← After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal
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- [01:01]
Merlin Holland
Par le tu francais, hablas espanol? Par l'. Italiano.
- [01:05]
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- [01:45]
Anthony
It's 1895 and we're at the Old Bailey in London. The courtroom falls silent as the judge prepares to speak. Hundreds of eyes fixed on the defendant. Once the brightest star in London, Oscar Wilde has appeared to wilt under the weight of the accusations presented. Not long ago, he stood defiant. But as the jury files back in, even his poise begins to fracture. Reporters lean forward, ready to carve his fate into tomorrow's headlines. Wild closes his eyes, knowing that whatever comes next will change everything. His name, his freedom, his legacy. The judge clears his throat and he proceeds to issue the verdict. Oscar Wilde was a national treasure, a prince of Victorian society. But beneath it all, a storm was gathering. And when the moment came, Wilde's world didn't just crack, it collapsed. Who was Oscar Wilde? How Did a man once loved for his work so quickly become vilified by the public? And what sort of legacy was forged in the wreckage of his fall? To answer these questions, we are joined today by Oscar Wilde, biographer and his only grandson, Merlin Holland. Welcome to After Dark.
- [03:37]
Maddie
Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Maddie.
- [03:39]
Anthony
And I'm Anthony.
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Maddie
Now, the downfall of Oscar Wilde in 1895 shattered the life of one of Britain's brightest literary stars. Reducing celebrated playwright. Reducing a celebrated. What is happening today? Oh, dear.
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Anthony
I don't think he likes brain.
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Maddie
I don't think he does. He's come back to.
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Anthony
And it is a he as well.
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Maddie
Yeah. Oh, dear. Reducing a celebrated playwright to a prisoner. Today we'll piece together the final tragic years of a man whose famous wit could not protect him from Victorian society. On today's show, we welcome on the pod, Merlin Holland. He's a biographer and editor of numerous works on Oscar Oscar Wilde, including his new work After Oscar. And he has been researching him for more than 30 years. Not only this, but he also happens to be Oscar's grandson, Merlin. Welcome to After Dark.
- [04:30]
Merlin Holland
Hello.
- [04:31]
Maddie
We're thrilled to have you here.
- [04:33]
Anthony
So good to have you, Merlin. This is a special episode in many ways because Merlin and I have met before when we were filming for a very Victorian scandal, which you'll be able to go and watch on history TV right now. And as I explained to Merlin on the day, Oscar has a very special place in my heart and in my intellectual pursuit and in so many ways since I was a teenager. So it's great to be able to sit with Merlin and talk about this particular history. And one of the things that, you know, I know as an Irishman and you're very aware of, but maybe some people aren't quite so aware, is that Oscar's origins are very Irish. And let's rewind to 1854 and talk about Irish, the family that Oscar arrives into in Dublin.
- [05:20]
Merlin Holland
Very good idea. Because I think many people today seem to assume that Oscar sprung fully formed about the 1890s and produced all these wonderful plays and the whole buildup to that, his youth and going through Trinity College, Dublin and Oxford, and a brilliant, brilliant scholar in classics at Oxford and so on. And I think that all this is quite often forgotten. The biographers, of course, know about it, but the general public doesn't. So, yes, why not?
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Anthony
It's a strange thing, really, isn't it? Because by forgetting that, we forget his Irishness and you know, he has said himself, he's often quoted and often Misquoted. But, you know, he has said himself that, you know, I am Irish, which is altogether a different thing when he was talking about his identity. So I do think it's really foundational and especially when, and we'll come to this, the trials start happening. His Irishness is to the fore in many ways, even if it's not mentioned explicitly. Let's talk about his mother and father, Merlin. What is their background and what position are they occupying in the 1850s in.
- [06:22]
Merlin Holland
Well, his father was one of the founding fathers of Irish medicine and Wilde's incision, I believe on good authority, is still used today for diseases of the air. And he's celebrated. And indeed, I think Sir William has a bust in the Victorian Urani. He was ophthalmic surgeon in ordinary, I think was the official title to Queen Victoria. So if ever the Queen went to Ireland and needed attention, Sir William would there have been there on hand. But he wasn't just a medic, he was also an antiquarian. And he led the British association for the Advancement of Science expedition to the Aran Islands. And I can't remember exactly what year it was. I think it was the early 1860s, because he knew all about the sort of early Irish history of the area. And they presented him with two magnificent claret jugs afterwards, one inscribed in Irish and one in English. And I think Oscar's real love of history comes from his father. But then his mother. Now that's a different saying.
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Anthony
This is a force, a life force.
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Maddie
She's not an ordinary woman, is she?
- [07:34]
Merlin Holland
Very much not. And she was Jane Elgee. She claimed that the Elgee family name was descended from Dante Alighieri, which I think was probably just her imagination, but she was a poet and contributed largely to the young island movement of, remind me, 1848, the uprising.
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Anthony
Yes, and then all the way into the 50s as well.
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Merlin Holland
But yes, and together with James Gavin Duffy. And at one point she was very nearly arrested for sedition for her anti British poetry in the newspaper that he ran. And when he was being tried, she went to court apparently and stood up and said, if anybody is to blame, it is I. And when she was told this story in later life and asked whether it was true, she said, well, no, it wasn't really, but let it stand. It will read well in a hundred years time.
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Anthony
She had a sense of the dramatic, which I adore.
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Merlin Holland
It's that nationalist revolutionary mother and the historian father, the scientist father. A combination of those two produces Oscar.
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Maddie
It's a particularly extraordinary upbringing, I suppose. And one of the things that I guess most people listening to this will know about Oscar is his incredible wit and just how quot and misquotable he is today. Was this version of him that we have now that is, I suppose, part mythic and part based on reality. Was this version of him on display in his earliest years? Was he the Oscar that we know and love from an early age, or did he have to grow into this person?
- [09:09]
Merlin Holland
He grew into it. I think the turning point, I mean, he went to Trinity College Dublin, and from there didn't get a degree there. Not that he failed, but he just didn't stay to get the degree. And as his tutor at Trinity said to him, run up to Oxford. You'll be better off up there than you are here. And I think that he got to Oxford, studied classics, and in those days, as today, even a classics degree was four rather than three years. Got a first part and a second part. The only degree at Oxford where you can get the famous so called double first, which of course he got and very few people did then. And when he left Oxford, I think one of the great turning points was being asked to go and lecture in America. And until the latest biographers, Richard Elman and Matthew Sturges, I think that time of Oscar's, a whole year, 145 lectures, roughly speaking, during the course of the year, going around, not on airplanes, but on trains. In those days, it's a hell of a journey. And he realized when he got there, he did a lecture called the English Renaissance. And it was bits of William Morris, Walter Pater, one of his tutors at Oxford, a bit of Rossetti, a bit of James Whistler, and a little bit of Oscar thrown in at the end. It was far too long, far too theoretical. The audiences didn't take it very well. And he then, as he did and many times later in his life change, he knew what the public wanted. And he then produced two lectures, one called the House Beautiful and the other was the decorative art. And basically what he was doing was telling the Americans how to decorate their houses. And it reads rather like a Habitat catalog of the 1960s. If you can't afford beautiful Persian rugs, put rush matting on the floor. And this was before he'd published anything at all. He produced a play, which was a flop, all about Russian revolutionaries, called Vera. He became famous for being famous, and I think it gave him a lifelong selection of gentle jibes at the American way of life as well. But it was, I think, pretty much for trial by fire. Because he'd gone as the living image of one of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas patients. He'd been caricatured, or an aesthete had been caricatured in the operetta. And he'd been asked to go as the real life thing come to life so that people could see.
- [11:40]
Anthony
So let's talk a little bit about this aesthetism. Then you talked about him essentially helping to decorate people's houses. And he has this. He does have this greater vision of an idea of beauty and creating beauty. Tell us a little bit about the aesthetes and where Oscar fits into this.
- [11:58]
Merlin Holland
It's very difficult. I've always said, much to the horror of many academic friends, that the whole idea of this aesthetic movement is almost something which is intangible. I mean, it has roots in the Pre Raphaelites, but the whole idea of living life for beauty. I think some of the. The aphorisms which Oscar comes out with, particularly at the beginning of the Picture of Dorian Gray, when it comes out in book form, much to the horror of the critics, he believed that the secret of life. He says the secret of life is in art. And I suppose if you. If you take that apart and analyze it, there's a lot of truth in it. Yeah. Whether the secret, what. What one interprets by the secret. Whether it's. One should live life in this way. Or whether it's idea that art is the only form of perfect existence. As imperfect as we are as human beings. I wish he was here to answer the question.
- [13:06]
Anthony
Listen, I think I struggle with this as well. I think, Mattie, you have a background in art history. So actually you're probably very well placed to talk about this as well. But it was this idea of kind of art for art's sake, wasn't it? Where it was like it didn't have to have anything other than beauty to be valuable or to have G given you that creative urge.
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Maddie
Yeah. I mean, this is. I'm so fascinated, Merlin, by something that you said about the aesthetic movement being intangible. Oscar strikes me as someone who is partly intangible. And yet we hold him up as this literary great, and rightly so, that he had so much substance to him. But you mentioned him being famous for being famous. And there's a very thin veil, I think, in his world between art and life. And they combine in all these interesting ways. You talk about him being sort of satirized on the stage, but then also turning up as that character. And there's a Boundary that's always being crossed. And it seems very, very playful. Is that something that he cultivated as he went along, or did he always have that sense of playfulness and art as being the only thing worth doing? Like that is how you should live your life.
- [14:18]
Merlin Holland
I think at this point, I should quote to you a sent out of a letter that he wrote to James Whistler. James Whistler was quite upset because Oscar pinched a number of his aesthetic art theories. But he writes this letter to James Whistler. And at the end of it, he says, remain James, as I do. Incomprehensible. To be great is to be misunderstood. So that's exactly what more or less sums it up. Yeah, it's this desire to remain the slightly incomprehensible figure. So long as you remain. Remain incomprehensible, people will continue to try and discover you.
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Anthony
I'm gonna take that forward in life, I think, add mystery to my wheelhouse. So one of the aspects. And, you know, we're gonna come towards the final days, and we're gonna come towards Oscar's. What's known as Oscar's downfall. Possibly what a lot of people remember him for in many ways, despite all the great literary. But before we get there, I want to talk about your grandmother and your father and your uncle and that side of his life. Because you already hinted at scandal with the Picture of Dorian Gray. We know that there's scandal coming down the line in terms of the trials. But what we also have is a family life, is domesticity, is a Victorian ideal of domesticity in many ways, at least on the surface of it. Tell us a little bit about their home, the Wilde family home life.
- [15:51]
Merlin Holland
Well, I think all we really know about it is what my father recorded in the memoir that he wrote in 1954. But you have to remember that this was written 60 years after the events. And I found it slightly difficult, with pangs of conscience, looking at my father's memoir and then looking at his diaries that he was keeping at the time. And I think that the idea of this smiling, gentle giant of a father going up to the nursery and playing with the children and so on. I don't think it was a regular thing. But because the idea of the sort of Victorian pater familias, the sort of rigid Victorian father who asks the nursemaid to bring the children down into the drawing room before dinner to be presented to the guest and all that. And otherwise hardly sees them. I think that definitely wasn't Oscar's style. And if I'm sure Oscar did go up to the nursery and play with the children, but it wasn't that frequent. But it was exceptional. And I think the exception in my father's mind then became the norm. And I think I had, as I say, a pang of conscience revealing what he says in his diary, which was, I had to write about this. And you know, I'm wondering whether Father Renner, he did come up to the nursery, but his brother, in a letter, shortly after Oscar dies, his brother writes a letter to one of the family friends and says, I remember how Oscar used to come up to the nursery and play with us. So there's a certain ambivalence there. I think he was exceptional as a Victorian father. I think there's no doubt he didn't write the so called fairy stories for the children because they were published when Vivian, my father and Cyril were only three and two and a half. Two, two. But as Vivian says in his memoir, he gave us suitably shortened versions of the stories for our young minds. And I think that it made the separation in the end when Oscar went to prison, when the children and Constance had to go in exile off to the continent to ride out the scandal, I think it made it all the worse. Because if your father hadn't been a hands on father or relatively hands on father, you wouldn't have missed him as much as they did.
- [18:24]
Anthony
Yeah, it's a real full stop on that family unit, isn't it?
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Maddie
And on the imaginative culture of that family as well, to a certain extent. Merlin, tell us a little bit about your grandmother Constance. Because people might be surprised to know that Oscar Wilde was married. They may not know that much about him and, you know, we know about his relationships with men, but how did he and Constance come to be married and what do you know about their relationship?
- [18:50]
Merlin Holland
It's interesting you say a lot of people didn't know that Oscar Wilde was married. I mean, obviously they knew at the time.
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Maddie
Yes, yes, that's very true.
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Merlin Holland
Many years when my father's book came out in 1954, I've got a whole. I've got two huge files of letters written to my father, thanking him for, you know, telling the story. And I should think, think probably between a third and. Yeah, about a third of them say we never knew Oscar Wilde was married. Yes, I think that, you know, the scandal had put the lid so firmly on the whole family story that people assumed or. Because most of what they knew was that he was the writer of some amusing comedies and. And went to prison for being gay. But Constance, Oscar when he was at Oxford, had a girlfriend, Florence Balcombe, and he and Florie were obviously very fond of each other. Florie then went off rather sensibly and married Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, who became Henry Irving, the famous actor's manager at the Lyceum Theatre. So I think Florrie Balcombe escaped with her skin, breathing a sigh of relief somewhere. But although they did, you know, they did correspond a bit after she got married. But there's never been any doubt in my mind that Oscar married. He could have done much better if he'd wanted to marry somebody for money. She wasn't poor. She had a legacy from her father and from her grandfather.
- [20:26]
Maddie
And she was English.
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Merlin Holland
And she was English, yes. Although she had Irish roots as well, but relatively slim, so to speak. But I don't think there's any question in my mind that they. That they married. They married for love, I agree. Yeah. People are constantly asking me, oh, did he, Was it a so called lavender marriage? Was he? Well, all right, if it was, then, okay, so he has one child, but he didn't need to have two. Probably. It's very difficult to conjecture about it, but my feeling always has been that they married for love. And in 1891, I think I'm right in saying the second volume of Stories, so called. Well, they weren't. By that stage, they'd all taken on a much darker hue. It was no longer the Happy prince and the selfish giant. It was the Fisherman and his Soul. Somebody selling his soul to. To be allowed to love a mermaid and so on. That or each one of those stories was dedicated to a famous society hostess, but the whole book is dedicated to his wife. And he writes a letter to her at the time saying he likens the book to a church. He says the side chapels, each individual story are dedicated to these famous women, but the whole is dedicated to you. The great lamp of the shrine, which burns beautifully, is yours. You know, it's a wonderfully sort of purple prose, Oscar, romantic letter. But, you know, even by 1891, she was the mother of his children. You can't take that away. As somebody once said, Oscar Wilde is not either or. You have to look at him as always, both and.
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Anthony
Yes, absolutely.
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Merlin Holland
So the fact that he finally became confirmedly gay doesn't in my mind alter the fact that he married his wife at the time for love. He may already have had homosexual tendencies. It's difficult to tell, I think. What would you say?
- [22:30]
Anthony
I mean, would you say, yeah, no, I think it's Actually, a very, very modern way of understanding these types of relationships. Rather than it being. It has to be this or it has to be that which. You know, I think we've come out of that era. But I think Oscar and Constance, even after the arrest, Oscar talks about going back to Constance. There's a conversation around whether or not that would be possible. So it's, you know. And he has that conversation regarding going back to Constance. And he. Well, as we will get to. Also talks about going back to Bosie, who I'll introduce in just a moment. So these two people are coexisting on a similar plane, I think, when I encounter them. And the remarkable thing about Constance is this. She's so perfectly named in many ways. She becomes this pillar, this familial pillar, I think, where she tries to manage all of these relationships. She's forced to manage all of these relationships. And she gets to a point, ultimately, where it will become too difficult for the children, for the boys. If she stays in that wild circus, I think. But certainly, even after he's released from prison. There's a world in which they considered coming back together. Okay. I'm not sure what that marriage would have looked like then. I'm not sure they would have cared, really. But certainly there was an idea that there would have been a marital or familial unit, even post prison, definitely. So I think you're right. I agree with you. I don't think it's black and white. And I think it's all the more interesting because it's not.
- [24:00]
Maddie
It's interesting as well that you say that the relationships that he had and the arrangements that he had. Seem to us fairly modern. We can maybe understand them a little bit more from our perspective. And I think it speaks to the ambiguity melon that you were talking about. And the other aspects of his life. That he isn't someone who exists in these categories or conforms to certain ideals. That actually he lives his life as a piece of art. And that includes all the passion and all the love and all the creativity that comes with that. And beyond that, the boundaries aren't really set. And they don't really matter in this circumstance.
- [24:31]
Merlin Holland
Well, I think there's been a tendency. And no longer, as you say, I think the either or view of Oscar, I think, has now been properly shelved where it belongs. But I think there was so much in the way of ambiguity, ambivalence in his. He was baptized a Protestant, although there is possible evidence that he may have had a Catholic baptism as well. And he was always fascinated by the Catholic Church. He was an Irishman who needed the oxygen of British society to produce these extraordinary comedies that he did. There's so much which balances itself out. It's two halves of the same thing, really. And I think this applies very much to his relationship with Constance as well. Incidentally, while we're on the subject of women, there's one thing which I think a lot of your listeners may not be aware of, which is that in 1897, Oscar was asked to edit to revamp a woman's magazine which was called the Ladies World. And he said, I'll do it, but on one condition, and that is you change the title. It's going to be called the Woman's World. And that was in deference to the new woman, as she was called then. And it is something which is not now. It's been. A lot has been made of it in the latest biographies. But he agreed to do this. And what he actually said at the time he said was that he wanted it was not too feminine and not sufficiently womanly. What we want to do is we want to deal not just with what women wear, but what they think and what they feel.
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Anthony
That's so radical.
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Maddie
Yeah.
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Anthony
For the end of the.
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Merlin Holland
You can see the influence of his mother behind this, can't you? And at one point he talks about a girl at, I think it was the Queen's University in Belfast who has won a scholarship. And he says of her, it's marvelous to chronicle night of news, Irish news. And he talks about her winning her scholarship. That shows how worthy women are of that higher culture and education which has been so tardily and in some instances, so grudgingly granted to them.
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Anthony
Go on, Oscar.
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Maddie
Absolutely. Wow.
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Merlin Holland
And there's a petition to Trinity College Dublin in 1892 with 10,000 signatures on it. It. The first signature is his mother, and the second signature is his wife.
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Anthony
Ah, there we go. So we have these amazing pillars of women that are holding him up in many ways and that he's very happy to be held up by.
- [27:23]
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- [29:54]
Anthony
Now let's turn a corner, Merlin and let's head towards those final days so as people may know what happens then in a very, you know, life changing way is that Oscar meets Bosie or Alfred Lord Douglas. He is the son of the Marquess of Queensbury and he is what, 20, 21, I think when they meet a young beautiful man and Oscar and he certainly fall in love, whatever that looks like, whatever that means we can talk about forever. Oscar, I think it's fair to say, is entirely enthralled. He is consumed by Bosie. And Bosie is. What is Bosie? Bosie is difficult, I suppose. Bosie is tricky and he's capricious and he's all of those things. And he's quite demanding. He can be demanding of Oscar's money. They take a pair of rooms side by side in the Savoy. And there is a visitation from lots of different sex workers, male sex workers that come into the room. And later those sheets come up in the trials. But it all starts to unravel. This intense intimate relationship starts to unravel. Not between Oscar and Bosie, but when Queensbury inserts himself in it. So there's a calling card which turns into a real turning point. Can you give us a little bit about what happens that day when Queensberry heads to a particular club in London?
- [31:14]
Merlin Holland
Well, just as a little preface to that, there was an incident which took place in the Cafe Royal, which is when Bosie and Oscar are having lunch. And they invite the Marquis, who has appeared, to join them. And he's, I think, a little bit doubtful about whether this is going to be a good idea. But apparently the story goes that Bosie leaves and the Marquis and Oscar finish their lunch together. And the Marquis. I can't whether he actually says it or he writes it to Bosie. He says, you know, I can understand why you're fond of this man. He's extraordinary. But of course, it doesn't take long. It's a matter of weeks before he's then saying, you've got to of break up this relationship London is talking about. It's disgraceful. And so on. And then in the end, it's at the first night of the Importance of being earnest in February 1895. He appears with a bouquet of rotting vegetables that he's intending to either throw on the stage, his ticket is cancelled at Oscar's request by the management. And he goes stomping off as Oscar says to Posie, chattering like a monstrous ape. But he goes and he leaves his calling card at Oscar's club, the Albemarle Club, on which he's written Oscar Wilde posing some demise, some device.
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Anthony
Yes, he was in a rush.
- [32:37]
Merlin Holland
And it's never. It was never quite clear what it was posing as or whether it was posing. So if he was posing as, he's not accusing him of being a sodomite, but posing sodomite means that you are a sodomite and you're posing.
- [32:51]
Anthony
Yes.
- [32:51]
Merlin Holland
So this is why when Oscar then sues him for libel at Bosie's insistence, the indictment which is drawn up takes account of both interpretations of the card. And when he receives the card, he writes a Note to his we think, I'm pretty certain his first male homosexual lover, Robert Ross and says, Robbie, come and see me. The most terrible thing has happened. The Ivory Tower is assailed by the foul thing that very purple again. I've asked Bosie to come in the morning, but when Robbie gets there, Bosie's already there. Bosie's not gonna waste the opportunity of trying to see his father behind bars.
- [33:39]
Anthony
We should say Bosie hates his father. Both sons, both of Queensberry's sons have a very. Well, the one that's left alive now have a very difficult relationship with his father. Queensberry is known to be a man of sport. He's the Queensberry Boxing rules. This is how he's known. So this is a very, you know, tactile. He's not an isthy put it that way. But as you say, Merlin, Bozie is keen to get this through in the course. And I just want to pause there for a second because it occurred to me recently, posing as sodomy. Posing somdomai definitely sodomitical intent is in there. But the interesting thing about this is that about. I think it was three or four months prior the Labouchere Amendment act had come into place, which when you were trying to prove same sex sexual activity between prior to that you had to prove penetration. So you had. It's a very difficult thing to prove. But with this amendment it was all kinds of kissing, fondling. It could be so many different things. So it suddenly widens out and it's more easy to go after somebody for same sex attraction because of this amendment. But it's interesting that Queensbury puts sodomite or somdomite specifically on the card because that is the thing that everybody would have been watching out for previously. That is worst thing. Again, I think people misunderstand this. It's Oscar who goes after Queensberry first. There are three trials and the first one is Oscar taking Queensberry.
- [35:07]
Merlin Holland
Interestingly that the Lebouchere amendment refers to it, as you say, it's far more broad. It's referred to rather quaintly as gross indecency, which can be interpreted more or less as anything. A kiss in public, it doesn't have to be sodomy. It's not specified. It's just very broad abroad. And I make the mistake constantly. In the first trial, which is the trial which Oscar brings for libel against the Marquess of Queensberry, he is cross examined by Edward Carson, the very famous barrister. And the cross examination is so penetrating and brutal that I make the mistake Constantly of seeing Oscar as being in the dock rather than Queensberry.
- [35:55]
Anthony
Yeah. He's interrogated like he's on trial. It's quite brutal.
- [36:00]
Merlin Holland
It is.
- [36:01]
Maddie
And it does backfire for him, doesn't it? But before we talk about the outcome of this trial, I have a question about Bosie here. And Anthony, you talked about him being difficult and potentially demanding on Oscar. And I just wonder how much is Oscar swayed by Bosie in going after Bosie's father. Is this something that Oscar feels he wants to do for himself, to right this wrong and stand up for himself? Or is this a case that within the relationship between Oscar and Bosie, Oscar feels he needs to do this, he.
- [36:31]
Merlin Holland
Wants to please this young man that he's in love with. I mean, I think by that stage, this is 1895 and he's known Bosie since 1890. 1891. I think the desire to please him is still there. They've had bitter quarrels over, as is evidenced by that long, long letter from prison he writes to Bosi de profundis. But he still wants to please him. And he says rather movingly in that letter, he writes from prison, you dominated me and your father frightened me. I was no longer the captain of my soul and did not know it.
- [37:07]
Maddie
Gosh.
- [37:08]
Merlin Holland
And in that, I think, sums up the relationship he has with, not only with Queensberry, but also with Bosie. I staggered as an ox into the shambles, he says. Events overtook me complet. I made all the wrong decisions. And I think it's wanting to please Bosie. Robbie Ross, who he asks to come the night the card. He discovers the card would, had he been there first, would have simply said to him, tear the damn thing up, put it in the waist. You're on a hiding to nothing. Other people said to him shortly before the trial, no jury is going to convict a father of trying to save his son from what is seen, of course, as depravity and sexual deviance. So I think that, yeah, gosh, people have often said to me, is the one question you'd like to ask your grandfather? And I've always said, yes, why did you do it? And I say, I think I know, but I want to hear it from his lips, if only.
- [38:10]
Maddie
Yeah. So tell us what the outcome of the trial is. It's not going to end well. And this is the beginning of the end on a larger scale, isn't it, for Oscar? But this trial specifically, what happens?
- [38:20]
Merlin Holland
Well, he treats it as a piece of theatre he's playing to the gallery. There are too many jokes. He's trying to score off Edward Carson, his own counsel, Sir Edward Clarke, who incidentally, almost incomprehensibly because he was very much of an establishment figure, represents him pro bono in the two criminal trials which follow. So he doesn't even pay for his barrister then. But Sir Edward Clarke admits a lot of the correspondence which has been found by Queensberry's solicitors, not exactly normal, if one could put it like that, letters passing between two men. And as Oscar says, this is not commercial correspondence, this is a correspondence between two men who are very fond of each other. But it's admitted. But it's when Edward Carson comes to cross examine him on all this that it all starts to unravel. And the famous point at which there's a servant, servant at Bosie's lodgings in Oxford called Walter Granger and Edward Carson says, did you sit down and dine with him? And Oscar says, of course not, he was a servant sort of thing wouldn't have happened. And then Edward Carson says, did you kiss him? And Oscar says, oh dear me, no. He was such an ugly boy, I pitied him for it. He was one. And you, it, ah, it's the train at the end of the tunnel, it's coming towards you and you. Please, no, it's one witticism, one joke too many and he talks himself into.
- [39:56]
Anthony
Prison and it is funny and I am laughing, you know, however many hundred years later. But you're right, Merlin, it's that thing that go, well, hold on, because the question, the follow on question is, so had he not been ugly, would you have kissed him?
- [40:10]
Merlin Holland
And then it's like, is that the reason you say that you did not kiss him? That's exactly, you're absolutely right, yes. That comes in. I think Carson couldn't believe what had. I don't think he was expecting the answer at all. I think it fell into his lap and he then made the most of it.
- [40:28]
Anthony
So then we have this instance where Oscar's council, both counsels together decide that we're gonna drop this case, that this will not turn out well, so let's drop it. So that's case one finished, but this is not the end of the, of the trials. Now what happens once this trial essentially collapses? What we have is Queensberry saying, no, we're actually not going to leave it there. And he decides to send all the evidence that they had and this evidence then gets filtered actually for what's coming next to the Director for Public Prosecutions, as it was known and we're kicking off again straight away with a second trial. Marilyn, tell us a little bit more about this. And this is more dangerous because now this is a trial that's being brought against Oscar.
- [41:15]
Merlin Holland
Exactly. Both parties agree to withdraw, as you say. Oscar goes off and has lunch or whatever it was. And in the afternoon he goes to the Cadogan Hotel where Bosie is staying. And he spends the afternoon there, I'm afraid to say, drinking hock and seltzer. And he is very undecided, I think, what he should do. People have always said the police left it until after the last train for the continent had gone to arrest him. And with a bit of research, I discovered that was complete nonsense because there were several more trains afterwards they were going to make. I think, and I believe this. There was too much of this going on. There was been the Cleveland street scandal. Telegraph boys from the post office were so called, offering their services at the aristocracy. At a sort of male brothel it was known about. The police raided it. I think the public feeling about this unmentionable vice was running pretty high. And I think to find that Oscar had dropped himself in it, basically by suing Queensberry. And the evidence coming out, it was too good an opportunity to miss. And there is, though, his mother comes into this as well, about fleeing or staying. Yes. You know, whether he should go or whether he should stay. And apparently it's reported that Oscar's mother said to her, to him, if you go, I will never speak to you again, but if you stay, you'll always be my son.
- [42:50]
Anthony
Isn't that amazing?
- [42:51]
Maddie
That's incredible, isn't it? It says so much of who she.
- [42:54]
Merlin Holland
Was, I think, and it's. It has such a ring of truth about it that I believe that it really is same.
- [42:59]
Anthony
I want to believe it. Whether it's true or not, I'm choosing to believe that it is. This trial, Trial two is interesting because we don't get a verdict. There is essentially a hung jury. I think it's 10 in favor, two against. As far as I remember, yes.
- [43:14]
Merlin Holland
In those days, it had to be a total verdict rather than a majority.
- [43:17]
Anthony
Yes. So we don't get a verdict in this trial. And you might be thinking to yourself, amazing, we're off the hook here and we can go. But no, this is when the Director of Public Prosecutions comes back again and this is where the case gets streamlined. They get rid of things that they're not 100% sure of. Oh, that doesn't stand up in court. Let's get rid of that they're really picky with their witnesses. And so now we get for trial three. And this is where the real downfall occurs.
- [43:47]
Merlin Holland
Yeah. Interestingly, though, in all three trials, the picture of Dorian Gray comes up as evidence that Oscar must be homosexual because he is writing. There is the homosexual subtext in the picture of Dorian Gray between the artist Basil and Dorian. And it comes up in the Crown Prosecution's trial against him as well. It's not made as much a of of as in the libel trial, but it's still there, I think the idea that you've got rid of this monster of depravity who is corrupting English literary morals, if you like, by writing this rather sort of dubious story, which is now on, I think, the O level syllabus in England.
- [44:32]
Maddie
I did it in school. I loved it. What's the great quote that Oscar says about, you know, there's no such thing as morality or immorality in a book that's just a book that's well written. A book that's poorly written, you know, and you can sort of imagine him saying that at trial. I'm not sure that he did, but, you know, the sort of defense of this, keeping everything ambiguous in terms of that art and life boundary. And because other people are now bringing his art into the trial and his real life, he is. You can imagine him sort of pushing back against that and being playful with it.
- [45:01]
Merlin Holland
Too clever by half. It's playing to the gallery. I mean, I've always said he goes into this as if it is a play to which he has written the prologue.
- [45:09]
Maddie
Yes.
- [45:10]
Merlin Holland
But he doesn't know the outcome. And he's not even sure of how many characters are going to appear. So it's a pretty dangerous thing to do. But, you know, he lived by, as he said again in De Profundis, the danger was half the excitement. And that sort of sums up that period of his life before he sues the Marquis of Queensberry.
- [45:32]
Anthony
So just to give you an idea then, of some of the proof that's presented in the trial. We have staff from the Savoy Hotel talking about who's coming and going from the two rooms. We have apparently stained bedsheets. So there's this inference of sexual activity. We have rent boys, as they're called at the time, who are coming in, however believably, to say that, yes, we had kissed, or, yes, he had given me money or whatever it might be. And this stacks up, stacks up, stacks up. And by the third trial, it won't surprise anybody to hear Oscar is certainly not the man he was even in the first trial. He is more defeated. He is tired, you know. And the amazing thing about this is they have the dock at Bow Street Museum of Crime and justice, it's called. Now, the very dock that he stood in is there, and they're refurbishing it and everything. So you can literally hold onto that dock, which is just incredible. No spoilers, because we're getting to it now. But he is found guilty. Merlin, in this case, tell us what happens once that verdict is delivered.
- [46:35]
Merlin Holland
Well, once the verdict's delivered, the judge says whatever he does say, take him away. And Oscar, in the reports of the trial, says, and I, my lord, may I say nothing. And the judge just waves him down into the cells. So he's arrested that night. I think he spends the weekend in Newgate. He then goes to Pentonville and he finishes up for three or four months in Wandsworth, Wandsworth prison. And he's been given a sentence of two years hard labor. And the judge says, in my view, it's not a severe enough sentence for what he has done. And we think about that today. And when I was doing some research into the subject, I found that a. I think I'm right in saying it was a boy of 12 had been given two weeks in prison for stealing a tin of condensed milk. And if that was the sort of thing, that sort of sentence that was handed down, you can understand why the judge is saying, well, this is nothing like a severe enough sentence for gross indecency. And I think that he starts performing hard labor in the prison. And it was a pretty harsh regime. It was intended to break prisoners. The treadmill, I believe it was prisoners in a long line, literally treading on the slats of this huge roller, which in turn was connected by gearing and pulleys and whatever, either to the prison laundry or. I think it was also. It was used for grinding corn. Yes, but at least that was something which was, say, creative. It had a purpose. What did not have a purpose is what they had in the cell, its. Which was what was called the crank. And it was simply a handle in the wall. The friction of this handle could be increased or decreased according to the. Presumably the strength and size of the prisoner. And a prisoner had to make so many revolutions of this crank. It was totally unproductive. And you think somebody was spending an hour, two hours, whatever it was, turning this damn handle for no obvious purpose, whatever. You can imagine how it was punishment, I mean, beyond anything which we can really conceive Today in a prison, thinking.
- [49:07]
Maddie
About his family in this moment when he's in prison and the experience beyond those prison walls. What happens to Constance and the children in this moment? How does she react to Oscar being imprisoned?
- [49:20]
Merlin Holland
Well, as soon as he's arrested, she brings the children out of the school. The libel trial takes place at the beginning of April. His first trial against the Crown is around April 2022, 3, 4. And the final trial is at the end of May. And I think Constance brings her children out of school wondering, you know, really what's going to happen next. She sends them off to the continent with a governess in the middle of the May, but she stays behind. And what she was saying about Constance and her name, she's very aptly named for her constancy. She stays behind and I have proof of the fact that she stays behind until the middle of June. Now why on earth would she stay behind? The answer is she stayed behind in my view, to the end of the second trial when he's convicted in order that if he gets off, she's there to greet him.
- [50:22]
Anthony
That stands to reason to me, I've always assumed she doesn't just sort of.
- [50:25]
Merlin Holland
Pick up her skirts and rush off to the continent with the children. The children are sent off, obviously to protect them from the fallout.
- [50:32]
Maddie
Yes.
- [50:32]
Merlin Holland
But then she then goes and joins them in June in Switzerland. They spend two or three months just above the Lake of Geneva and then starts this peripatetic existence between Switzerland and Italy and Germany. Constance finding a new place to settle with her children and school them. Initially hoping that she can get back into England sort of by the back door maybe six months after the whole thing has blown over. But of course the scandal is far too big and there's no way that she can go back to England. And eventually she dies before Oscar on the continent.
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- [52:48]
Anthony
I'm going to fast forward a little bit to 1897. So we've had two years of hard labor. We've had De Profundis. We've had that beautiful letter that, as you've quoted from earlier, Merlin, that has, you know, sort of part confession, part art, part musing. It's really, really, really beautiful work. But Oscar emerges into a world that doesn't really know where to place him, particularly in terms of England. And so he must again, thanks to good old Robbie Ross, the help of Robbie Ross, he must get himself out of there. So tell us what happened in that exile period once he leaves prison in 18.
- [53:31]
Merlin Holland
There's one little thing I'd like to tell you.
- [53:33]
Anthony
Yeah, of course.
- [53:33]
Merlin Holland
When he comes. Within a few days of coming out of prison, friends have gathered a certain sum of money for him to try and set him up on his feet. Constance has agreed to give him an allowance of £150 a year. This is her deviant, delinquent husband who she is giving an allowance out of her, her private income and of the money that the friends have gathered together. Oscar sends the equivalent in today's money of about £2,000 to 10 of his fellow prisoners to set them up when they come at £2 here, £2 there, £1 50 here. And he sends it to solicitors to be given to these men that he's not known his fellow convicts when they come out of prison to set them up. And there's one thing I'd just like to say to you that in De Profundis he's in prison, he's never been in prison before. And he writes, this society takes upon itself the right to inflict appalling punishments on the individual. But it also has a supreme vice of shallowness and fails to realize what it's done. When the man's punishment is over, it leaves him to himself. That is to say it abandons him at the very moment when its highest duty towards him begins. And this is written in prison to Alfred Douglas. And when we talk today about the rehabilitation of offenders, here is Oscar again. He's so much. I know it's a cliche, but he's so much ahead of his time. Realizing that society has to help rehabilitate the criminals. Extraordinary. Anyway, Constance writes to him. He writes to Constance. Apparently her brother says it was one of the most beautiful letters he'd ever seen. Sadly now disappeared, destroyed by her family. After her death, she kept all his letters. And it's quite clear that she wanted to go up to northern France, to Dieppe Belneval, where he was living, and see him. He desperately wanted to see her. Partly, obviously, to have access to his children. And my interpretation of the whole. People have said that she hesitated. Yeah, she did hesitate. But why? And the answer, I think, is quite simple. They weren't divorced. She didn't want to divorce him. If they got back together, it wouldn't have lasted. But if they got back together, how on earth would that continental society have coped with Mr. And Mrs. Wilde? He was a convict, a homosexual and a bankrupt. Any one of those would have put you beyond the pale. So we can't ostracize her, but can we really accept him back in? Look, the easiest thing, my dear, is just let him find his feet. Give him a period of probation, six months maybe. And, of course, she listens to this. At which point Alfred Douglas starts working his magic.
- [56:37]
Anthony
He's back. He's back. And he goes to Oscar, doesn't he? They reunite relatively briefly, but he goes out to him.
- [56:43]
Merlin Holland
Alfred Douglas is living in France at the time. And he keeps writing to Oscar. And Oscar writes to Robbie Ross, who is being his loyal friend at this stage, saying, I've had the most revolting letter from Bosie. I hope I never see him again. But, oh, God, the autumn comes. He's living on the north coast of France. The only way to look, basically, at Berneval is over the Channel, home, back towards England. Cold, gray autumn days coming in. And Bosie says to him, come on, let's go off to Naples for the winter. I mean, in his position, I'm afraid to say, I think I probably would have done the same.
- [57:25]
Anthony
Oh, listen, we could. We could sit here and be like, no, you shouldn't do it. Don't go back.
- [57:29]
Merlin Holland
It's just like the trial. And so he goes off to Naples with Alfred Douglas, and all hell breaks loose. Constance stops his allowance The Martianess of Queensbury, who is the one who's funding Bosie's lifestyle at that stage, stops her allowance. So they're starved to. And I think Oscar finally realizes that he's made a terrible mistake. There's a very interesting letter that Constance writes to a friend of hers a month or two after they've broken up, Oscar and Bosie in Naples. And she says, for the sake of the children, I feel I have to keep apart. But if I saw him now, I know I should forgive him everything. And it's almost, it's almost incomprehensible that she can have been so loyal and so. But she was the mother of his children. She believed in him.
- [58:24]
Maddie
You get such a sense of her perception of him as a charismatic and lovable person. And he's obviously a huge, huge portion of her life and so important to her. As you say, he's the father of her children. But even beyond that there's obviously, there's a connection there. Whatever that connection looks like, that is not breakable for either of them. And she doesn't want to break it, she doesn't need to.
- [58:49]
Merlin Holland
There's a line in. I think it's a woman of no importance, an exchange between, I think Mrs. Allenby and Lord Illingworth. And she says to him, you men, you love with your eyes, if you love at all. We women, we love with our ears. And to me that sums up Constance. She doesn't just love with her eyes, she has a life behind her with Oscar and her children. And I think if what would have happened if they'd got back to. As I say, I don't think it would have lasted, but it might have kick started him again into writing. It wouldn't have been. It wouldn't have been. It wouldn't have been comedies, it would have been things like Salloway. It would have been the new surrealist, the symbolist theater. We would have had other things. And then of course, Constance dies barely a year after Oscar comes out of prison from a botched operation. He never sees her again. He does go and visit her grave and he writes very movingly about it.
- [59:55]
Maddie
I was gonna say. What is his reaction to her death?
- [59:57]
Merlin Holland
He's distraught. Robert Ross wrote to Oscar's publisher and said, Mrs. Wilde has died. And of course Oscar didn't feel it at all. And people have often quoted this in evidence of the fact that Oscar was now confirmedly gay, couldn't care less about his wife, didn't feel her death at all. In my book, I've conjectured something which is much more complicated and I think it's probably more correct. But he is distraught not only by her death. He says to one of his friends, if only we'd kissed one more time. That was to another very close friend of his. And he goes and sees her grave in Genoa, where she had been living and died. And he says it was very tragic seeing her name carved on the tomb. Of my name, no mention. And it gave me a sense of the uselessness of all regrets. Life is a very terrible thing. Oh, gosh.
- [60:55]
Anthony
Yeah, it's heartbreaking.
- [60:56]
Merlin Holland
It gives me the shivers every time I read it in those last years. He never abandons his sense of humor. It's difficult to conceive how in those circumstances he could still be amusing. But as an old friend of his invited him to go and she just got married, Frances Forbes Robertson, and she's living in Wales. And she says, come and see me and my new husband. And this is how he replies to her. Miles of sea, miles of land, the purple of mountains and the silver of rivers divide us. You don't know how poor I am. I have no money at all. I live where I'm supposed to live on a few francs a day. A bare remnant saved from shipwreck. Like dear Saint Francis of Assisi, I am wedded to poverty. But in my case, the marriage is not a success. I mean, but you can come out with that. It has humor, it has beauty, it has sadness. And he finishes the letter saying also sometimes send me a line to tell me of the beauty you found in life. I live now on equality and have little music of my own. Your old friend, Oscar Bosh.
- [62:01]
Anthony
We have had then in this history, we have had an Irishman who has, you know, set Trinity alight, not literally, and then moved over to England and become a star in his own right. Even before he published anything and you know, made waves in America, had these hit plays published. Very, very immoral or headline grabbing novel. We've had the trials, we've had this idea of same sex attraction. We've had again more headlines around Oscar. The witticism and then the downfall. We've had the imprisonment, we've had the release. And now we come to the final day, the death of Oscar Wilde. This is a French affair. But the life that he leads is certainly not the life he experienced even five, 10 years prior. He is, he is a broken man. He is a lost man. I would imagine if he had seen this somehow 10 years before, he could never have imagined that this was how it was going to end, maybe.
- [63:04]
Merlin Holland
I think you're absolutely right. And I think that if he had been prescient and he'd known what was going to happen, he would never have taken legal action against Marcus of Queensberry. And so he says to Bosi in that famous letter, the De Profundis, he says, you never understood my art. My art to me was emphasis. Everything. It was. All other passions to me were as marsh water to red wine, the light of the glowworm against the magic mirror of the moon. My art meant everything to me. And I think people have often talked about Oscar being a martyr, as he says somewhere that the uselessness, the terrible uselessness and waste of martyrdom. If you're a martyr, you go willingly to your death for a principle, for a cause, whatever it may, may be. And he certainly didn't go willingly to his death. And I think that those last terrible years alone there were friends, but he wasn't totally destitute. He writes begging letters to people for money. He sells the scenario of an unwritten play to three different people. And I feel terrible every time I read it. You know, very, very naughty. But, you know, when you need money, there's not. Not much you stop at. And of course, in the end, it's been conjectured that he died of tertiary syphilis, which has now been more or less firmly stamped on by the medical profession and exposed as a silly bit of gossip. But, you know, the. The literary man who dies young and dies of syphilis, showing a life of sort of depravity, sexual depravity and everything else. It was all part of the Oscar Wilde, if you like. But it's basically, he had a terrible ear problem. And it got into. As his father said, at one stage, when the ear is infected, unless it's treated, there is no knowing where the infection may go and into the brain. Cerebral meningitis, terrible pain, opium in his last days. And finally he just dies.
- [65:14]
Anthony
One of the things that, when we spoke before, Merle and I know, and a lot of listeners will probably be really aware, and I think this is a good place to see this conversation out on, is that of course, in Pere Lachaise, there is the iconic grave that is there and that is visited again and again and again. And I was telling Merlin just before we began this, I'm heading that way myself this weekend. But you had some work that you, as kind of the guardian of this legacy, had to do recently, too. Cause, you know, if you think about that gravestone, one of the first Things that comes to mind is all the lipsticks. And, yes, it feels like this is a fitting tribute and whatever else, but actually, maybe you should tell listeners what happens with all those lipsticks over time and how that can impact the monument.
- [66:03]
Merlin Holland
Well, I think it started shortly after the film in which Stephen Fry played Oscar very well. I mean, he has the physique as well as the intellectual capability to carry it off. But I think it made people aware that there was those who didn't know that there was a tomb in. In Pere Lachaise, and somebody, one person, put a lipstick kiss on it. And it became the thing to do on the Paris circuit for all visitors. And it was partly due to the generosity of the Irish that we were able to clean the tomb and put up a glass be barrier around it. And interestingly, when the sun shines early in the morning on the glass in the autumn and it's low in the sky, and a kiss on the glass will be projected onto the tomb. Same effect, no damage. And I found this out from a journalist who was writing about the protection and cleaning of the tomb shortly afterwards. And she said, a couple of girls came running down the alley, where's the tomb with all the kisses on? And she said, whose tomb? Well, you know, the tomb of the kisses. No idea who it was. And they were distraught to find that they couldn't kiss the stone. But she said, kiss the glass and see what happens. And they did. And she said, now you've done what you wanted to do. You've given Oscar a kiss, but it's just been projected by the sun onto the stone.
- [67:33]
Anthony
I didn't realize you could do that now. And the whole point being that the chemicals in the lipsticks were starting to corrode the monument, which is, you know.
- [67:42]
Maddie
People do that a little bit at Mary Wollstonecraft's grave in St. Pancras old church as well. We went there and saw that, actually, and did not kiss it.
- [67:50]
Anthony
We didn't kiss it. And I never have kissed us, even though I don't wear lipstick. But I've never kissed that grave either. So I'm not going around kissing graves, if anybody wants to know. Maddy, would you like to wrap up for us?
- [67:59]
Maddie
I would. So before we end, I want to ask Merlin about the British Library that he's been given for his grandfather, because he showed us this before we started recording. And we can talk a lot about, you know, the different legacies that Oscar Wilde leaves behind. And, you know, he is one of 50,000 men who are posthumously pardoned for homosexual acts in, I think, 2017. It's called the. Is it the Alan Turing Law?
- [68:23]
Merlin Holland
Yes, that's right.
- [68:24]
Maddie
You know, and there are some very serious ramifications and lots of different legacies that we can discuss. But tell me about the British Library card, because it was quite remarkable to see this when you came into the studio this morning.
- [68:38]
Merlin Holland
Well, somebody found that Oscar's reader's card from what was then the British Museum Reading Room, which was the National Library back in those days, had been taken away from. Ernie was convicted and they. Oh, you know, they were homophobic, they took it and the British Library is the successor to the British Museum Reading Room, said, this is nonsense. Anyone who had a conviction had his reader's past taken away. And they got in touch with me and they said, wouldn't it be a nice gesture if we made one in his name and gave it back to you? And I said, that's a lovely idea. Could we perhaps combine it with an evening when my book comes out?
- [69:15]
Maddie
Perfect timing.
- [69:16]
Merlin Holland
And they did that. And people have asked me about the Alan Turing Law. I'm not sure, I'm still not sure whether I, as a descendant, have to request a pardon. I think it's called a. It has a proper legal name, whether I have to ask for a pardon or whether it's done automatically. And I've said to people, if I have to ask for it, I don't think I would, because a pardon implies that you've done something wrong. And although it was against the law, he didn't believe that same sex relations between men was wrong. And the fact that an institute of learning has given him back to a man of letters, a reader's card, symbolically, to me is more, much more significant and worthwhile than to have a pardon under the Alan Turing law. And yes, I have a reader's card. If I don't, I suppose I'd have to get dressed up in knee breeches and grow my hair in order to get in on. No, I was deeply touched by that. It's a lovely gesture.
- [70:26]
Maddie
Yeah. And it is a really fantastic object. You know, anyone who's got a British Library reader's card is, you know, the little plastic sort of credit card shaped card and it's got Oscar's photograph on it. It's really remarkable.
- [70:35]
Merlin Holland
Expiry 30th of November 1900.
- [70:40]
Maddie
So you won't be able to check any books out with it necessarily. Okay, Merlin, if anyone wants to read your work, including your latest book, where can they do that? What's the title of it.
- [70:48]
Merlin Holland
Where is it available after Oscar the Legacy of a Scandal. And in it I think I first of all tried to bust a lot of the myths which were created around him after his death, and second, secondly, to show that Oscar in fact caused more trouble after his death in 1900 right up until the present day than he did in his lifetime. So it's, it's. I think it's quite a rocky read, if I can put it like that.
- [71:16]
Maddie
Wonderful. I will be getting my copy straight after we've recorded this. If you've enjoyed this show, then leave us a five star review wherever you get your podcast. If you're watching on YouTube, leave a comment below. Share Like Subscribe Everything that we ask you to do, please do it and we will see you next time. Thank you very much.
- [71:44]
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Hannah Berner
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