158. Sending Wilde to the Wilderness

Henry Labouchère’s amendment of 1885 had criminalised any sexual act between men, labelling it gross indecency, an offence which was a great deal easier to prove than the older charge of sodomy.

In 1895, Oscar Wilde was at the peak of his fame and acclaim, with his play The Importance of Being Earnest having had a hugely successful premier. He was also in a stormy relationship with Alfred Douglas, the son of the Marquess of Queensberry (yes, he of the rules of boxing). Queensberry had already lost his eldest son, killed it was maintained in public in a shooting accident, believed in fact to have committed suicide, following an affair with no less a man than the Prime Minister, Lord Rosebery. When Queensberry realised that another son was involved in something similar, he hit the roof. He left a card at Wilde’s club with the accusation that he was a ‘sodomite’. Wilde felt the accusation was so serious, he had to sue for libel.

Sadly, his case fell apart, especially under the acute cross examination of a lawyer destined for a brilliant career in the law and in politics, Edward Carson. He defended Queensberry by setting out to show that the allegation against Wilde was true. Sadly, by doing that he provided all the evidence Wilde’s enemies needed to have him condemned in a criminal trial himself.

And with that, Wilde was bankrupted and his career destroyed. “I have ruined the most brilliant man in London,” Carson is reported to have said. Certainly, he contributed. But the real blame was a law that made the unorthodox behaviour of the most brilliant man in London not just a difference to tolerate, but a deviance to persecute.

Illustration: Oscar Wilde and Alfred Douglas, in a gelatin silver photo of 1893, by Gillman & Co, National Portrait Gallery P1122

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.