  32 CL, 633; the first week’s receipts for IBE came to £903 14s; OW, due 10 per cent of the weekly gross (up to £1,000, and 15 per cent thereafter) would receive £90 7s 6d.

  33 Holland, 46: OW, when asked on 3 April whether the play was ‘in rehearsal now’, replied: ‘I don’t know that it is actually in rehearsal, Madame Sarah Bernhardt promised to produce it before the middle of May.’ Although Holland (307 n94) doubts the truth of OW’s statement, it is confirmed by a letter from Mrs Enid Lambart (née Spencer-Brunton) to A. J. A. Symons, 11 July 1931 (Clark) in which she mentions that she possesses a letter from OW written from Holloway (i.e. 5 April – 7 May 1895) mentioning an aborted production of Salomé with Sarah Bernhardt. Bernhardt’s plans were perhaps prompted by a successful dance version of the story performed by Loie Fuller, which had opened at the Comédie Parisienne on 4 March.

  34 CL, 796.

  35 C. O. Humphreys & Co. to OW, 28 February 1895 (Clark).

  Chapter 2: Hideous Words

  1 Ricketts, 39–43.

  2 CL, 634.

  3 CL, 633. OW’s letter to CMW is undated, but – like the letter to Ross – was written in pencil on Hotel Avondale paper. And it has been plausibly assumed to relate to this crisis. It proposes a meeting ‘at nine’ – although whether this was nine in the evening (as is generally assumed), or in the morning, is not made clear.

  4 Moyle, 229. Moyle suggests that CMW’s comments about praying for her boys does indicate knowledge of OW’s relationship with Douglas. But against this must be set her readiness to allow her relatives to lend money to OW to support his libel action – which must have been based on a belief in his innocence.

  5 CL, 634, 796.

  6 CL, 634, 796; Ross – in his 1914 ‘Statement’, prepared for his libel case v. Crosland (Clark) – when he was anxious to blame Douglas for encouraging the ill-fated action, suggested that he counselled caution; but there is nothing in the contemporary record to suggest this.

  7 Hyde, Oscar, 253.

  8 CL, 796, 635; LAD to Percy Douglas [25 March 1895] (BL) confirms that Percy had offered only to pay ‘half’ the probably expenses, estimated at ‘about £500’.

  9 Holland, 4; it seems that, even here, Queensberry may have been misquoting himself. Although his handwriting is barely legibly it can, more credibly, be read as ‘For Oscar Wilde / posing somdomite’ – rather than ‘posing as somdomite’.

  10 Holland, 22; New York Herald, 3 March 1895, in McKenna, 343.

  11 Marjoribanks, Life of Lord Carson, 202.

  12 LAD to F. Harris, 30 April 1925 (Austin); CL, 633; LAD to Percy Douglas 25 [March 1895] (BL), mentions OW raising £800 ‘by sacrificing property worth about £3,000’.

  13 Holland, 9–22, xxiii; A. H. Robins, Oscar Wilde: The Great Drama of His Life (2011), 17; PMG, 9 March 1895; MQ to Lady Douglas, 11 March [1895] (BL). The magistrate’s decision was formally confirmed when a grand jury returned a True Bill against Queensberry on 25 March; see PMG, 25 March 1895.

  14 Holland, 285.

  15 LAD to Percy Douglas, 11 March 1895 (BL).

  16 Arthur Humphreys to OW, 11 March [1895] (MSL/Delaware).

  17 Maguire, 65; on 1 March OW raised £10 2s 6d; CL, 690–1.

  18 CL, 635; LAD to Percy Douglas, 25 March 1895 (BL).

  19 Hyde, Trials, 346–51.

  20 MQ to Minnie Douglas, 11 March 1895 (BL); MQ, enraged at Percy publicly siding with OW and LAD, began bombarding first him, then his wife, and finally their solicitor, with letters outlining his suspicions and findings, in the hope that he might change Percy’s position. And it seems probable that Percy would have passed on this information to OW and LAD. It is likely that MQ’s attention had been drawn to The Chameleon by an article in Jerome K. Jerome’s magazine, To-Day, which demanded its withdrawal from circulation. OW (as represented in The Green Carnation) was supposed to have offended Jerome by describing his writings as ‘vulgar without being funny’. Anon., Oscar Wilde: Three Times Tried, 175.

  21 MQ to Minnie Douglas, 26 February 1895 (BL).

  22 Robins, Oscar Wilde: The Great Drama of His Life, 17, makes the telling observation about the costs involved; Harris, 113–17; the date of the lunch is conjectural. It was on a Monday shortly before the trial, and it was certainly not Monday 1 April, as Harris, 119, suggests that news of Queensberry’s plea of justification followed some days after the encounter.

  23 CL, 636.

  24 Northern Echo, 26 March 1895; PMG, 28 March 1895.

  25 Gladys Brooke (née Palmer), Relations and Complications (1929), 3–4: she recalled, as a child, hearing OW asking her father in a voice ‘full of anguish’, ‘Oh, Walter, Walter! I ask you as man to man to lend me four hundred pounds for my trial.’ It seems unlikely that he did. Nevertheless Gladys states that her parents helped OW ‘both financially and morally during his trial’.

  26 Moyle, 262.

  27 Hyde, Trials, 33–4; Marjoribanks, Life of Lord Carson, 201; OW’s letter had, apparently, come into Queensberry’s hands via a blackmailing solicitor called Bernard Abrahams. [I. Playfair, Some Gentle Criticisms of British Justice, (1895); McKenna, 468–70.

  28 Reginald Turner to G. F. Renier, 22 March 1933 (Clark).

  29 Robins, 18.

  30 CL, 759.

  31 Pearson, 288; that afternoon CMW had hosted an ‘at home’ at Tite Street. Only a handful of people had called. It was noticed that she seemed ‘depressed and distracted’, Moyle, 261.

  32 Holland, 251; Hyde, Trials, 61.

  Chapter 3: The Prosecutor

  1 Holland, xxvii; PMG, 3 May 1895. In the 1890s there were four courtrooms in the Central Criminal Court (the old building has since been demolished and replaced). It does not seem to be recorded which courtroom Wilde appeared in.

  2 PMG, 3 April 1895.

  3 Holland, 52ff; Western Mail, 4 April, 1895.

  4 Travers Humphreys, Foreword to Hyde, Trials, 8.

  5 Holland, 104–5.

  6 ‘Silk and Stuff’, PMG, 4 April 1895; Daily Chronicle, 4 April 1895, in Holland, xxviii.

  7 Holland, 115; 134; 144.

  8 Holland, 134, 138–9, 146, 116–18.

  9 ‘Our London Letter’, Dundee Courier & Argus, 4 April 1895.

  10 Hyde, Trials, 51; Holland 152–6.

  11 Holland, 207–9, 321; Hyde, Trials, 150.

  12 Sherard, Life, 115–16.

  13 Sun, 4 April, 1895, quoted in Holland, 322.

  14 Hyde, Trials, 53.

  15 Holland, 271; Hyde, Trials, 55; 178, 269.

  16 CL, 636, dates the telegram to ‘3 April 1895’, but the original – at the Houghton Library at Harvard – while imperfectly stamped, shows a date of ‘4 April’ and a time of ‘4.21 p.m.’; the court rose at 4.20 on the afternoon of Thursday 4 April, so it may be that the telegram was dispatched by Bosie (or another) on OW’s instructions.

  17 Hyde, Trials, 55–6.

  18 C. H. Norman, quoted in Holland, xxxix; George Bernard Shaw to LAD, 12 August 1938, in Mary Hyde, ed., Bernard Shaw and Alfred Douglas: A Correspondence (1982), 87.

  19 Northern Echo, 6 April 1895, describes (quoting the first-hand observation of the Star reporter), how OW left the Old Bailey just after the verdict had been delivered. ‘His brougham was waiting, and he stepped rapidly into it, calling to the coachman to drive to the Holborn Viaduct Hotel. Before the carriage had stopped at the door of the hotel he thrust his arm and a gold-headed cane out of the window, and signaling to a man who stood there, apparently waiting, hoarsely cried, “The verdict is not guilty!” they entered the hotel together, and shortly afterwards Lord Alfred Douglas was also seen to go into the hotel.’ ‘Within half an hour’ of OW’s arrival at the hotel, several gentlemen arrived hurriedly, and were conducted at once to the rooms which have been reserved for Mr Wilde since Thursday.’ (‘Arrest of Oscar Wilde’, Western Mail, 6 April 1895). The Leeds Mercury, 6 April 1895, reported that ‘the party remained in earnest conference in a private room until one o’clock, when they partook of luncheon
, at which much wine was drunk’. The paper described one of the men as ‘a lawyer’: Turner was a qualified barrister.

  Chapter 4: Regina Versus Wilde

  1 Hyde, Trials; the letter was sent at two o’clock that afternoon.

  2 Anon., Oscar Wilde: Three Times Tried, 129.

  3 ‘A Society Scandal’, Northern Echo, 6 April 1895; MQ later clarified that his message, sent before the end of the trial, had not said he ‘would shoot Mr. Wilde’, only that, if OW ‘persuaded his misguided son to go with him he would feel quite justified in following him (Wilde) and shooting him, did he feel inclined to do so, and were he worth the trouble’.

  4 New York Herald, 6 April, 1895, in McKenna, 507.

  5 Although it was reported in the press that, after leaving the court, ‘He appears… to have been so carefully shadowed by detectives that he had no chance of flight’, most of those shadowing him seem to have been newspaper reporters (‘London Letter,’ Western Mail, 6 April 1895; Borland, Wilde’s Devoted Friend, 45). A police source later claimed that they had been reluctant to act: ‘We couldn’t help ourselves. Scotland Yard knew all that Lord Queensberry could tell long before, but we never move in such cases unless obliged.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Well, experience has taught us prosecutions of a certain character do far more harm than good. They are in effect suggestive instead of deterrent.’ Evening News (Sydney), 12 February 1896.

  6 CL, 642.

  7 Ransome, 18.

  8 Hyde, Trials, 58.

  9 Northern Echo, 6 April 1895; ‘Our London Letter’, Belfast News-Letter, 6 April 1895.

  10 Moyle, 266; Hyde, Trials, 59–60; Hyde mentions ‘hock-and-seltzer’; the account in To-day refers to ‘a spirit decanter on the table’, from which OW helped himself, and an empty ‘soda-water bottle’ (quoted in the Broadford Courier and Reedy Creek Times (Broadford, Victoria), 7 June 1895).

  11 Hyde, Trials, 60; Holland, xxxi.

  12 Anon., Oscar Wilde: Three Times Tried, 167; More Adey to [Unknown], June 1895, draft letter (Clark) mentions witness payments; Ellmann, 447.

  13 Reynolds’s Newspaper, 7 April 1895.

  14 Hyde, Trials, 63–4; Jane Cotta [sic] witness statement, quoted in McKenna, 295. In the trial transcripts the chambermaid’s name is given as Jane Cotter.

  15 Holland, xxxix; LAD to George Bernard Shaw, 22 August 1938 (BL), states Clarke’s ‘conscience reproached him’ over the advice he had given OW; contemporary press opinion seems to support the notion: ‘no counsel ever committed a grosser or more inexplicable error of judgement, from his client’s point of view, than did Sir Edward Clarke when he accepted a verdict in the Queensberry trial. There was nothing to gain and everything to lose – as has been proved – by Sir Edward Clarke’s action. In all probability Lord Queensberry would have got a verdict anyhow, but a verdict secured in face of the unbroken denials of Wilde would have been a different matter for a verdict obtained on his own admission of the truth of Lord Queensberry’s charge. That fatal admission made on the astounding advice of Sir Edward Clarke dogged his wretched client through all the subsequent proceedings and minimized to the last degree his chance of escape. Sir Edward Clarke tied a millstone round his unfortunate client’s neck.’ ‘London Correspondence’, Freeman’s Journal, 27 May 1895.

  16 LAD, Autobiography, 119–20; Anon., Oscar Wilde: Three Times Tried, 156.

  17 New York Herald, in Hyde, Oscar, 292.

  18 George Wyndham to Percy Wyndham, 7 April 1895, in Hyde, Oscar, 296.

  19 Harris, 218.

  20 Illustrated Police News, 20 April 1895.

  21 ‘The Oscar Wilde Case’, Western Mail (Cardiff), 2 May 1895.

  22 Lucien Pissarro to Camille Pissarro, 16 April 1895, in Thorold, ed., The Letters of Lucien to Camille Pissarro, 421.

  23 National Observer, 6 April 1895; Henley was no longer editor of the paper; he had been replaced by James Edmund Vincent in 1894.

  24 John Stokes, In the Nineties (1989), 14.

  25 J. Lewis May, John Lane and the Nineties (1936), 89.

  26 Anon., Oscar Wilde: Three Times Tried, 178.

  27 W. E. Henley to C. Whibley, 19 April, 1895: ‘Bobbie [Ross] has been subpoenaed: with a view to obliging him to clear. But he is impudent – and quixotic – enough for anything.’ In John Connell, W. E. Henley (1949), 300. Ross, in his 1914 ‘Statement’ (Clark) says he was subpoenaed in connection with the Queensberry libel trial, but Henley’s contemporaneous letter indicates that it was in relation to OW’s first criminal trial.

  28 W. B. Yeats, Autobiographies (1938), 226.

  29 CL, 641.

  30 CL, 642.

  31 CL, 646.

  32 CL, 651–2.

  33 George Wyndham to Percy Wyndham, 7 April 1895, in Hyde, Oscar, 295–6: ‘I know on the authority of Arthur Balfour, who has been told the case by lawyers who had all the papers, that W[ilde] is certain to be condemned… There is no case against Bosie.’

  34 Charles Gill to Hamilton Cuffe, 19 April 1895; Hamilton Cuffe to C. S. Murdoch, 20 April 1895, in Holland, 294–6.

  35 Philip Burne-Jones to CMW, 11 April 1895, in Moyle, 271. P. Burne-Jones was passing on advice from George Lewis. CMW went down to Babbacombe on 19 April.

  36 CL, 646.

  37 Elisabeth Marbury to OW, 15 March 1895 (Clark), ‘the outlook is encouraging’ (for AIH); Leeds Mercury, 8 April 1895: ‘The directors of the Lyceum Theatre [New York] have decided to discontinue the performance of Oscar Wilde’s play, An Ideal Husband, after this week’; Beckson, Oscar Wilde Encyclopedia, 154.

  38 CL, 643, Mrs Enid Lambart (née Spencer-Brunton) to A. J. A. Symons, 11 July 1931 (Clark).

  39 Donald Mead, ‘The Pillage of the House Beautiful’, Wildean, 47 (2015), 38–55; ‘Oscar Wilde’s Goods’, Weekly Standard and Express (Blackburn), 27 April 1895; PMG, 25 April 1895; ‘Sale of Oscar Wilde’s Effects’, Newcastle Morning Herald (New South Wales), 4 June 1895. The price of Carlyle’s writing desk is variously given by the different papers as £14, 14 guineas, and ‘fourteen and half guineas’.

  40 Hyde, LAD, 85; LAD to More Adey, 27 September 1896 (Clark).

  41 CL, 647.

  42 Hyde, Oscar, 323.

  43 Hyde, Oscar, 321–2, 339.

  44 Hyde, Oscar, 325.

  45 Anon., Oscar Wilde: Three Times Tried, 272.

  46 Max Beerbohm to R. Turner, 3 May 1895, in Hart-Davis, ed., Max Beerbohm’s Letters to Reggie Turner, 102.

  47 Hyde, Trials, 239.

  48 Anon., Oscar Wilde: Three Times Tried, 291; Hyde, Oscar, 336.

  49 CL, 646.

  50 ‘The Oscar Wilde Case’, Hampshire Telegraph, 4 May 1895.

  51 William Archer to Charles Archer, 1 May 1895: ‘This infernal Oscar Wilde business, which by the way will be over today. I’m afraid Oscar hasn’t the ghost of a chance’ (Charles Archer, William Archer (1931), 215); Freeman’s Journal, 2 May 1895: ‘Those who had heard the judge’s charge were not unprepared for such an unsatisfactory result of a highly unsavoury case.’ ‘The Oscar Wilde Case’, Western Mail, 2 May 1895.

  52 Max Beerbohm to R. Turner, 3 May 1895, in Hart-Davis, ed., Max Beerbohm’s Letters to Reggie Turner, 102–3.

  53 Belfast News-Letter, 2 May 1895.

  54 Hyde, Trials, 268–9; Hyde, Oscar, 343.

  Chapter 5: The Torrent of Prejudice

  1 Freeman’s Journal, 2 May 1895; Hampshire Advertiser, 4 May 1895; T. M. Healy, Letters and Leaders of My Day (1928), 2:416–17; H. M. Hyde, The Life of Sir Edward Carson (1953), 143; Schroeder, 169.

  2 Sir Edward Hamilton (assistant financial secretary) diary, 21 May 1895, and 25 May 1895, in Michael S. Foldy, The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1997), 27; ‘London Letter’, Western Mail, 3 May 1895; Reynolds’s Newspaper, 5 May 1895; More Adey to [unknown], draft letter, from Rouen, June 1895 (Clark).

  3 Sir Edward Hamilton (assistant financial secretary) diary, 21 May 1895, in Foldy, The Trials of Oscar Wilde, 27; Ellmann, 437; Max Beerbohm to R. Turner, 3 May 1895, in Hart-Davis, ed., Max Beerbohm’s Letters to Re
ggie Turner, 102; McKenna, 529; Freeman’s Journal, 27 May 1895; MQ to Minnie Douglas, 14 May 1895 (BL).

  4 F. G. Bettany, Stewart Headlam: A Biography (1926), 130. Headlam told Bettany ‘he consented to act because “a third party came to Selwyn Image, who was unable to take on the responsibility, and so I agreed to do so.” Selwyn Images confirms this – and says the third party was a member of a City business firm [Ernest Leverson] who was debarred by the articles of his firm from going bail for anybody.’ Image had no money, so asked Headlam, who consented. Leverson, however, gave the assurance that – in the event of a default – any liabilities would be covered by himself and other businessmen.

  5 MQ to Stoneham, 9 May 1895; a telegram from MQ to Stoneham, 8 May 1895, runs: ‘Unless I can get some assurance that Alfred is away and does not intend joining this fellow [OW] – shall keep hunting him and seeking from every Hotel as I did last night.’ Stoneham, in his letter to MQ, 8 May 1895, refers to ‘avoiding a repetition of the scene of last evening’ (BL). Quite what the ‘scene’ involved is uncertain. But the colourful account, provided in Sherard, Life, of OW being pursued across town by a gang of Queensberry’s hired thugs – who threatened to wreck any establishment that gave the poet shelter – is not supported by the contemporary reports. See Stratmann, Marquess of Queensberry, 243.

  6 Sherard, Life, 358; CL, 649; Goncourt Journal, vol. 3, 1136. The information about JFW came from Sherard, via Léon Daudet.

  7 George Ives Diary, 1895 (Austin): in a ‘p.s. many years later’ he recalled ‘I hoped he would kill himself in the interval when he had the chance’; A. F. Tschiffely, Don Roberto (1937), 349; Connell, W. E. Henley, 301–2.

  8 Harris, 168; Yeats, Autobiographies, 227; the ‘rumour’, reported by Yeats, that WCKW refused to ‘sit at the same table’ as his brother, and dined, instead, at a nearby restaurant – at Oscar’s expense – are not supported by the first-hand accounts of Sherard and Frank Harris. R. H. Sherard to A. J. A. Symons, 8 June 1937 (Clark).

  9 Sherard, SUF, 168–9; CL, 649–50.

  10 Harris, 168; Yeats, Autobiographies, 227; LAD to OW, 15 May 1895, Hôtel des Deux Mondes, Paris: ‘I hope you will join me next week’ (Clark). Sherard, Life, 366; Ada Leverson, Letters to the Sphinx., 41, Bettany, Stewart Headlam, 130: ‘More than once [OW] said to me, “I have given my word to you and to my mother, and that is enough.”’