The Fall of the House of Wilde (57 page)

There was Edward Shelley, whom Carson sneeringly described as the ‘office boy', working for the publishers Elkin Mathews and John Lane, and to which description Oscar objected, ‘his voice quivering with anger'. Oscar had taken this eighteen-year-old to dinner at the Albemarle Hotel. ‘Was that for the purpose of having an intellectual treat?' Carson asked ‘in tones of undisguised contempt'. ‘Did you give him whiskies and sodas?' ‘Whatever he wanted,' Oscar replied. When pressed as to whether ‘improper conduct' took place, Oscar said, ‘He did not stay all night, nor did I embrace him.' The cross-examination revealed that Oscar had had Shelley to dine at Tite Street with Constance, had taken him to the Earl's Court Exhibition, the Café Royal, to Kettner's, to the theatre, to the Lyric Club. And yes, he had given him money, £4, £3, £5, and a signed copy of the first edition of
The Picture of Dorian Gray
, and another novel,
The Sinner's Comedy
. And when asked, ‘Was he a proper and natural companion for you?' Oscar answered, ‘Certainly.'
²¹
The axe Carson really wanted to grind, the point he was driving home, was not so much the possibility of love or sex between two men, but that Oscar's engagement with Shelley was disturbing the class system.

It was much the same with Alphonse Conway, described by Carson as ‘a loafer', who ‘sold newspapers at the kiosk on the pier' in Worthing, where Oscar had befriended him. Oscar tried to defend his occupation with sardonic wit. ‘It is the first I have heard of his connection with literature.' But Carson was doing what he could to make it difficult for the gallery to enjoy Oscar's playfulness. It turned out Conway also dined with Oscar at his house and at the Marine Hotel. And no, Oscar had not taken him along the road towards Lancing, ‘kissing and indulging in familiarities along the way'. But yes, he had given him a cigarette case and ‘a silver-mounted walking-stick', all held up for the jury to frown upon. And more, he had taken ‘the lad' to Brighton, bought him ‘a suit of blue serge', ‘a straw hat with a band of red and blue', all so ‘this newsboy . . . might look more like an equal' – at least, that was Carson's framing. ‘No,' Oscar claimed, it was simply ‘as a reward for his being a pleasant companion to myself and my children'. Oscar treated these boys like one would a courtesan. Conway's reward included a stay at Brighton's Albion Hotel, where Oscar had taken two rooms, but in answer to whether ‘the bedrooms communicate by a green baize door', Oscar's ‘I am not sure' marked the end of the first day, leaving the rest to the audience's imagination.
²²

So far Oscar had maintained his poise, his characteristic mixture of dignity and provocation. But Carson's mockery was making the appearance of dignity look flimsy. It was certainly a more subdued Oscar who appeared in the witness box on the second day, and immediately had to face questions about Alfred Taylor, who Queensberry had alleged acted as procurer of young men for him. In a few compacted, staccato sentences, Carson conjured up the scene of Taylor's den, with its heavily curtained candlelit rooms, where perfume burnt all through the day; in other words, a male brothel at 13 College Street in Westminster. And, if one were in doubt, one only had to open the wardrobe, which the police had done and found ‘a lady's costume'. Taylor, we know, had a band of young men and had introduced Oscar to about five, as he admitted to the court. There was, for instance, Charles Parker, who had been charged along with Taylor with felonious practices. But again Carson harped on about class.

Carson asked ‘sneeringly
': Did you know that one, Parker, was a gentleman's valet, and the other [man] a groom?

Wilde
:  I did not know it, but if I had I should not have cared. I don't care twopence what they were. I liked them.
²³

Carson was shocked that Oscar should take these men to dine at Kettner's, and offer them ‘the best of Kettner's wines'. ‘All for the valet and the groom?' To which Oscar defiantly asked Carson, ‘What gentleman would stint his guests?' Only to receive from Carson, ‘What gentleman would stint the valet and the groom?'
²⁴
And no, Parker did not come with him to the Savoy, but others did, and enjoyed the whiskies and sodas and iced champagne. Once again Oscar denied any ‘improprieties' took place.

Other names rolled out of Carson's lips and Oscar was found to have given them all money and presents, receiving nothing in return but the pleasure of their company. Then Oscar made a slip of the tongue. Carson questioned Oscar about a youth named Walter Grainger, a sixteen-year-old waiter he had come across at Oxford.

Carson
:  Did you ever kiss him?

Oscar
:  Oh, dear no! He was a peculiarly plain boy.

Carson jumped at this: Was that the reason you did not kiss him?

Flustered and indignant, all Oscar could blurt out was, ‘Oh! Mr Carson: you are pertinently insolent.'

Carson persisted and Oscar was reported to be ‘nearing the verge of tears'. He tried several answers but was unable to finish any of them. Carson kept up his monosyllabic bark, ‘Why? Why? Why did you add that?' All Oscar could say was ‘you sting me and insult me and try to unnerve me – and at times one says things flippantly when one ought to speak more seriously'.
²⁵
The damage was done. And no doubt the jury's faces lengthened with the inevitable assumption that Oscar had not been telling the truth. The phrase Carson had been using, ‘improprieties', was elliptical, but now he had spelt out its implications.

In his final speech for the defence of Queensberry, Carson called upon the jury as fathers to ask whether his client was not justified in trying to rescue his son from the influence of Mr Oscar Wilde. ‘Before you condemn Lord Queensberry, I ask you to read Mr Wilde's letter [the ‘prose poem'] and to say whether the gorge of any father ought not to rise. I ask you to bear in mind that Lord Queensberry's son was so dominated by Mr Wilde that he threatened to shoot his own father.' And he promised to prove that ‘Taylor has in fact been the right-hand man of Mr Wilde in all the orgies in which artists and valets have taken part' should the case proceed further. Carson, revelling in his success, continued until his gown had to be plucked to get him to sit down:

The wonder is not that . . . this man Wilde should have been tolerated in society in London for the length of time he has. Well, I shall prove Mr Wilde brought boys into the Savoy Hotel . . . As to the boy Conway, Conway was not procured by Taylor – he was procured by Wilde himself. Has there ever been confessed in a Court of Justice a more audacious story than that confessed to by Mr Wilde in relation to Conway? He met the boy, he said, on the beach at Worthing. He knew nothing whatsoever about him excepting that he assisted in launching the boats. Conway's real history is that he sold newspapers at Worthing at the kiosk on the pier . . . If the evidence of Mr Wilde was true – and I sincerely hope it is not – Conway was introduced to Mrs Wilde and her two sons, aged nine and ten. Now, it is clear that Mr Wilde could not take about the boy Conway in the condition he found him. So what did he do? And it is here that the disgraceful audacity of the man comes in. Mr Wilde procured the boy a suit of clothes to dress him up like a gentleman's son, put some public school colours upon his hat, and generally made him look like a lad fit and proper to associate with Mr Oscar Wilde. The whole thing in its audacity is almost past belief . . . If Mr Wilde were really anxious to assist Conway, the very worst thing he could have done was to take the lad out of his proper sphere, to begin by giving him champagne luncheons, taking him to his hotel, and treating him in a manner in which the boy could never in the future be expected to live.
²⁶

The irony was that one of Oscar's strongest points, his kindness to these men, was the virtue Carson was deploring. Addled by Oscar's disruption of class distinctions, the Christian Carson could not see the bad faith of his argument. Carson's astonishment at this act was itself astonishing – the notion that treating a lover, a companion for six weeks, as an equal, was so audacious a crime.

Carson was turning the case into an issue of class. Part of Carson's problem was his inability to categorise Oscar's relations with men, for some were neither prostitutes nor social equals. That Oscar, supposedly a gentleman, moved among classes with ostentatious ease was what constituted the indignity for Carson, and added to the outrage his trial provoked.

Lest Carson draw on his evidence, Edward Clarke advised Oscar to withdraw from the prosecution, for if the case went to its end, the judge would unquestionably order his arrest. The irony is that Oscar had been the prosecutor. Oscar took Clarke's advice and withdrew from the case. The verdict for Queensberry was ‘not guilty' of libel. ‘What filthy business,' a nauseated Clarke exclaimed to Carson as they left the court. ‘I shall not feel clean for weeks.'
²⁷

Oscar left the building by a side door and so avoided meeting the female prostitutes dancing lewdly outside the Old Bailey, frustrated that Oscar Wilde and his ilk were putting them out of business. That day, on 5 April 1895, Oscar wrote to the
Evening News
, explaining his withdrawal.

It would have been impossible for me to have proven my case without putting Lord Alfred Douglas in the witness-box against his father. Lord Alfred Douglas was extremely anxious to go into the box, but I would not let him do so. Rather than put him in so painful a position, I determined to retire from the case, and to bear on my own shoulders whatever ignominy and shame might result from my prosecuting Lord Queensberry.
²⁸

So blinded had Oscar become in his role as masochist, bearing on his own shoulders the ‘ignominy and shame' of the case, that even at this stage he failed to see that any evidence Alfred Douglas could have given about his father's true character had nothing to do with the issue to be decided at the trial – the truth or otherwise of Oscar posing as a sodomite.

He also sent off a note to Constance, instructing her to let no one into his bedroom or sitting room at Tite Street. Finally, he visited George Lewis, who told Oscar he was powerless to do anything. Though Lewis added, ‘If you had had the sense to bring Lord Queensberry's card to me in the first place, I would have torn it up and thrown it in the fire, and told you not to make a fool of yourself.'
²⁹

But time was running out. Queensberry's solicitors had already sent the evidence to the director of public prosecutions, who applied to the home secretary, Asquith, for a warrant for Oscar's arrest. Asquith agreed and sent it on to Sir John Bridge, the Bow Street magistrate for signing. But before Bridge signed, he delayed for an hour and a half. Whether this was to give Oscar time to catch the last boat train to the Continent, or because he wished to read the documents, is not known. But he fixed the time for a quarter of an hour after the boat train's departure.

Meanwhile Oscar lingered at the Cadogan Hotel, in Sloane Street, in the company of Ross, and remained deaf to entreaties to leave for France. When Ross told Constance of the proceedings at the Old Bailey, she joined the chorus, saying, ‘I hope Oscar is going abroad.'
³⁰
Faced with the decision to go or not to go, Oscar simply could not make up his mind, and sat waiting like one of Samuel Beckett's characters, letting things take their course. He could have escaped to France, but he could not decide to go or not to go – the open, half-packed suitcase at the Cadogan Hotel says it all. Then it really was too late. A reporter from the
Star
, who had seen a message come through that the warrant had been issued, turned up at the hotel, followed within a matter of minutes by Inspector Richards of Scotland Yard, who arrived at room 53 with instructions to take Oscar Wilde to Bow Street ‘on a charge of committing indecent acts'. A ‘very grey in the face' Oscar struggled into his overcoat, picked up his gloves and the yellow book (presumably a French novel) he was reading, and stumbled towards the door, showing the effects of the hock and seltzer he had been imbibing throughout the afternoon. Before he left the Cadogan, he was granted permission to scribble a note to Douglas. He asked him to arrange bail from his brother, Percy, and from the theatre managers, George Alexander and Lewis Waller, where his plays were showing.
³¹
Ross went along to Tite Street and collected some clothes and books Oscar might need, but when he arrived at Bow Street, he was allowed neither to see the prisoner nor to leave the Gladstone bag. Douglas did as bidden and went to ask Alexander and Waller if they would be prepared to pay Oscar's bail. Both refused. Only Percy agreed.

News broke that evening and there was scarcely a bar, club or home where it was not discussed. ‘And so a miserable case is ended,' wrote the
London Evening Echo
on 5 April 1895, ‘Lord Queensberry is triumphant, and Mr Oscar Wilde is “damned and done for.”' Having told its evening readers the details were too shocking to repeat, it proceeded the next day to spell out the salacious aspects. The revelations had a visceral effect on the public.

The newspapers surpassed themselves in their vulgar gloating and had they known Oscar had once declared his ambition to demoralise the public, most would have agreed he had accomplished his goal. The curtain had come down on the age of Decadence.

39

Facing Fate

Oscar was removed from Bow Street to Holloway Prison, where he remained for almost a month awaiting trial. He had been refused bail because of ‘the gravity of the case'. As the French papers observed with some puzzlement, in England sodomy was rated only one grade below murder. Frank Harris wrote later, ‘His arrest was the signal for an orgy of Philistine rancour such as even London had never known before.'
¹
One paper pictured the prisoner pacing up and down his cell at night like a caged beast. Pamphlets containing salacious snippets of evidence given at the hearings were hawked for sale in the streets of London. Shortly after his arrest, the name of Oscar Wilde was wiped off the billboard advertising
The Importance of Being Earnest
and
An Ideal Husband
. A few weeks later both plays were withdrawn. Those of Oscar's books still in print were struck off publishers' lists, and sales of his books almost ceased. Thus did his income dry up.