CHAPTER 5 ‘I HAVE GOT AS FAR AS THE HOUSE OF DETENTION’ LEFT: The Boulevard from Quelques On 5 April 1895, the jury at the Old Bailey returned a verdict of ‘not aspects de la vie de Paris, by Pierre guilty’ in the libel trial brought by Oscar Wilde against the Marquess of Bannard, 1899. On his release from prison Queensberry. The verdict indicated that Queensberry had been justified in in May 1897, Oscar Wilde settled for a calling Wilde a sodomite in the public interest. The packed court room time in Berneval-sur-Mer, claiming: ‘If I had cheered and the judge passed Queensberry’s counsel, Edward Carson, live in Paris I may be doomed to things I a note congratulating him on his ‘searching crossXam’ and having ‘escaped don’t desire. I am afraid of big towns.’ Less the rest of the filth’. Within minutes of the collapse of the case, the trial than a year later, however, a letter to the papers had been sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions. publisher Leonard Smithers from Naples The press almost universally crowed at the result: announced ‘I shall be in Paris on Sunday next. It is my only chance of working. I There is not a man or woman in the English-speaking world possessed of the miss an intellectual atmosphere, and I am treasure of a wholesome mind…not under a deep debt of gratitude to the tired of Greek bronzes...My life has gone to Marquess of Queensberry for destroying the High Priest of the Decadents. great ruin here, and I have no brains now, or energy. I hope to make an effort in Paris.’ Wilde had again been given a chance to escape to France. According to Frank Harris, Wilde’s lawyer would have kept the prosecution parade rolling if his client required time to flee abroad, otherwise, in the face of ABOVE: Frank Harris caricatured by the mounting evidence it was pointless. However, Wilde elected not to Beerbohm, 1896. Harris had strongly flee despite the urgent and repeated pleadings of his friends that he should urged Wilde to flee rather than pursue the take the boat train for France (the warrant for his arrest was not issued Queensberry libel case: ‘...you are a sort of until a quarter of an hour after its departure). It was later estimated that standard bearer for future generations. If 600 other gentlemen crossed to Calais that night. you lose you will make it harder for all Whilst Bosie rushed to the House of Commons to seek help from one writers in England...you will put the of his relatives, Wilde, Turner and Ross could do nothing but sit in the clocks back fifty years.’ Cadogan Hotel in Sloane Street, waiting. 131 OSCAR WILDE ‘I HAVE GOT AS FAR AS THE HOUSE OF DETENTION’ At ten minutes past six in the evening of 5 April 1895, a waiter, accom- RIGHT: A reconstruction of Wilde’s Finally, on the insistence of Wilde’s lawyer, who felt that his presence panied by two police officers, knocked on the door of room 53. One of progress from lecture hall to court room would be detrimental to his client’s interests in court by reminding the the detectives stepped into the room, saying ‘We have a warrant here, Mr by the The Illustrated Police News, as jury of the charge of corrupting an innocent youth, Bosie left for France. Wilde, for your arrest on a charge of committing indecent acts.’ Wilde, Wilde’s first trial reached its conclusion. Wilde, he recalled, ‘kissed the end of my finger through an iron grating at who had gone ‘very grey in the face’, was then escorted in a cab to Bow ‘Are you a dramatist and author?’ Wilde Newgate, and begged me to let nothing in the world alter my attitude and Street Police Station. was asked to establish at the committal my conduct towards him.’ Nearly every day before the trial opened, Bosie visited Wilde, first at BELOW: Holloway Prison, London, at that proceedings at Great Marlborough Street Those of Wilde’s books still in print were withdrawn from sale; An Bow Street and then in Holloway Prison, where he was on remand. time a men’s prison, where Wilde was on 9 March 1895. ‘I believe I am well Ideal Husband, playing at the Criterion, closed; Wilde’s name was pasted Unlike Ross, who had reluctantly gone to France, Bosie stayed during this remanded for a period between his trials. known in that capacity,’ he replied, and over on the billboards for The Importance of Being Earnest, then it, too, dismal period, writing letters to the press declaring that judgement had In the original version of The Importance received an immediate rebuke from the closed. The bailiffs moved into Tite Street, to Wilde’s anguish: been passed on Wilde before his trial opened. ‘Nothing but Alfred of Being Earnest, Algernon is arrested for magistrate; ‘Only answer the questions …all my charming things are to be sold: my Burne-Jones drawings; my Douglas’s daily visits quicken me into life, and even him I only see under debt and objects vehemently to the prospect please.’ For Wilde, the Old Bailey was Whistler drawings; my Monticelli; my Simeon Solomons; my china; my humiliating and tragic conditions.’ Sitting opposite each other and separat- of detention in Holloway: ‘Well, I really am inevitably another arena for performance Library with its collection of presentation volumes from almost every poet of ed by a corridor, Wilde’s deafness in one ear and the interminable noise of not going to be imprisoned in the suburbs and to his great detriment he played to the my time, from Hugo to Whitman, from Swinburne to Mallarmé, from ABOVE: A sketch showing the arrest of other prisoners meant that he could hardly hear what Bosie said, and as for having dined in the West End. It is gallery on too many occasions. Morris to Verlaine; with its beautifully bound editions of my father’s and Wilde from the The Illustrated Police the men tried to converse tears coursed down both their faces. perfectly ridiculous.’ mother’s works; its wonderful array of college and school prizes, its éditions News. The tension of waiting was over: Wilde wrote from Holloway to Ada de luxe at give-away prices. Leverson and her husband, Ernest, He sipped at a weak hock and seltzer of the comfort that he nevertheless The trial of Oscar Wilde opened at the Old Bailey on 26 April 1895. He As he gazed at the London skies... derived from these emotionally stood in the dock with Alfred Taylor, charged with twenty-five acts of ‘I want some more hock in my seltzer, searing occasions: gross indecency contrary to the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, And Robbie, please give me your hand – Section 11. It was the first time that ‘indecent relations’ between men in Is this the end or beginning? I write to you from prison, where private had been designated a criminal offence; this was also the notorious How can I understand?’ your kind words have reached me and Act which excluded lesbianism from its terms of reference, since it is From 'The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at given me comfort, though they have alleged Queen Victoria firmly asserted that ‘women would not do such the Cadogan Hotel', by John Betjeman. made me cry in my loneliness. Not things’. There was in addition a conspiracy to procure charge, which was that I am really alone. A slim thing, subsequently dropped. Alfred Taylor was also charged with having acted gold-haired like an angel, stands as a procurer for Wilde. The charges related to the Parker brothers, always at my side. His presence Frederick Atkins, Sidney Mavor, the would-be blackmailer Alfred Wood overshadows me. He moves in the and Edward Shelley (the Bodley Head clerk); two further charges gloom like a white flower. concerned incidents at the Savoy Hotel. 132 133 OSCAR WILDE ‘I HAVE GOT AS FAR AS THE HOUSE OF DETENTION’ The strain of the last weeks had told on Wilde: it was RIGHT: At the Café Royal by, Sidney noted that he looked thin, ill-kempt, anxious and tired as Starr, 1888. Wilde often dined with Bosie the trial rehearsed much of the same evidence as had been and other friends at the Café; it was also heard three weeks earlier at the libel hearing. This time a venue for entertaining boys or ‘feasting the boys were there in person, however, to testify to din- with panthers’. Frank Harris recalled how ners in restaurants with red-shaded candles, a generosity on one occasion he encountered Wilde of champagne, brandies and coffee, cabs, liqueurs, hock there with two ‘quite common’ youths. and seltzers, cigarettes, gold rings, all paid for by Wilde; ‘He was talking as well as if he had had gifts of money, £3, £4, £30, £300, talk of poetry and art. a picked audience...about the Olympic There were descriptions of going into bedrooms in games, telling how the youths wrestled... London hotels and lying on sofas in Tite Street; of kisses and won the myrtle wreath...nude, and protests, and then more kisses; of sitting on Wilde’s clothed only in sunshine and beauty.’ lap ‘imagining I was a girl and he was my lover; of being called ‘Mrs Wilde’ and ‘Miss Oscar’; of cabs to the Savoy hotel; of more liqueurs; of the ‘act of sodomy’. Landladies gave evidence of rooms where daylight was never admit- ted, lighted as they were by coloured candles, furnished with mattresses and strewn with women’s wigs, shoes and stockings, and perfumed with women’s scent, where it was ‘always gentlemen’ who called.