Bellotti’s ‘boys’ were the type of young men of whom Mr Justice Wills was speaking: that I must accept. What I do not accept, however, is that Oscar was ever the centre of any circle of corruption. He cultivated the company of young men—he revelled in their youth—but he did not corrupt them. He reverenced them. Whether they were always worthy of his adoration is another matter. Several of those who gave evidence against him at his trial were young men whom he had treated as friends—and who repaid that friendship with false testimony bought at a price. (From the spring to the summer of 1895, every one of the prosecution witnesses in the case of Regina v. Wilde was paid a retainer of five pounds a week.)
In a conversation with me some time after Oscar’s death, Arthur Conan Doyle likened what he called ‘our friend’s pathological obsession with masculine youth and beauty’ to his creation Sherlock Holmes’s addiction to morphine and cocaine. “In my experience,” said Conan Doyle, “great men are frequently shot through with an obsessive or addictive strain that may seem aberrant—even abhorrent—to the rest of us. It does not diminish their greatness. It may make us more aware of their humanity.”
If, on occasion, in moments of weakness, in the privacy of a darkened room, Oscar succumbed to the sins of the flesh, so be it. It happened. It was his way. It does not make him a corrupter of youth. I knew Oscar from the time he was twenty-eight until the time of his death; you must believe me when I tell you he was a gentleman in the fullest, best and truest sense of the word. As Conan Doyle has written in his own memoir,* “Never in Wilde’s conversation did I observe one trace of coarseness of thought.” Neither did I.
* Memories and Adventures, 1924.
The same could not be said of Gerard Bellotti.
We found Bellotti in the monkey house, eating peanuts. He was cracking open the shells between his teeth and spitting the nuts through the bars into the monkeys’ enclosure.
“Bread and bread, these two,” he said, as we approached. He did not turn to greet us. “I thought they might take a fancy to one another, but they haven’t. Fighting like cats. That’s monkeys for you.” He uttered a small high-pitched laugh and held out his paper bag of peanuts in our direction. “Care for one?”
“No, thank you,” I said, “I’ve breakfasted.”
“Oho, Mr Wilde, your friend has a lively sense of humour. We like that in a man, don’t we?” Oscar said nothing. “Mr Wilde has a lovely sense of humour,” Bellotti added, shifting his huge bulk slightly, but still keeping his gaze fixed firmly ahead of him. The monkeys—long, lanky, ugly creatures, with low-slung pot-bellies, their shaggy coats grey-haired and moth-eaten—swung wildly around their cage, squealing and screeching as they went. Bellotti’s head did not follow their movements, but he seemed to know what they were doing nonetheless. One of the animals came to rest immediately in front of him, lying on its back, scratching itself against the ground. “Nice pencils they have,” murmured Bellotti. “I like a well-endowed monkey, don’t you?”
“These are spider monkeys,” said Oscar, “and these are females of the species.”
“Surely not?” said Bellotti, turning in our direction for the first time. There was a milky-white translucent film across his eyes and his blackened teeth were decorated with shards of peanut shell. His sallow skin was faintly pock-marked and, beneath his boater, tight curls of his henna-coloured hair glistened with oil and perspiration. He was not a pretty sight.
“The elongated sexual organ of the female spider monkey is often confused with that of the male. Do not trouble yourself, Mr Bellotti. It is a common mistake.”
I laughed. “How on earth do you know this, Oscar?”
Oscar smiled. “I have read Mycroft on Monkeys. It is the standard text. My reading extends beyond Sophocles and Baudelaire, you know.”
Bellotti sniffed and stuffed his paper bag of nuts into his pocket. He pinched his nose and closely studied his thumb and forefinger as he rubbed them together lightly. “I take it you’ve come about Billy Wood,” he said. “I’ve heard the news. It is very sad. He was a bright boy, one of the best. You were especially fond of him, Mr Wilde, I know. My condolences.”
“Who told you?” asked Oscar, moving a half-step closer to Bellotti and at the same time indicating to me that I should take a written note of what was to follow.
“O’Donnell,” said Bellotti, “the uncle.”
Oscar raised an eyebrow. “When was this?”
“Just before Christmas. He was drunk—and abusive. Made all sorts of threatening noises. Demanded money, the usual thing. I sent him on his way.”
“Did you give him anything?”
“Advice, that’s all. But good advice. I told him to leave the country—return to Canada or go to France. He speaks French of a sort, when he’s sober enough to speak at all. I’ve not heard from him since. Have you, Mr Wilde?”
“No,” said Oscar, quietly. He seemed suddenly distracted, in a reverie, thinking of something other than what Bellotti was saying, though with a brief nod of his head he indicated to me that I should continue to take notes.
“I believe he may have killed the boy himself,” said Bellotti, now peering at a grubby thumbnail as he used it to push back his cuticles, “though he denied it. And vehemently. With more threats and vile abuse. Of course, he could have murdered the poor boy in a drunken rage and clean forgotten that he had done so.”
“In that case, wouldn’t the body have been discovered by now?” I asked.
“Not necessarily. I imagine it happened in Broadstairs. Having killed the boy, he disposed of the body at sea. Or maybe he drowned him in the first place—pushed him off the cliff at Viking Bay or flung him off the end of the pier. I don’t know. I do know Billy Wood couldn’t swim.”
“How do you know that?” asked Oscar, snapping back from his reverie.
“I took him to the baths in Fulham once, Mr Wilde. With Mr Upthorpe. Billy told me he couldn’t swim. He told me he had a horror of water. He got it from his mother, he said.”
“Why did O’Donnell come to you at all?” I asked.
“He came for money. He came for Billy’s wages.”
“Billy’s wages?” I asked. Gerard Bellotti was slowly pushing ajar a window on a world with which I was entirely unfamiliar.
“The wages go to the guardian. The tips and presents go directly to the boy. Mr Wilde gave Billy a beautiful cigarette case, did you not, Mr Wilde? It carried a charming inscription, I recall. Billy was proud of it, rightly so.”
Oscar said nothing. (I thought nothing of the cigarette case at the time—or later. Oscar was absurdly generous with his gifts. He was particularly partial to presenting his friends with inscribed cigarette cases. Over the years, he gave me three.) “Was O’Donnell the boy’s guardian?” I asked.
“He was his uncle. And his mother’s lover, as I understand it. He was the one who first brought the boy to me, in any event. It was just a year ago. I assume he had the mother’s blessing. I assume they shared the wages. Billy was properly paid—and enjoyed the work. He took to it. He was a natural, wasn’t he, Mr Wilde?”
“I did not realise that you paid him, Mr Bellotti,” said Oscar, coldly.
“Did you not, Mr Wilde?”
“I gave the matter no thought, I am ashamed to say.”
“A labourer is worthy of his hire, is he not, Mr Wilde? And modelling is onerous work, especially when you’re working for an artist as particular as our Mr Aston Upthorpe.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know his work,” I said.
“You wouldn’t,” said Oscar, with a hollow laugh. “And I don’t believe Edward O’Donnell murdered Billy Wood. Why should he—if, as you say, Billy earned him a weekly wage? Why slaughter your own milch cow?”
“I’m not saying he did, Mr Wilde. I’m saying he might have done. He has the temperament. He’s a violent man at the best of times, and when he’s in drink…All I’m saying is it’s possible, you’ll grant me that? And assuming the boy was already dead when you and y
our friend came to see me, Mr Wilde—you remember, at the skating rink?—assuming Billy was dead by then…”
“He was,” said Oscar.
“Well,” said Bellotti, “then O’Donnell was, as far as I know, the last man to see the boy alive.”
“What?” exclaimed Oscar. “What are you saying?”
The monkeys in their cage whooped and screeched as Gerard Bellotti looked up towards us with a devilish smile. He lifted his straw boater, took a yellow handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow. He was evidently elated by the effect on Oscar of the intelligence he had just let slip.
“You both came to see me on a Thursday, did you not?”
“Yes,” said Oscar, “on 2 September.”
“And you asked me when I had last seen Billy Wood?”
“And you told us first it was on the day before,” I said, “and then corrected yourself and said it was on the Tuesday.”
“It was on Tuesday 31 August, was it not?” asked Oscar. “You told us Billy had been at one of your ‘club lunches’ and you always hold your lunches on the last Tuesday in the month.”
“That’s right, Mr Wilde, you remember. You’ve been to one or two of them yourself, of course—not for a while, I know, and not since we moved to Little College Street.”
“O’Donnell was not at the lunch, surely?”
“Naturally not,” said Bellotti, with a splutter of disgust. “But the point, Mr Wilde, is this. Billy left the lunch early in order to meet up with him. At two o’clock, on the dot, Billy got to his feet and asked to be excused. I can see the boy now—in my mind’s eye. He was wearing a sailor suit. Very fetching. He said he had an important appointment with his uncle. He told us he was looking forward to it. He said he had shaved especially, I remember. We all laughed at that—given he was so young. He stood at the door and took his leave of us with a little naval salute. He was a lovely lad. That was the last I saw of him.”
“And you say it was two o’clock?”
“On the dot. We heard Big Ben strike.”
“And within two hours the poor boy was dead,” said Oscar, “murdered in cold blood—not in Broadstairs, but in a perfumed room not two streets away.”
“Now you are telling me what I did not know,” said Bellotti, mopping his face with his yellow handkerchief. The monkey house was hot and airless.
“Who else was at the lunch?” asked Oscar.
“All the regulars—Mr Upthorpe, Mr Tirrold, Mr Prior, Mr Talmage—Canon Courteney, of course—and a couple of other boys.”
“No strangers?”
“No strangers.”
“I must meet them,” said Oscar. He looked at me, indicating that it was time for us to take our leave. “We must piece together all the details of Billy Wood’s final hours. We must talk to those who saw him last.”
“Come to our next lunch,” said Bellotti, holding out his hands, palms upwards, by way of invitation. “They’ll all be there. I’ll make sure of that. Bring your friend, Mr Wilde. He’ll be most welcome.”
“Thank you,” said Oscar.
“Little College Street, number 22. Any time from twelve. I take it you’ve still got your key?”
“But you’ve moved, haven’t you?” said Oscar.
“Different address. Same lock. Canon Courteney’s idea.” Bellotti raised his boater in my direction. “It’s always the last Tuesday in the month. Be sure to breakfast lightly. We lay on a good spread, don’t we, Mr Wilde?”
“Indeed,” said Oscar, without emotion. “Thank you, Mr Bellotti.”
We made to leave. Bellotti returned his attention to the monkeys, feeling in his coat pocket for his bag of nuts. “You say they’re all females, Mr Wilde?”
“Without question, Mr Bellotti.”
The fat man shifted his bulk uneasily and shook his head ruminatively from side to side. “Appearances can be very deceptive,” he said, with a small laugh.
“Indeed,” said Oscar. “Good day.”
As we reached the door of the monkey house, it swung slowly open as if by magic. As we stepped through it, we saw that it was being held open by Bellotti’s dwarf. The ugly creature gazed up at us with ill-concealed contempt. Oscar threw a sixpenny piece at his feet.
When we reached the gates of the zoo itself, we found a hansom cab awaiting us, with, standing by it and holding open the cab door, the street urchin with the friendly face who had touched his cap to us in Baker Street an hour before. As we clambered into the vehicle, Oscar turned to the lad and said, “Continue to keep an eye on them, Jimmy. They’re not to be trusted.”
As the hansom set off towards town, the boy stood on the roadside watching us, waving us on our way.
“Who is that?” I asked.
“One of my ‘spies’,” said Oscar. “One of the best.”
16
“Look at the Postscript”
“Who are these ‘spies’?” I asked, as our cab rumbled through Clarence Gate, out of Regent’s Park and, into Baker Street.
“Good-hearted boys like Jimmy there,” he said. “Street boys—ragamuffins, urchins, call them what you will. Their lives may be rackety and irregular by the standards of the sons of stockbrokers and civil servants, but they are good lads, my ‘spies’, hard-working and as honest as the day is long.”
“They work for you? You pay them?”
“I give them the odd sixpence and keep them out of mischief. They run errands for me: carry messages about town, deliver flowers, get me cabs…”
“And ‘spy’ on your behalf?”
He smiled. “When necessary. They are my roving eyes and ears, Robert, and—more to the point—my roving legs. As you’ve observed, I’m not much given to exercise. I wasn’t built for it. These lads are nimble and fleet of foot. They can throw a girdle round the capital in forty minutes. Each one’s my Ariel.”
“How many of them do you have, then?”
“Across London? Two dozen perhaps, thirty at the most. I count them among my truest friends. Conan Doyle has given Holmes a similar band of youthful assistants, but I came up with the idea first. Posterity will give me no credit for it, of course—unless you put the record straight. You are my Recording Angel, Robert. My reputation rests with you.”
Oscar did not keep a diary, but he knew that I did and he encouraged me to continue. He was fond of remarking that he had put his genius into his life but only his talent into his work and he told me, regularly, that he was relying on me and my journal to show posterity where his genius lay.
I took this responsibility seriously. For example, when we parted after our encounter with Gerard Bellotti, the first thing I did on getting back to my room was to write up the record of the morning’s adventure. Indeed, it would be true to say that, during the years when Oscar and I were closest, my journal is as much an account of his life as it is of my own. Perhaps that is not so surprising. His life was infinitely more remarkable than mine.
Re-reading my diary of January 1890, what do I appear to have achieved that month? Very little. My days, it seems, were spent in pursuit of Veronica Sutherland. My evenings, until I met up with Oscar at around 11 a.m. for our customary nightcap at the Albemarle Club, were mostly empty. Usually, I dined in my room alone and then wandered the streets of Bloomsbury and Soho for an hour or so. Occasionally, I treated myself to a solitary glass of beer at a public house in Chenies Street. I went to the theatre twice (to the Drury Lane pantomime and, with Oscar, to the revival of an H.J. Byron farce at the Criterion) and one evening, so the record shows, I took a young lady named Lucy (of whom I have no recollection whatsoever) to the Agricultural Hall to witness an American cowboy on horseback racing a French bicyclist on a penny-farthing! (I reckoned the outing ‘a costly failure’; the novelty of the entertainment quickly wore thin and Lucy, apparently, spent the entire evening explaining to me that her brother would be most anxious if she were not home by half past ten.)
In the exact same period, by contrast, Oscar, according to my journal, dined o
ut on twenty-six nights out of thirty-one. He spent his evenings in the company of the outstanding personalities of the age—poets, playwrights, politicians, artists and actresses, men and women whose names still resonate half a century later—and his days seated at Thomas Carlyle’s writing desk, writing, reading, reflecting. That month, while I wrote not one worthwhile word (and appear to have read nothing of note except, appropriately enough, Jerome K. Jerome’s Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow), Oscar’s reading encompassed (to my certain knowledge) Goethe, Balzac, Baudelaire, Plato, Petrarch and Edgar Allan Poe, and his writing included two articles, one lecture, three poems, the outline of a play (for George Alexander) and ten thousand words of The Picture of Dorian Gray.
He made light of his industry. (His account of spending a morning deciding to place a comma in a paragraph, and then spending the afternoon deciding to take it out again, was one of his favourite jeux d’esprit.) And he made a point when we met of enquiring about my endeavours before giving news of his own. As soon as we had each been served with our eleven o’clock glass of champagne, he would ask, “How is Miss Sutherland today? Is she still pretty? Is she still pleasing? Is she more pliant?” He gave the impression of being truly interested. Oscar had the charmer’s gift of looking you in the eye and making you feel that, in that particular moment, he cared more about you than about anybody else in the world.
Usually, once we had spent five minutes discussing Veronica (and her infuriating ability to both encourage and resist me at the same time), Oscar would throw in a casual reference to Aidan Fraser. Did Miss Sutherland have news of her fiancé?
“No, we never speak of him. He is her fiancé, you understand?”
2007 - Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders Page 15