Oscar Wilde and the Murders at Reading Gaol: A Mystery (38 page)

For her sustaining enthusiasm and detailed input, my principal debt, of course, is to my British publisher, Kate Parkin at John Murray, who has guided me from the outset. I am also much indebted to Caroline Westmore at John Murray and to Nick de Somogyi, my perspicacious proofreader, as well as to my publishers in other countries, notably Lauren Spiegel at Touchstone, Simon and Schuster, in New York, and Emmanuelle Heurtebize at 10/18 in Paris. As with each book in this series, I owe considerably more than fifteen per cent to my literary agent, the incomparable Ed Victor, and to his team.

This is the sixth book in this series to date. Readers new to the series regularly ask: which one should I start with? The answer is: truly, it does not matter. Each mystery stands alone.
Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders
is set in 1889 and begins with the first encounter between Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle, but it does not need to be read first.
Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man’s Smile
is set in the early 1880s, at the time of Oscar’s celebrated lecture tour of the United States and, later, when, for a while, he lived and worked in Paris.
Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders
begins right back in 1877 when Oscar, as a student visiting Rome, had an audience with Pope Pius IX.
Oscar Wilde and the Nest of Vipers
begins in the spring of 1890 and features Wilde’s association with the Prince of Wales and Bram Stoker.
Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death
is an adventure that takes place in 1892, at the time of Wilde’s great success with the play
Lady Windermere’s Fan.
Please read next whichever of the stories comes most easily to hand.

The third question I am most frequently asked is this: ‘Which biography of Oscar Wilde do you recommend?’ Of course I recommend
Oscar Wilde
by Richard Ellmann (1987), but, magisterial as it is, the book is riddled with inaccuracies and must be read in conjunction with
Additions and Corrections to Richard Ellmann’s Oscar Wilde
by Horst Schroeder (2002). I also recommend, and without reservation,
The Wilde Album
by Merlin Holland (1997) and
Oscar Wilde and His World
by Vyvyan Holland (1966). The two books that, for me, take the reader closest to ‘the real Oscar Wilde’ are
The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde
edited by Merlin Holland and Rupert Hart-Davis (2000) and
Son of Oscar Wilde
by Vyvan Holland (1954). For the most complete portrait of Constance Wilde I wholeheartedly recommend
Constance: The Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs Oscar Wilde
by Franny Moyle (2011), and for a wonderfully evocative picture of Dieppe at the time of Wilde’s sojourn there I recommend
60 Miles from England: The English at Dieppe 1814–1914
by Simona Pakenham (1967).

Biographical Notes

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was born at 21 Westland Row, Dublin, on 16 October 1854. He was the second son of Sir William Wilde, an eminent Irish surgeon, and Jane Francesca Wilde, née Elgee, a poet, author and translator, who wrote under the pseudonym ‘Speranza’. Oscar Wilde was educated at Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, at Trinity College, Dublin, and at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he achieved a double first and, for his poem
Ravenna
, won the Newdigate Prize for Poetry. On leaving Oxford, he settled in London and embarked on a career as a professional writer, critic and journalist. His play
Vera
was published in 1880 and his
Poems
appeared in 1881.

In 1881, Richard D’Oyly Carte presented the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta
Patience
, satirising Oscar and his fellow ‘aesthetes’. Its success, and Wilde’s celebrity, led D’Oyly Carte to invite the young author, aged twenty-eight, to undertake an extensive lecture tour of North America at the beginning of 1882. In 1883, Wilde spent several months in Paris, working on his play
The Duchess of Padua
, and meeting, among others, Victor Hugo, Paul Verlaine, Emile Zola and Robert Sherard. On 29 May 1884 he married Constance Lloyd, the daughter of a noted Irish QC, and set up home at 16 Tite Street, Chelsea. Their sons, Cyril and Vyvyan, were born in 1885 and 1887.

Wilde’s story
Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime
appeared in 1887, followed, in 1888, by
The Happy Prince and Other Tales
and, in 1889 and 1890, more controversially, by
The Portrait of Mr W. H.
and
The Picture of Dorian Gray.
The first of his successful social comedies,
Lady Windermere’s Fan
, was produced in London in 1892, followed by
A Woman of No Importance
(1893),
An Ideal Husband
(1895) and
The Importance of Being Earnest
(1895).

In 1891 Oscar Wilde met Lord Alfred Douglas, the third son of the then Marquess of Queensberry. In 1895 Queensberry left a card for Wilde at the Albermarle Club accusing him of ‘posing Somdomite’ (
sic
) and provoking Wilde to sue Queensberry for criminal libel. The failure of the libel action led to Wilde’s own prosecution on charges of gross indecency. On 25 May 1895 he was found guilty and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment with hard labour. Released from gaol on 19 May 1897, Wilde travelled immediately to France and spent the rest of his life on the Continent. His poem
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
was published in 1898, and his confessional letter
De Profundis
was published posthumously, in 1905. Constance Wilde died in Genoa on 7 April 1898, following an operation on her spine. Oscar Wilde died in Paris on 30 November 1900. He was buried at Bagneux Cemetery. In 1909 his remains were moved to the French national cemetery of Père Lachaise.

Robert Sherard

Robert Harborough Sherard Kennedy was born in London on 3 December 1861, the fourth child of the Reverend Bennet Sherard Calcraft Kennedy. His father was the illegitimate son of the sixth and last Earl of Harborough and his mother, Jane Stanley Wordsworth, was the granddaughter of the poet laureate, William Wordsworth (1770–1850). Robert was educated at Queen Elizabeth College, Guernsey, at New College, Oxford, and at the University of Bonn, but he left both Oxford and Bonn without securing a degree. In 1880, having quarrelled with his father and lost his expected inheritance, he abandoned his ‘Kennedy’ surname.

In the early 1880s, Robert Sherard settled in Paris and set about earning his living as an author and journalist. He cultivated the acquaintance of a number of the leading literary figures of the day, including Emile Zola, Guy de Maupassant, Alphone Daudet and Oscar Wilde. He published thirty-three books during his lifetime, including a collection of poetry,
Whispers
(1884), novels, biographies, social studies (notably
The White Slaves of England
, 1897), and five books inspired by his friendship with Oscar Wilde:
Oscar Wilde: The Story of an Unhappy Friendship
, 1902;
The Life of Oscar Wilde
, 1906;
The Real Oscar Wilde
, 1912;
Oscar Wilde Twice Defended
, 1934; and
Bernard Shaw, Frank Harris and Oscar Wilde
, 1936.

He was three times married and lived much of his life in France, where he was made a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur. He died in England, in Ealing, on 30 January 1943.

In 1960, in
Oscar Wilde and His World
, Vyvyan Holland, Wilde’s younger son, gave this assessment of Robert Sherard: ‘When they first met . . . they felt they had nothing in common and disliked each other intently; but they gradually got together and became life-long friends. Sherard wrote the first three biographical studies of Wilde after his death . . . On these three books are based all the other biographies of Wilde, except the so-called biography by Frank Harris, which is nothing else but the glorification of Frank Harris. Sherard got a great deal of his material from Lady Wilde when she was a very old lady and was inclined to let her imagination run away with her, particularly where the family history was concerned; and Sherard, a born journalist, was much more attracted by the interest of a story than by its accuracy, a failing which we can see running through all his books. But where his actual contact with Wilde is concerned, he is quite reliable.’

Gyles Brandreth

Gyles Brandreth was born on 8 March 1948 in Germany, where his father, Charles Brandreth, was serving as a legal officer with the Allied Control Commission and counted among his colleagues H. Montgomery Hyde, who published the first full account of the trials of Oscar Wilde in 1948. In 1974, Gyles Brandreth produced
The Trials of Oscar Wilde
(with Tom Baker as Wilde) at the Oxford Theatre Festival and, in 2000, edited the transcripts of the trials for an audio production featuring Martin Jarvis.

Gyles Brandreth was educated at the Lycée Français de Londres, at Betteshanger School in Kent, and at Bedales in Hampshire, where the school’s founder, J. H. Badley (1865–1967), provided him with a series of vivid personal accounts of Oscar Wilde’s conversational style. Badley was a friend of the Wildes, and their son Cyril was a pupil at Bedales at the time of Oscar’s arrest. Gyles Brandreth went on (like Robert Sherard) to New College, Oxford (where he was a scholar, President of the Union and editor of the university magazine), and then (again like Sherard) embarked on a career as an author and journalist. His first book was a study of prison reform (
Created in Captivity
, 1972); his first biography was a portrait of the Victorian music-hall star, Dan Leno (
The Funniest Man on Earth
, 1974). More recently he has published a biography of Sir John Gielgud, an acclaimed diary of his years as an MP and government whip (
Breaking the Code: Westminster Diaries 1990–97
) and two best-selling royal biographies:
Philip & Elizabeth: Portrait of a Marriage
and
Charles & Camilla: Portrait of a Love Affair.
In 2010 John Murray (publishers of Arthur Conan Doyle) published Gyles Brandreth’s diaries covering the years 1959 to 2000 under the title
Something Sensational to Read in the Train
– a phrase borrowed from
The Importance of Being Earnest.

Robert Sherard’s forebears included William Wordsworth. Gyles Brandreth’s include a less eminent poet, George R. Sims (1847–1922), who wrote the ballads ‘Billy’s dead and gone to glory’ and ‘Christmas Day in the workhouse’, and was the first journalist to claim to know the true identity of ‘Jack the Ripper’. Sims, a kinsman of the Empress Eugénie and an acquaintance of both Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle, was probably the first ‘celebrity columnist’ and well known in his day for his endorsement of an ‘infallible cure for baldness’ known as ‘Tatcho, The Geo R Sims Hair Restorer’.

As an actor Gyles Brandreth has appeared in pantomime and Shakespeare, and, most recently, as Lady Bracknell in a musical adaptation of
The Importance of Being Earnest
. As a broadcaster, he has presented numerous series for BBC Radio 4, including
A Rhyme in Time
,
Sound Advice
,
Wordaholics
and
Whispers
– coincidentally the title of Robert Sherard’s first collection of poetry. He has featured on
Desert Island Discs
and is now best known as a regular on
Just a Minute
(Radio 4) and a reporter on
The One Show
(BBC 1). He is a regular on the Channel 4 word game
Countdown
, and his television appearances have ranged from being the guest host of
Have I Got News for You
to being the subject of
This Is Your Life.
With Hinge & Bracket he scripted the TV series
Dear Ladies
; with Julian Slade he wrote a play about A. A. Milne (featuring the young Aled Jones as Christopher Robin); and, with Susannah Pearse, he has recently written a play about Lewis Carroll and the actress Isa Bowman. Gyles Brandreth is married to the writer and publisher Michèle Brown, and they have three children – a barrister, a writer and an environmental economist.