The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde Read online

  Praise for The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde

  "Achieving the rare distinction of making the familiar fresh, McKenna takes an unvarnished look at the life of the 19th-century poet and playwright whose bold sense of style and rapier wit rivaled his decadent lifestyle for notoriety."

  -Rocky Mountain News

  "Drawing on newly discovered interviews with some of the witnesses at [Wilde's] trials, as well as numerous unpublished memoirs and diaries, Neil McKenna has produced a superb new portrait of the secret life of one of the 19th century's most tragic and beguiling figures.... This meticulous reconstruction of Wilde's "sexual journey" breaks important new ground by placing Wilde at the center of a pantheon of gay sexual revolutionaries."

  -The Washington Post

  "Although dozens of books have been written about Wilde, none has been as personal and intimate as The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde. This crisply written book is a frank and disarming psychological portrait of a troubled genius. This is fascinating reading and highly recommended."

  -Tucson Citizen

  "[A] stunning piece of investigative historiography ... this extraordinary book ... gives a new and revealing portrait of Wilde's sexuality that supersedes all previous Wilde biographies. The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde must now rank as a crucial, hitherto missing, but terribly vital piece of both gay and literary history-and it is beautifully written to boot. It is both a major achievement and a wonderful read."

  -In These Times

  "Richly detailed and revelatory ... a thoroughly researched and often mesmerizing account of an indispensable writer."

  Atlantia Journal-Constitution

  "This thorough and harrowing book gives us the information we need to assess Oscar Wilde's place in the creation of modern Western culture and in the history of gay rights. Previous biographies have tended to portray Wilde as either a genius with an occasional but fatal weakness for boys, or as a heroic martyr of gay liberation. By reviewing all the publicly available material and uncovering important new sources from an era in which every educated person kept diaries and wrote several letters a day, Neil McKenna scrupulously documents Wilde's sexual life and demonstrates its connection to his art, his ethical evolution, and his tragedy."

  -Gay and Lesbian Review

  "McKenna's masterful, eminently readable new work takes a sharp, very productive turn in Wilde scholarship ... the most exciting and important Wilde scholarship to be published in decades."

  -Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  "Offers an entertaining and fascinating (sometimes jaw-dropping) insight into Victorian homosexual practices. He is outstanding... "

  -The Observer (UK)

  "The most important [book] to have been written about Wilde for many years."

  -Irish Independent

  "It cannot be recommended too highly. Extraordinary, intensely passionate and quite beautiful."

  -Manchester Evening News

  "Intriguing and entertaining ... McKenna makes an impassioned case for re-gaying Wilde."

  -Times of London

  "A groundbreaking new biography of our greatest queer martyr."

  -The Observer (UK)

  "A bold book."

  -The Guardian

  NEIL MCKENNA

  For Robert in love and friendship

  `There is nothing Wilde would desire more than that we should know everything about him.'

  - W.H. Auden

  `What a lurid life Oscar does lead - so full of extraordinary incidents. What a chance for the memoir writers of the next century.'

  - Max Beerbohm

  `Nothing is serious except passion.'

  - Oscar Wilde

  CONTENTS

  Foreword xi

  Acknowledgements xiii

  May 1895 1

  Wonder and remorse 3

  Tea and beauties 11

  A little in love 21

  Nothing but my genius 28

  Freedom from sordid care 36

  The marriage cure 44

  Against nature 53

  An ideal wife 60

  Playing with fire 69

  Mad and coloured loves 76

  Poets and lovers 85

  }Eolian harps 92

  Spiritualised sodomy 101

  Shadow and song 109

  John and Dorian 118

  Scarlet threads 127

  Outlawed noblemen 135

  Apples of Sodom 147

  Wild and terrible music 157

  Strange green flowers 169

  Hyacinth and Narcissus 180

  Gay, gilt and gracious 189

  Prophets and priests 197

  For love or money 206

  Feasting with panthers 216

  The madness of kisses 226

  Brazen candour 238

  A pugilist of unsound mind 246

  A schoolboy with wonderful eyes 257

  On a gilded barge 269

  The Scarlet Marquis 278

  The boys on the beach 290

  The arsenic flower 300

  Love's sacrifice 313

  Passionate fauns 323

  Hideous words 331

  Raking Piccadilly 341

  Vexed and persecuted lovers 350

  Fighting with panthers 358

  So very ugly 366

  Kill the bugger! 374

  Oscar at bay 380

  The love that dares to speak its name 389

  A foul and dark latrine 398

  Bitter waters 410

  From the depths 420

  Comfort and despair 429

  Two outcast men 440

  A joy-song 450

  November 1900 463

  Permissions and picture credits 466

  Select bibliography 467

  Notes 471

  Index 531

  FOREWORD

  Oscar Wilde always knew that the story of his emotional and sexual life, and especially the story of his disastrous affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, would one day be told in full. `Some day the truth will have to be known: not necessarily in my lifetime or in Douglas's,' he wrote shortly before his release from Reading Gaol.

  This biography sets out to tell that story, to chart Oscar's odyssey to find his true sexual self, from the troubled and uncertain first stirrings of his feelings for other men, to the joyous paganism of his last years in exile. It was a journey of self-discovery with more than its fair share of love and lust, joy and despair, comedy and tragedy. - -- -- -- - -- - -- - - -- -

  Despite many excellent biographies and critical studies, comparatively little has been written about Oscar's sexuality and his sexual behaviour. Most accounts of Oscar's life present him as predominantly heterosexual, a man whose later love of men was at best some sort of aberration, a temporary madness and, at worst, a slow-growing cancer, a terrible sexual addiction which slowly destroyed his mind and his body.

  But the truth, as Oscar famously remarked, is rarely pure and never simple. Like many men of his time, Oscar struggled long and hard against his overwhelming sexual feelings for young men, before he decided to surrender to them. As time went by, he not only surrendered to these sexual feelings, but embraced them, and eventually became a brave champion of `the Love that dare not speak its name'.

  For years, Oscar had a secret sexual and emotional life. He was a husband and a father, a poet and a playwright, a wit and a dandy, and a lover of young men. He was torn between the desire to proclaim the existence of his secret life and the need to conceal it. These conflicting imperatives fired Oscar's creativity and found expression in his writing.

  In researching and writing this book, I wanted to go beyond the mythology and the misapprehensions about Oscar's sexuality, and seek to prese
nt a coherent and psychologically convincing account of his sexual journey, one which would examine his relationships with Constance, with Robbie Ross, with Bosie Douglas and with the host of other boys and young men whose lives became entwined, however briefly, with his.

  I wanted to find answers to some of the puzzling questions about Oscar's life. When did he first realise that he was attracted to other men? If he knew himself to be attracted to men, why then did he marry Constance? How much did Constance know or suspect? And why, knowing that he was almost certain to be found guilty on charges of `gross indecency', did Oscar choose to stay in England and face imprisonment? I have, I believe, found answers to these and many other unanswered questions.

  Oscar's place in the history of the small but courageous band of men who strove to bring about the legal and social emancipation of men who loved men has rarely been acknowledged. To Oscar, Bosie, George Ives and others, `the Cause', as they simply termed their social and political aspirations, was nothing short of sacred. Understanding Oscar's commitment to `the Cause' helps to explain many of his otherwise inexplicable decisions.

  I was also intrigued by the persistent but unproven rumour of a political conspiracy underpinning the vigorous prosecution of Oscar. Immediately after he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment with hard labour, Bosie and one or two others made a series of wild allegations that senior members of the ruling Liberal Party had conspired together and sacrificed Oscar in order to protect the reputation of the Prime Minister, Lord Rosebery, himself a lover of men. It quickly became apparent to me that Bosie's allegations were far from wild and were founded on a solid basis of fact.

  There is a surprising wealth of material about Oscar's sexual and emotional life. Some of it is new and exciting, like the recently discovered witness statements made by the boys Oscar had sex with, and to which I was fortunate enough to be granted exclusive access. The boys' statements bring Oscar's sexual behaviour vividly to life. Taken in conjunction with the publication, earlier this year, of the full and unexpurgated transcript of the trial of the Marquis of Queensberry for criminally libelling Oscar, these statements made it possible for me to reconstruct Oscar's immensely rich and complicated sexual life between 1892 and 1895, the years of his love affair with Bosie.

  There are other materials - like the voluminous diaries of Oscar's friend and fellow lover of men, George Ives, and the scabrous and unpublished memoirs of Trelawny Backhouse - which have yielded important information and shed much light on Oscar's attitudes to sex and love. -- - - - - - -- --- - - ---- -

  I have re-examined much under-used material which has been published once and promptly forgotten, or never published at all, often because it was deemed inappropriate or obscene. And I have given due prominence to other materials, like Fred Althaus's poignant letters charting his unhappy love affair with Oscar, which have simply been overlooked.

  Oscar's own writings area rich biographical source. Nearly all his work - from the very early poems to his four great society comedies - is highly autobiographical, reflecting and revealing his secret life. And Oscar's letters, recently republished with many new additions, remain the single most important source of information about his life and his loves, especially about his affair with Bosie and his last years abroad.

  Oscar Wilde lived more lives than one, and no single biography can ever compass his rich and extraordinary life and achievements. I hope that this book has succeeded in telling the story of one, and to me the most interesting, of Oscar's many lives.

  Neil McKenna

  London,2005

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This book could not have been written without consulting some of the rich manuscript collections held in libraries. In Britain, I am grateful to the staff of the Public Record Office in Kew, the British Library in London and Boston Spa, the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the University of Reading Library, the library of King's College, Cambridge, the library of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. In the Netherlands, I was greatly helped by the staff of Homodok, the excellent archive of gay and lesbian history. In the United States, I am indebted to the staff of the William Andrews Clark Library in Los Angeles, especially Suzanne Tatian and Jennifer Schaffner, and the staff of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin.

  I would also like to thank the many people who have helped me in ways large and small over the past three years: Val Allam, Charlotte Arnold, Hans Arnold, Neil Bartlett, Di Bennett, Jamie Buxton, Martin Bowley, John Cooper, Nancy Duin, Tim d'Arch Smith, Trevor Fisher, Jonathan Fryer, James Gardiner, Simon Garfield, Sandra Greaves, Emily Green, Peter Grogan, Judith Hawley, Terry Heath, Philip Horne, Pam T. Job, Ellen Jones, Marion Janner, Liane Jones, Neil Kydd, Marie Jaqueline Lancaster, Marina Leopardi, Jayne Lewis, Leo McKinstry, Peter Millson, Roger Moss, Douglas Murray, Rictor Norton, Harold Pinter, Keith Raffan, Dr David Rose, Nic Rose, John Rubinstein, Charles Russell, Dee Searle, Diane Samuels, David Souden, Jane Scruton, Linda Semple, Paula Synder, Jan Spiegel, Liz Sturgeon, Ian Small, Chris Smith MP, Ben Summerskill, Alex Sutherland, Peter Swaab, Peter Tatchell, Thomas Venning, Simon Watney, Pamela Lady Wedgwood, Fay Weldon, Jacqueline Wesley, Peter Wilby and Sarah Woodley.

  I would particularly like to thank: Sally Cline for her unfailing optimism and encouragement; Sian Jones for her excellent translations; Angie Penfold for all her hard work; Siobhan Kilfeather for encouraging me to undertake this book; Professor Jules Lubbock, my tutor at Essex University, who taught me a great deal and continues to do so; Professor John McRae of Nottingham University who generously shared his insights and expert knowledge of Teleny with me; and Janice Stevenor Dale and her family for her generous hospitality in Los Angeles. I owe a debt of gratitude to John B. Thomas of the Humanities Research Center in Austin, Texas, who not only put at my disposal his unrivalled knowledge of the collections there, especially the George Ives materials, but who also became a friend.

  I would also like to express my sincere appreciation of the way in which Rina Gill, Hannah Black, Kate Watkins and other staff at Century have worked with me on this book with immense professionalism and great cheerfulness. I also want to acknowledge the huge contribution made by David Smith, my copyeditor, who has enthusiastically read and re-read the manuscript and made an enormous number of suggestions and improvements.

  I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity of meeting and talking with the late Sheila Colman, who knew Bosie in his last years and who generously shared her knowledge with me. John Stratford was also extremely helpful and answered my many questions about Bosie. Caspar Wintermans, the biographer of Bosie, has put his knowledge of Bosie at my disposal, and I eagerly anticipate his forthcoming edition of Bosie's letters.

  I am extremely grateful to Merlin Holland, Oscar Wilde's grandson, who has not only been extremely supportive of this project but has also answered my many questions with unfailing grace and charm. In our enjoyable and stimulating conversations about Oscar over the past three years, Merlin has generously pointed me in the direction of materials I did not know about and has made many acute observations about Oscar and his sexuality.

  I want to thank my agent, Andrew Lownie, who took me and the idea of this book on, and who spent a long time and a great deal of energy in finding a publisher. Without Andrew, this book would not have seen the light of day. I also want to thank my publisher, Mark Booth, who has been a joy to work with. Mark entered enthusiastically into the spirit of the book and has been wonderfully encouraging and supportive. It would be hard to think of a nicer publisher, or, indeed, a nicer person.

  I would also like to thank Chip Rossetti, Jason Brantley, David Shoemaker, and the rest of the team at Basic in New York for the passion and utter professionalism they brought to publishing this U.S. edition of my book.

  Finally, I want to express my profound gratitude to Robert Jones without whose love and friendship this book could not have been written.

  May 1895
/>   It was unusually hot that last Saturday in May, and the small, cramped and badly ventilated courtroom at the Old Bailey was stifling. It was the last day of the second trial of Oscar Wilde on charges of gross indecency with young men, and everyone confidently expected that a verdict would be reached by the end of the afternoon. Every available seat was occupied, and the courtroom was, the Illustrated Police Budget reported, `crowded to suffocation'.

  The jury retired at half past three. Oscar's small but gallant band of friends and supporters in the public gallery were hoping against hope that the jury would fail to reach a verdict, as they had done just three weeks earlier. If they did, Oscar would almost certainly go free. A second retrial would surely be out of the question. `You'll dine your man in Paris tomorrow,' Sir Frank Lockwood, who had prosecuted Oscar, remarked to Sir Edward Clarke, Oscar's barrister. But Clarke was not so sure. `No, no, no,' he replied, shaking his head sadly.

  The trials of Oscar Wilde had been going on for two months, since the fateful day in early March when Oscar had applied for a warrant for the arrest of the Marquis of Queensberry, the father of his lover Bosie, for criminally libelling him as a `ponce and sodomite'. Oscar had appeared - as either prosecutor or defendant - in no fewer than nine separate court proceedings, and had spent four gruelling days in the witness box being cross-examined by three of the greatest advocates of the day.

  The wait for a verdict in the Old Bailey was interminable. An hour or so after the jury went out there was a ripple of excitement in the stuffy courtroom. Was the verdict imminent? But it turned out to be a false alarm. The jury had only requested some bottled water and some paper and pencils. Another hour dragged by and the atmosphere in the court became more and more tense, more and more expectant. A few minutes after five-thirty, Oscar was brought up from the cells below and took his place in the dock. As the jury filed back into court, he leant over the front of the dock, `eagerly scanning the faces of the twelve good men and true, seemingly trying to read in their physiognomies his fate'.