1895 The downfall of Oscar Wilde began with a spelling mistake. On 18 February 1895 the Marquess of Queensberry – boxing legislator, bully, and near-madman – left a calling card at the writer’s club, addressed to him as a ‘posing somdomite’. Wilde had been conducting a flagrantly public affair with the Marquess’s son, Bosie.
The card was, technically, a public declaration. Wilde, disastrously, chose to take offence and – idealistically – to strike a blow for the love that dared not speak its name (but could spell it correctly). He brought a charge against the Marquess for criminal libel.
The trial began on 3 April 1895. Wilde fenced brilliantly with the leading defence lawyer of the day, Edward Carson. It was as witty a performance as in his current West End comedy, The Importance of Being Earnest. But wit, paradox and epigram can wilt in the heavy atmosphere of court. Asked if he had kissed a certain young male servant, Wilde retorted that he had not, adding: ‘He was a particularly plain boy.’ He got his laugh, and lost his case.
A warrant was issued for Wilde’s arrest immediately after the collapse of the criminal libel trial. He was arrested at the Cadogan Hotel. It inspired Betjeman’s comic-pathetic poem:
A thump, and a murmur of voices—
(‘Oh why must they make such a din?’)
As the door of the bedroom swung open
And TWO PLAIN CLOTHES POLICEMEN came in:
‘Mr Woilde, we ’ave come for tew take yew
Where felons and criminals dwell:
We must ask yew tew leave with us quoietly
For this is the Cadogan Hotel.’
On 25 May, Wilde was sentenced to two years’ hard labour for ‘gross indecency’ (sex with rent boys, principally). The provision in the law under which he was convicted had been passed through Parliament in 1885 by Henry Labouchère, an admirer of the playwright.