Transcription
On Valentine's Day in 1895, the most famous playwright in the English-speaking world, Oscar Wilde, presented his new play, "The Importance of Being Earnest," in London at St. James's Theatre. The audience was packed with celebrities, aristocrats, and famous politicians, eagerly awaiting another triumph from a man universally heralded as a genius. At the end of the performance, there was a standing ovation. Critics adored the play, and so did audiences, making it Wilde's fourth major success in only three years.
Yet, only a few short months later, Wilde was bankrupt and about to be imprisoned. His reputation was in tatters, and his life ruined beyond repair. It was, as everyone then and now agreed, a tragedy: the swift fall of a great man due to a small but fateful slip. The story of how Oscar Wilde went from celebrity playwright to prisoner in such a short space of time has much to teach us about disgrace and infamy. We don't have to be acclaimed to understand that Wilde's poignant tragedy urges us to abandon our normal moralism and have sympathy for those who stray. It calls for us to extend our love not just to those who obviously deserve it, but precisely to those who seem not to.
Wilde's tragedy began several years earlier when he was introduced to a beguiling young man named Lord Alfred Douglas. Douglas, known to family and friends as Bosie, was extremely handsome, charming, and arrogant. By 1892, a year after they'd met, the two men had fallen profoundly in love. Although Wilde was married with two children, he spent much of his time with Bosie. They traveled together, stayed in hotels, and hosted large dinners for their friends.
By 1894, the pair were constantly seen together in public, and rumors of their love affair had spread as far as Bosie's father, the Marquis of Queensberry. The Marquis was a cruel, aggressive character, known for inventing the Queensberry Rules of Amateur Boxing. Having decided that Wilde was corrupting his son, he demanded that the pair stop seeing each other. When Wilde refused, Queensberry began to hound him across London, threatening violence against restaurant and hotel managers if they allowed Wilde and Bosie onto the premises.
Queensberry booked a seat for the opening night of "The Importance of Being Earnest." He planned to throw a bouquet of rotting vegetables at Wilde when he took to the stage. When Wilde heard about the stunt, he had him barred from the theater, and Queensberry flew into a rage. He left a calling card which publicly accused Wilde of having sex with other men. Since homosexuality was illegal and deeply frowned upon in Victorian society, this was a dangerous accusation.
Seeing no end to Queensberry's bullying behavior, Wilde decided to take legal action by suing Queensberry for libel. Wilde hoped to clear his name and put an end to the harassment. When the trial began, Wilde was confident. He took to the stand and gave witty, distracting answers during his cross-examination. Within a few days, however, the tide had turned against him. It became clear that Queensberry's lawyers had hired private detectives to uncover an uncomfortable truth: that both Wilde and Bosie had hired male prostitutes. Some had even blackmailed Wilde in the past, successfully extorting money from him in return for their silence. The trial was hopeless, and Wilde withdrew his case.
But events had spiraled beyond his control, and Wilde was soon arrested on charges of gross indecency. The legal costs left him bankrupt, and theaters were forced to abandon his plays. Wilde's criminal trial began at the Old Bailey on April the 26th. He faced 25 charges, all of which surrounded his sexual relationships with younger men. Wilde continued to deny the allegations, and the jury could not reach a verdict. But when the prosecution were allowed to try Wilde a second time, he was eventually found guilty. The judge said at his sentencing, "It is the worst case I have ever tried. I shall pass the severest sentence the law allows."
Wilde was sentenced to two years of hard labor. Inmates in London's Pentonville Prison, where he was sent, spent six hours a day walking on a heavy treadmill or untangling old rope using their hands and knees. For someone of Wilde's luxurious background, it was an impossible hardship. His bed was a hard plank, which made it difficult to fall asleep. Prisoners were kept alone in their cells and barred from talking to one another. Wilde suffered from dysentery and became physically very frail.
After six months, he was transferred to Reading Jail. As he stood on the central platform of Clapham Junction with handcuffs around his wrists, passersby began to recognize the celebrity playwright. They laughed and mocked; some even spat at him. "For half an hour I stood there," Wilde wrote afterwards, "in the gray November rain, surrounded by a jeering mob. For a year after that was done to me, I wept every day at the same hour and for the same space of time."
During his last year in prison, Wilde wrote an anguished essay, "De Profundis." "I once a lord of language have no words in which to express my anguish and my shame. Terrible as was what the world did to me, what I did to myself was far more terrible still. The gods had given me almost everything, but I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace. There is only one thing for me now: absolute humility. I have lain in prison for nearly two years. I have passed through every possible mood of suffering. The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered, those who know what beauty is and those who know what sorrow is. Nobody else interests me."
In May 1897, Wilde was finally released. He set sail for Dieppe in France. The very same day, his wife Constance had changed her name and moved abroad with her two sons, Vivian (now 11) and Cyril (12). Wilde would never see his children again. He missed them every day. Constance agreed to send him money on the condition that he end his relationship with Bosie, but only a few months later, the pair reunited, and the money stopped.
They moved to Naples, and Wilde began using the name Sebastian Melmoth, inspired by the great Christian martyr Saint Sebastian and a character from a gothic novel who had sold his soul to the devil. They hoped to find privacy abroad, but the scandal seemed to follow them wherever they went. English patrons recognized them in hotels and demanded that they be turned away. After Constance stopped sending money, Bosie's mother offered to pay their debts if he returned home, and the pair once again parted ways.
Scorned by many of his former friends, Wilde moved to Paris, where he lived in relative poverty. He spent most of his time and money in bars and cafes, borrowing money wherever he could and drinking heavily. His weight ballooned, and his conversation dragged. He was slowly inebriating himself to death. When a friend suggested he tried to write another comic play, he replied, "I have lost the mainspring of life and art. I have pleasures and passions, but the joy of life is gone."
His final piece of writing, a poem "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," was published in 1898. The author's name was listed as C.3.3., Wilde's cell block and cell number from his time in the prison. Towards the end of 1900, Wilde had developed meningitis and became gravely ill. A Catholic priest visited his hotel and baptized him into the church. He died the following day, aged 46.
More than a century later, in 2017, a law was passed to exonerate those who had been convicted due to their sexuality, and Oscar Wilde received an official pardon from the UK government. "It is hugely important," declared a government minister, "that we pardon people convicted of historical sexual offenses who would be innocent of any crime today. Our society has become generous towards Wilde's specific behavior, but it remains moralistic towards a huge number of other peoples and ways of life. Many of us would, across the ages, want to comfort and befriend Oscar Wilde. It's a touching hope, but one that would be best employed in extending understanding to all those less talented and less witty figures who are right now facing grave difficulties and still deserve compassion. That would be true civilization and a world in which Wilde's horrifying downfall had not been in vain."
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