The Trial of Oscar Wilde.
“In all men’s hearts a slumbering swine lies low”, says the French poet; so come ye, whose porcine instincts have never been awakened, or if rampant successfully hidden, and hurl the biggest, sharpest stones you can lay your hands on at your wretched, degraded, humiliated brother, who has been found out.
The Trial of Oscar Wilde
The life and death of Oscar Wilde, poet, playwright, poseur and convict, can only fittingly be summarised as a tragedy. Every misspent life is a tragedy more or less; but how much more tragic appear the elements of despair and disaster when the victim to his own vices is a man of genius exercising a considerable influence upon the thought and culture of his day, and possessing every advantage which birth, education, talent and station can bestow? Oscar Wilde was more than a clever and original thinker. He was the inventor of a certain literary style, and, though his methods, showy and eccentric as they were, lent themselves readily to imitation, none of his followers could approach their “Master” in the particular mode which he had made his own. There can be two opinions as to the merits of his plays. There can be only one judgment as to their daring and audacious originality. Of the ordinary and the commonplace Wilde had a horror, which with him was almost a religion. He was unmercifully chaffed throughout America when he appeared in public in a light green suit adorned with a large sunflower; but he did not don this outrageous costume because he preferred such startling clothing. He adopted the dress in order to be original and assumed it because no other living man was likely to be so garbed. He was consumed, in fact, with overpowering vanity. He was possessed of a veritable demon of self-esteem. He ate strange foods, and drank unusual liquors in order to be unlike any of his contemporaries. His eccentricities of dress continued to the end. On the first night of one of his plays—it was a brilliant triumph—he was called upon by an enthusiastic audience for the customary speech. He was much exercised in his mind as to what he could say that would be unconventional and sensational. No mere platitudes or banalities for the author of “Lady Windermere’s Fan,” who made a god of the spirit of Epigram and almost canonized the art of Repartee. He said, “Ladies and Gentlemen: I am glad you like my play. I like it very much myself too,” which, if candid, was hardly the remark of a modest and retiring author. The leopard cannot change his spots and neither can the lion his skin. Even in his beautiful book, “De Profundis”—surely the most extraordinary volume of recent years—the man’s character is writ so plainly that he who runs may read. Man of letters, man of fashion, man of hideous vices, Oscar Wilde remained to the last moment of his murdered life, a self-conscious egotist. “Gentlemen,” he gasped on his death-bed, hearing the doctors express misgivings as to their fees, “it would appear that I am dying beyond my means!” It was a brilliant sally and one can picture the startled faces of the medical attendants. A genius lay a-dying and a genius he remained till the breath of life departed.
Genius we know to be closely allied to insanity and it were charitable to describe this man as mad, besides approaching very nearly to the truth. Something was out of gear in that finely attuned mind. Some thorn there was among the intellectual roses which made him what he was. He pined for strange passions, new sensations. His was the temperament of the Roman sybarite. He often sighed for a return of the days when vice was deified. He spoke of the glories of the Devastation, the awful woman and the Alexandrian school at which little girls and young boys were instructed in all the most secret and unthinkable forms of vice. Modern women satisfied him not. Perverted passions consumed the fire of his being. He had had children of his wife, but sexual intercourse between him and that most unfortunate lady was more honoured in the breach than in the observance. They had their several rooms. On many occasions Wilde actually brought the companions of his abominable rites and sinful joys to his own home, and indulged in his frightful propensities beneath the roof of the house which sheltered his own sons and their most unhappy mother. Could the man capable of this atrocity possess a normal mind? Can Oscar Wilde, who committed moral suicide and made of himself a social pariah, be regarded as a sane man? London society is not so strict nor straight-laced that it will not forgive much laxity in its devoted votaries. Rumour had been busy with the name of Oscar Wilde for a long time before the whole awful truth became known. He was seen, constantly, at theatres and restaurants with persons in no way fit to be his associates and these persons were not girls or women. He paraded his shameful friendships and flaunted his villainous companions in society’s face. People began to look askance at the famous wit. Doors began to be closed to him. He was ostracised by all but the most Bohemian coteries. But even those who were still proud to rank him among their friends did not know how far he had wilfully drawn himself into the web of disgrace. Much that seemed strange and unaccountable was attributed to his well-known love of pose. Men shrugged their shoulders and declared that “Wilde meant no harm. It was his vainglorious way of showing his contempt for the opinion of the world. Men of such parts could not be judged by ordinary standards. Intellectually Wilde was fit to mix with the immortals. If he preferred the society of miserable, beardless, stunted youths destitute alike of decency or honour—it was no affair of theirs,” and so on ad nauseam. Meanwhile, heedless of the warnings of friends and the sneers of foes, Wilde went his own way—to destruction.
He was addicted to the vice and crime of sodomy long before he formed a “friendship” which was destined to involve him in irretrievable ruin. In London, he met a younger son of the eccentric Marquis of Queensbury, Lord Alfred Douglas by name. This youth was being educated at Cambridge. He was of peculiar temperament and talented in a strong, frothy style. He was good-looking in an effeminate, lady-like way. He wrote verse. His poems not being of a manner which could be acceptable to a self-respecting publication, his efforts appeared in an eccentric and erratic magazine which was called “The Chameleon.” In this precious serial appeared a “poem” from the pen of Lord Alfred dedicated to his father in these filial words: “To the Man I Hate.”