On April 26, 1895, a criminal trial against Oscar Wilde, celebrated playwright and sharpest of wits, began. He was accused of gross indecency.
If the French genius Voltaire about whom I wrote last week were to find a rival to match his wit, it would undoubtedly be this brilliant and notorious playwright from across La Manche. If Voltaire faced exile due to his politically insensitive and radical advocacy, Oscar Wilde faced it following ignominy and stigma.
The trial may not have perhaps taken place at all had he disregarded his lawyer’s advice. Wilde had just withdrawn a criminal libel case against the Marquis of Queensberry who had publicly accused him of being a sodomite – a serious criminal offence.
Wilde committed this mistake with good intent, expecting reciprocity from the Marquis. It proved fatal. The moment Wilde withdrew the case, the establishment swung into action. An inspector from Scotland Yard appeared before Magistrate John Bridge to request a warrant for Wilde’s arrest.
Bridge, likely an admirer of Wilde’s literary talent, adjourned the hearing for an hour and a half, giving Wilde time to escape from England on the last train to the Continent, as the playwright’s friends had urged. But Wilde could not make up his mind and finally left it till it was too late.
On the fourth day of the trial, he took the stand and produced a memorable moment when questioned about a phrase used in a poem by his friend Lord Alfred Douglas – the Marquis’s son.
Prosecutor Charles Gill asked: “What is the Love that dare not speak its name?”
Wilde’s response drew long and loud applause – as well as some disapproval. He said:
“The love that dare not speak its name in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare.
It is that deep, spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as ‘the love that dare not speak its name,’ and on account of it I am placed where I am now.
It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man when the elder man has intellect and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him.
That it should be so the world does not understand. The world mocks it and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.”
The jury could not reach a verdict and Wilde was bailed to appear for a second trial three weeks later.
This time he was found guilty. The judge told him:
“Oscar Wilde, the crime of which you have been convicted is so bad that one has to put a firm restraint upon oneself to prevent oneself from describing, in terms I would rather not use, the sentiments which must rise to the breast of every man of honour who has heard the details of these terrible trials.
It is no use for me to address you. People who can do these things are dead to all sense of shame and one cannot hope to produce any effect upon them.
This is the worst case I have ever tried. I shall, under such circumstances, be expected to pass the severest sentence allowed by the law. It is, in my opinion, totally inadequate for such a case as this.
The sentence of the court is that you be imprisoned and kept to hard labour for two years.”
Wilde’s hard labour included stepping onto a giant treadmill, a contraption on which prisoners walked side by side, divided by vertical separators, usually for eight hours. Inevitably, legs would give out under this tedious misery and prisoners would fall, leading to more punishment for abandoning their task.
There was also picking apart old ropes to extract oakum, a fibre used in shipbuilding. Laboriously separating used rope by hand stained the fingers permanently and made them bleed, as well as causing tendonitis and nerve damage.
These tasks had to be performed in silence. No communication was allowed between prisoners — not at meals, not during exercise (in which they walked in circles wearing masks), and not after lights out.
After his release Wilde lived abroad as a bankrupt under the name Sebastian Melmoth.
He died in Paris on 30 November 1900, aged 46 in a decrepit, decaying hotel. His last words reportedly were “This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do.”
More than a century later, Oscar Wilde has reached heights of popularity he would not have dreamt of. His life – and wit – is endlessly retold in books, films and on television. Some compensation for his last years spent in torture and shame!
In 1995, a stained glass memorial was unveiled in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey, “for Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wilde, playwright and aesthete”. At the service, Dame Judi Dench and Sir John Gielgud read extracts from Wilde’s works.
Vindication indeed for a man who once said: “There is only one thing worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
scribo ad LX 