5

The Torrent of Prejudice

‘Do keep up your spirits, my dearest darling.’

alfred douglas to oscar wilde

Despite Gill’s assertion, there was some disquiet about the prospect of a retrial, with the ‘raking up anew’ of all the ‘loathsome details’. Some hoped that a second trial – if it had to happen – ‘could be heard in private’. But the pressures for action were great. When the Irish nationalist MP T. M. Healy begged Lockwood not to put Wilde ‘on his country’ again – to spare his ‘venerated’ mother ‘further agony’, the solicitor general replied, ‘Ah, I would not but for the abominable rumours against [Rosebery].’* Carson, it seems, made a similar appeal, and received a similar answer. Rosebery himself (so George Ives heard) considered doing something to aid Wilde, but was told by his home secretary, Asquith, ‘If you do, you will lose the election.’1

The case had become a lightning rod for conspiracy theories. There was ‘a wide-felt impression’ that the judge had been ‘got at, in order to shield others of a higher status in life’. Some suspected that ‘the Government were trying to hush up the case’ for the same reason. The newspapers were bombarded with letters clamouring for further prosecutions, and suggesting that ‘the police in their action against immoral practices are paralysed by orders from above to see that nothing is done’. It was claimed that there were ‘hundreds of members of parliament, judges, artists, actors and others guilty of such offences’. Douglas, on the other hand, believed that the government was relentlessly driving the case forward under pressure from Queensberry and ‘a body of private persons’ who threatened to produce evidence against ‘important and exalted persons’ unless Wilde’s conviction was secured.2

There was much reporting – and much disagreement – about the division within the jury. Some put it down to a single ‘cantankerous jury-man’; L’Echo de Paris suggested it was ten to two in favour of conviction; Beerbohm understood ‘nine out of the twelve jurors was for [Oscar]’. One newspaper printed a supposed breakdown of the voting on the various charges, showing splits ranging from 10/2 (in favour of convicting Wilde for having had sex with Edward Shelley) to 2/10 (in favour of convicting Taylor of having had sex with the Parker brothers). But, overall, a ‘strong suspicion’ remained that the ‘hopeless disagreement… was not entirely free from the taint of corruption’. Queensberry was only too ready to believe that ‘individuals’ had been bribed. He even suspected his son Percy – ‘the great Lord Hawick and Shitters’ – of putting up the money. In such a climate, continued prosecution became inevitable.3

Bail was eventually granted on 3 May, but the amount was set at £5,000. Several further days were needed to arrange the money. £2,500 was allowed on Wilde’s own cognizance; Percy Douglas put up £1,250 to oblige his brother and to vex their father. The final £1,250 – after some frantic searching – was provided by Rev. Stuart Headlam, an independently wealthy and independently minded Anglican clergyman of socialist sympathies. Although he barely knew Wilde, he was a friend of Ross’s great friend, flatmate and occasional literary collaborator, More Adey. To those who expressed surprise – or horror – at his action, Headlam explained that he had come forward on ‘public grounds’, believing that the press coverage had been calculated to prejudice the case. He was not, he pointed out, a ‘surety’ for Wilde’s ‘character’; only for his appearance in court – and, on this score, he felt confident of the writer’s ‘honour and manliness’.4 After the formal bail hearing at Bow Street on 7 May, Wilde was finally released. He had been in Holloway for over a month.

Freedom, however, brought its own problems. Accompanied by Percy and Headlam, Wilde went to the Midland Hotel, St Pancras. He was consulting there with some of his legal team when the Marquess of Queensberry arrived, accompanied by his friend Sir Claude de Crespigny. Queensberry was convinced that Bosie was back in London, and he was determined to prevent his joining Wilde. Confronted by the marquess, Wilde hastily decamped across the road to the Great Northern Hotel, by King’s Cross. But Queensberry followed him there. And, it seems, this performance was repeated at several other hotels across London during the course of the evening. ‘There was no occasion for [Wilde] to bolt as he did, if the wretched [Bosie] was not with him,’ Queensberry wrote to Percy’s solicitor. ‘The display of the white feather was delicious all round.’5

Eventually, towards midnight, Wilde – harassed and desperate – sought refuge at his mother’s house in Oakley Street. Willie lived there too, together with his new wife, Lily. Oscar – according to his brother – collapsed over the threshold, ‘like a wounded stag’. ‘Willie, give me shelter,’ he pleaded; ‘or I shall die in the streets.’ Oscar was put up on a camp bed in the bare spare room. He at once succumbed to nervous – and physical – ‘prostration’. There is no record of his reception by his mother. Oscar’s travails had left her ‘very poorly and utterly miserable’.† According to some accounts she had taken to her bed, and was dosing herself with gin.6

Alcohol was certainly a ready resource at Oakley Street. Willie was a dedicated inebriate. And when Sherard came over from France to see what could be done, he found a flushed and worn Oscar lying on his narrow bed, smelling strongly of drink. But oblivion was hard to come by. ‘Oh, why have you brought me no poison from Paris?’ Wilde demanded in a broken voice.

There was widespread expectation, even hope, that Wilde might kill himself. George Ives believed that it would have been for the best. Robert Cunningham Graham claimed that during an encounter in Hyde Park, Wilde – after telling ‘his tale of woe’ – had asked, ‘What am I to do?’ Without thinking, Cunningham Graham raised his arm and, pointing to his temple with his index finger, ‘made a noise similising a revolver shot, by flicking the middle finger over the thumb’. He felt terrible when – at once – he realized what he done. Wilde apparently broke down, sobbing, ‘I know it’s the only way out, but I haven’t the courage.’ The notion that Wilde was funking the option was reiterated by Henley in a stupendously tasteless letter to Charles Whibley: ‘They say, he has lost all nerve, all pose, all everything; and is just now so much the Ordinary Drunkard that he hasn’t even the energy to kill himself.’7

The atmosphere at Oakely Street was depressing. The forced rapprochement with Willie brought little consolation. ‘Willie makes such a merit of giving me shelter,’ Oscar complained. ‘He means well, I suppose, but it is all dreadful.’ Among his many insensitivities was the comment, ‘Thank God my vices were decent.’ Sherard noted, however, that Wilde did not attach ‘any idea of criminality’ to his own behaviour. It was the men who did not like ‘bestowing sexual caresses’ on boys whom he now considered ‘abnormal’. He earnestly asked the writer Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, who had called at Oakley Street, whether ‘truly and honestly he could declare that he had never liked young men, never wished to fondle and caress them’ and he ‘seemed almost to doubt Tex’s sincerity when he emphatically repudiated the very conception of such a thing’.8

A trickle of callers came to offer their support. Wilde was roused from his depression by a pleasant hour of talk with the poet Ernest Dowson. A tall veiled lady (possibly Ellen Terry) came to the door one evening and delivered a horseshoe with a bunch of violets, ‘For Luck’. The Leversons had him to dine.9

Sherard had arrived, determined to persuade Wilde to flee abroad. It was an idea that many supported. Frank Harris took Wilde out to lunch and urged the same course. He even claimed to have a steam yacht waiting in the Thames, ready to bear them across the Channel. Douglas, meanwhile, was expecting him daily in France. Wilde, however, had determined to stay. As Willie constantly reiterated to visitors, ‘Oscar is an Irish gentleman, and will face the music.’ Beside his commitment to his bailsmen, he had given his word to his mother. ‘If you stay,’ she had declared, ‘even if you go to prison, you will always be my son. It will make no difference to my affection. But if you go, I will never speak to you again.’10

Although Harris set down Wilde’s refusal to flee as ‘weakness’ – or ‘extraordinary softness of nature’ – combined with ‘a certain magnanimity’ (in not letting down his bailsmen), in his own mind Wilde framed it as bold defiance. He would rather be a martyr than a fugitive. He would suffer for his great love for Bosie. ‘A false name,’ he wrote to Douglas, ‘a disguise, a hunted life, all that is not for me, to whom you have been revealed on that high hill where beautiful things are transfigured.’11 In his resolve there was, too, besides love, a sense of the dramatic. Harris certainly considered that Wilde’s fascination (and identification) with Jesus played its part: ‘He felt vaguely that the life-journey of genius would be incomplete and farcical without the final tragedy: whoever lives for the highest must be crucified.’12

From the discomforts and irritations of Oakley Street Wilde was rescued by the Leversons, who invited him to come and stay with them at Courtfield Gardens. Before he arrived they canvassed their servants, giving them the opportunity to leave if they wished. All elected to stay, and assist ‘poor Mr Wilde’. He was installed in the two adjoining rooms of the nursery usually occupied by the Leversons’ young daughter, Violet. It was a refuge of comfort and calm. He would come down each evening at six, exquisitely dressed, and spend an evening of talk with ‘the Sphinx’ and other friends. Though he might arrive muted and depressed, the atmosphere of wit and loving friendship – as well as the good cigarettes – soon roused him. He discoursed on the joys of absinthe and the effects of opium. He told tales and talked of books. It was to Ada that he remarked, concerning The Old Curiosity Shop, that ‘one must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.’ The trial was never alluded to.

During the day, though, Wilde would remain on the nursery floor, and it was there – ‘in the presence of a rocking horse, golliwogs, and a blue and white nursery dado with rabbits and other animals on it’ – that he consulted with his lawyers over the forthcoming trial. By special arrangement his case, and that of Taylor, was to be called on the opening days of the sessions. And, in an extraordinary move, the prosecution would be led by the solicitor general, Frank Lockwood, supported by Charles Gill and Horace Avory. The determination of the Crown to secure a conviction was clear.

Wilde also received a visit from Constance. She had come up from Babbacombe ‘with an urgent message from her lawyer [presumably George Lewis] imploring him to go away’. Even this was to no avail. She left in tears. Her distress prompted Ada to send up a note to the nursery begging Wilde to do as his wife had asked. She received no answer. But that evening, when Wilde came down, he returned the note with the comment, ‘That is not like you, Sphinx.’13

In his resolve he was heartened by some messages of support and sympathy. Yeats had called at Oakley Street after his departure with a sheaf of letters gathered from ‘Dublin literary men’.14 Frederick York Powell even relayed the unexpected news that Whistler was touched by his plight, and had ‘expressed himself very kindly and gently’ on the subject.15

Wilde remained at Courtfield Gardens until Monday 20 May, the date on which he had to surrender to his bail at the Old Bailey. The case was to be heard before the sixty-six-year-old Justice Wills, a noted Alpinist, and also – by chance – a neighbour of the Wildes in Tite Street.16 Proceedings, however, were delayed when Sir Edward Clarke made a successful application for the cases of Wilde and Taylor to be tried separately. And then – to his dismay, and despite his protestations – the prosecution elected to take Taylor’s case first. It was another reverse: if Taylor were convicted, Wilde’s already slim chances would be further reduced.

Taylor’s case was quickly heard. Beginning at noon on Monday 20 May, by the following afternoon the jury had declared him guilty of gross indecency with both Parker brothers. They were unable to decide on the question of whether Taylor had procured the Parkers for Wilde, but the judge felt it was sufficient to have come to a verdict on the principal charges. Sentencing was postponed until Wilde’s case had been heard.

During the course of 21 May, Wilde was present at the Old Bailey, ready if his case were called. While in the building he was approached by the ex-police inspector Kearley and handed the Marquess of Queensberry’s formal demand for payment of his £677 3s 8d legal costs. Failure to pay within seven days would constitute a statutory ‘act of bankruptcy’.17 It was a new misery to contemplate, piled upon his own legal expenses, his outstanding trade debts, his borrowing from friends and relations, his advances from theatrical producers.

Almost at the moment of this crisis, though, he received a communication from his friend Adela Schuster. She wished to place £1,000 at his disposal. In the note accompanying the gift she wrote, ‘I desire this money to be employed for your own personal use and that of your children as you may direct.’ Wilde chose to call the money a ‘trust’ or ‘deposit fund’. Rather than using it to repay immediate debts it would be used to provide for emergencies and necessities, depending upon the outcome of the case. He handed the sum over to Ernest Leverson to administer: £120 was converted immediately into banknotes, and handed to Wilde to distribute; £150 was used to pay Humphreys.18

Wilde’s own trial commenced – before a new jury – on the morning after his encounter with Kearley. It continued for four days, during which he stayed again at his mother’s house in Oakley Street, being collected and returned each day by Headlam, sometimes together with Percy Douglas. Wilde now had to face only the eight counts of gross indecency: with Charles Parker, Alfred Wood, Edward Shelley and the unknown boys at the Savoy. But it was enough.

The evidence and the arguments rehearsed at the previous trials and court hearings were gone over once again. But the appetite of the public – and even of the press – seems almost to have been sated. The reporting of the case began to slacken. Wilde, too, seemed a notably diminished and wearied figure. He was allowed to sit, even when giving evidence. He declared that he found it difficult to hear.19 ‘Most of the time he seemed in a daze, and now and then, when consciousness of his position returned to him, he swayed backwards and forwards as if overwrought with mental distress. The evidence that was being given made no impression on him.’ During much of the time he doodled on a piece of foolscap that lay on the ledge of the dock, gradually turning it black with ink.20

The only people whose energy appeared undimmed were the two leading counsels and the Marquess of Queensberry. From the beginning of proceedings Queensberry had been a conspicuous presence in the crowded courtroom. He greeted the news of Taylor’s conviction with a crowing telegram to Percy’s wife, ending, ‘Wilde’s turn tomorrow’. And, when confronted by Percy that evening on Piccadilly, he succeeded in giving his son a black eye (the fist-fight was broken up and both men were arrested, and bound over the next day to keep the peace).21

In the courtroom the ‘stubbornness’ with which the case was fought on both sides was considered ‘most remarkable’, and ‘the personal encounters’ between Lockwood and Clarke would – it was suggested – be long ‘remembered as the fiercest scenes of the kind which have ever been witnessed in court’.22 Clarke (as a former long-serving solicitor general) reminded Lockwood that he was a public ‘minister of justice’ and was ‘not here to try to get a verdict of guilty by any means’.23 He portrayed Wilde as the victim of a conspiracy of ‘all the blackmailers in London’, his name besmirched by men who, in ‘testifying on behalf of the Crown… have secured immunity for past rogueries and indecencies’.24

Justice Wills was certainly sceptical about the admissibility of much of the evidence against Wilde. To Lockwood’s fury, he agreed with Clarke that Edward Shelley (the Crown’s one witness not tainted by allegations of blackmail) must be regarded as an accomplice, whose evidence could not be accepted without corroboration. As there was no such corroboration, he ordered that the count be removed from the consideration of the jury, and a formal verdict of ‘not guilty’ recorded. The ruling – at the end of the Thursday sitting – created a great buzz of excitement. That evening Lockwood fulminated against the judge around the clubs of London, calling Wills ‘an incompetent old fool’.25 Clarke secured another telling point, eliciting that Jane Cotter, the chambermaid at the Savoy who claimed to have seen a boy in Wilde’s bed, was severely short-sighted yet never wore ‘eye-glasses’ at work.26

Although, in the public mind, there was (apparently) ‘not a shadow of doubt’ as to Wilde’s guilt, ‘somehow the feeling spread abroad that in view of all the circumstances’ there would almost ‘certainly be another disagreement’ of the jury, and perhaps even an acquittal.27 Wilde, perhaps, dared not hope so much.

Coming away from court on the afternoon of Friday 24 May, he was accompanied back to Oakley Street in the carriage by Ernest Leverson. There were financial matters to discuss. Leverson gave assurances that, should Wilde be convicted, his mother would be provided for from Adela Schuster’s ‘trust fund’. Leverson also asked, though, whether he might repay himself – from the same source – the £250 still owing from his emergency loan of £500. And, it seems, that Wilde readily agreed.28

That night Wilde took farewell of his friends. All would be over on the morrow. Lockwood would conclude his closing address, and the judge would make his charge to the jury. Wilde informed each of those gathered at Oakley Street of ‘a little gift, from the poor trinkets which remained to him’ – a souvenir in case he did not return home the next day. After his bouts of depression and apathy, he seemed to have achieved an impressive serenity. On retiring he kissed – with ‘stately courtliness’ – the hand of Willie’s wife. He had been touched by her kindness and sympathy.‡ He then spent a ‘long hour’ with his beloved mother.29 And, almost certainly, he wrote, yet again, to Bosie.

‘Every great love has its tragedy,’ Wilde declared, ‘and now ours has too, but to have known and loved you with such profound devotion, to have had you for a part of my life, the only part I now consider beautiful, is enough for me… Our souls were made for one another, and by knowing yours through love, mine has transcended many evils, understood perfection, and entered into the divine essence of things.’30

In court the next morning, Lockwood continued his closing address. He seemed determined to make good any deficiencies in the evidence through the vehemence of his rhetoric. Wilde would later recall the strange sensation of sitting in the dock listening to this ‘appalling denunciation’ and being sickened by what he heard. And then it had suddenly occurred to him: ‘How splendid it would be if I was saying all this about myself?’ He saw then that ‘what is said of a man is nothing. The point is, who says it.’ Now, unfortunately, it was being said by the solicitor general.31

The summing up of Justice Wills, though moderate, was – when compared to that of Justice Charles – markedly less disposed towards the defendant. He made no allusions to the prejudicial reporting of the newspapers. He was not inclined to accept an artistic interpretation of Wilde’s passionate letters to Lord Alfred Douglas. He suggested there was ‘some truth in the aphorism that a man must be judged by the company he keeps’ – adding, ‘Gentlemen, you have seen the Parkers, as you have seen Wood… Are these the kind of young men with whom you yourselves would care to sit down to dine?’

The jury retired at half past three, and Wilde was taken down to the cells to wait upon their return. Despite Lockwood’s powerful performance, and Justice Wills’s closing remarks, there still existed in the courtroom a suspicion that there might again be a hung jury. If that were to occur, there was a strong possibility that the Crown would abandon the prosecution, and Wilde would be allowed to go free – doubtless in the hope that he would depart into self-imposed exile. As the minutes extended, and the first hour passed, this began to seem an ever more likely outcome. ‘You’ll dine your man in Paris, tomorrow,’ Lockwood is supposed to have remarked to Clarke. Wilde’s counsel, however, was less sanguine. The jury re-appeared shortly after half past five. But it was only to inquire about a piece of evidence, and – following the judge’s elucidation of the point – they retired again. A few minutes later they returned. It was clear they had reached a decision.

Wilde was brought back into the dock. He stood, ashen-faced, to hear the verdicts. To the first count: Guilty. Wilde was seen to slump forward and clutch the rail. Guilty. Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. Only on the charge relating to Shelley was he found, formally, not guilty.

Taylor was brought up into the dock to hear sentence pronounced. Justice Wills was scathing in his comments. He had not ‘the shadow of a doubt’ that the jury had come to the correct decision. ‘It is no use for me to address you,’ he informed the prisoners:

People who can do these things must be dead to all sense of shame, and one cannot hope to produce any effect upon them. It is the worst case I have ever tried. That you, Taylor, kept a kind of male brothel it is impossible to doubt. And that you, Wilde, have been the centre of a circle of extensive corruption of the most hideous kind among young men, it is equally impossible to doubt.

He passed the severest sentence that the law allowed: two years’ imprisonment, with hard labour. ‘In my judgement,’ he added, ‘it is totally inadequate for such a case as this.’32

The harshness of the sentence caused ‘considerable sensation’ in court. There were cries of ‘Oh! Oh!’ and ‘Shame!’. Taylor appeared to hear the sentence with calm indifference. But Wilde seemed stunned. He made a movement as if he wished to address the judge. He struggled to articulate a phrase (perhaps, ‘And I? May I say nothing, my Lord?’) The words, however, were lost. The warders hurried him out of sight.33

* Lockwood’s personal feelings in the matter may well have been conflicted – or sharpened – by the fact, that, like Asquith, he had been on friendly terms with Wilde both socially and politically. He was a vice-president of the Eighty Club. Wilde even owned a sketch of Pigott (the Parnellite forger) done by Lockwood. As a further complication, Lockwood’s nephew (by marriage) was Maurice Schwabe, whose name – though kept out of the original libel trial – had been mentioned in subsequent proceedings as the man who had introduced Wilde to Taylor.

† Adding to her misery was the thought that Constance (on the advice of Philip Burne-Jones) was planning to change her name and that of the children. It would, she suggested, ‘bring them much confusion’. She urged Constance to wait ‘until the trial is quite over’: ‘Neither’, she went on, ‘do I approve of the Navy [as a future career] for [nine-year-old] Vyvyan. I think it quite unfit as he is a born writer, made for literature alone.’

‡ Lily Wilde was then heavily pregnant. On 11 July 1895 she would give birth to a daughter, christened Dorothy Irene Wilde – to be known as Dolly.