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| REVIEWS | BY ILLTYD HARRINGTON |
 Oscar Wilde and Alfred Douglas Bosie, in Oxford spring, 1893  Oscar Wilde |
The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde, by Neil McKenna, £20 Century THERE is hardly anything secret about Oscar Wilde’s life, it has been filmed three times at least, then there is Richard Ellman’s definitive biography and somewhere every night in a theatre around the world people are laughing at his wit, others looking for hidden messages and meanings. Here he is portrayed as an early gay rights champion, asked while at Oxford University what he hoped for, he said: “I’ll be famous if not notorious,” a bitter prophecy. Born in 1854 to upper class parents in Dublin he died broken and poor in Paris in 1900, his life was extravagant and defiant. Constance, his wife, did remain constant and he adored his two young sons. Oscar courted danger with his public and ostentatious behaviour with young and sometimes very beautiful men. In so much of his life curious ironies occur. In 1885 Henry Labouchere, the radical Member of Parliament for Northampton, a man Oscar admired, after being persuaded by lurid accounts of young male prostitution in London, put down an amendment to the Criminal Law Amendment Act, it defined gross indecency and for 80 years criminalised some forms of sexual behaviour between men, not women. It became known, for obvious reasons, as the ‘blackmailer’s charter’. Wilde was outraged and with others formed in 1892, The Order of Chaeronea to advance “The Cause” – a premature homosexual law reform group. Such defiance of the Establishment spelled danger. In 1890 he published The Picture of Dorian Gray, it was a virtual open record of his affair with John Gray, a young beauty. Two of his friends, Arthur Balfour and Herbert Asquith, strongly advised him not to publish. They were the leaders of the Tory and Liberal Parties respectively. In July 1889 London was rocked by a raid on a male brothel in Cleveland Street, Fitzrovia. Informed gossip said that a senior member of the royal family was involved. Oscar’s notoriety and contempt of this institutional hypocrisy bore him along, and in June 1891 his fate was sealed by meeting the Lord Alfred Douglas Bosie. Bosie was the second son of the manic Marquis of Queensbury and the wit and the beauty were besotted with one another. Their behaviour seemed beyond reckless and as Wilde added later: “We feasted with panthers.” These rent boys and rough trade were “the brightest of gilded snakes, their poison was part of their perfection”. Max Berrbohm, a friend, was more concerned with Wilde’s “extreme left wing views”. At this point, in 1892, the tale takes a surprising turn. The rising star of the Liberal Party, Foreign Secretary and later Prime Minister Lord Roseberry had fallen in love with Lord Drumlonrig, Queensbury’s eldest son. But Oscar’s star blazed and he was spending the equivalent of £8,000 a week. His extravagance was legendary and provoked the envious. The mad Marquis of Queensbury was on the rampage and on February 28, 1894 he left a card at Wilde’s club to “Oscar Wilde, posing as a sodomite”, or was it “ponce and sodomite”? Who was Queensbury really after? According to McKenna none other than the Prime Minister, for on February 1894 Drumlonrig shot himself while on a hunting party. The next day the PM threatened to resign. Attention must be diverted from Whitehall, and a confrontation with Oscar Wilde as the fall guy happened, so goes the theory. What followed was the disastrous libel action by Wilde against Queensbury. Oscar came against Sir Edward Carson, representing Queensbury, they had been childhood friends and university colleagues. Oscar lost, and of course he was charged with gross indecency not sodomy, that could have been 10-15 years inside. A thoroughly documented case with testimonies of young male prostitutes was mounted and close interest was taken at the highest level of government. The dissent into his personal hell was rapid. Quickly arraigned on April 3, he arrived at the Old Bailey on May 1895, he received two years with hard labour. Roseberry made a rapid recovery while a small, steady band of friends stuck by Oscar during his exile and his impossible demands. It is said that the night he won the libel case against Wilde Sir Edward Carson, a dour Ulster QC, said sadly to his wife: “I’ve ruined the most brilliant man in London.” The Establishment smugly agreed, they had covered their tracks yet again. |
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