Oscar Attacks Queensberry and is Worsted

It was weakness in Oscar and not strength that allowed him to be driven to the conflict by Lord Alfred Douglas; it was his weakness again which prevented him from abandoning the prosecution, once it was begun. Such a resolution would have involved a breaking away from his associates and from his friends; a personal assertion of will of which he was incapable. Again and again he answered my urging with:

“I can’t, Frank, I can’t.”

When I pointed out to him that the defence was growing bolder — it was announced one morning in the newspapers that Lord Queensberry, instead of pleading paternal privilege and minimising his accusation, was determined to justify the libel and declare that it was true in every particular — Oscar could only say weakly:

“I can’t help it, Frank, I can’t do anything; you only distress me by predicting disaster.”

The fibres of resolution, never strong in him, had been destroyed by years of self-indulgence, while the influence whipping him was stronger than I guessed. He was hurried like a sheep to the slaughter.

Although everyone who cared to think knew that Queensberry would win the case, many persons believed that Oscar would make a brilliant intellectual fight, and carry off the honours, if not the verdict.

The trial took place at the Central Criminal Court on April 3rd, 1895. Mr. Justice Collins was the judge and the case was conducted at first with the outward seemliness and propriety which are so peculiarly English. An hour before the opening of the case the Court was crowded, not a seat to be had for love or money: even standing room was at a premium.

The Counsel were the best at the Bar; Sir Edward Clarke, Q.C., Mr. Charles Mathews, and Mr. Travers Humphreys for the prosecution; Mr. Carson, Q.C., Mr. G.C. Gill and Mr. A. Gill for the defence. Mr. Besley, Q.C., and Mr. Monckton watched the case, it was said, for the brothers, Lord Douglas of Hawick and Lord Alfred Douglas.

While waiting for the judge, the buzz of talk in the court grew loud; everybody agreed that the presence of Sir Edward Clarke gave Oscar an advantage. Mr. Carson was not so well known then as he has since become; he was regarded as a sharp-witted Irishman who had still his spurs to win. Some knew he had been at school with Oscar, and at Trinity College was as high in the second class as Oscar was in the first. It was said he envied Oscar his reputation for brilliance.

Suddenly the loud voice of the clerk called for silence.

As the judge appeared everyone stood up and in complete stillness Sir Edward Clarke opened for the prosecution. The bleak face, long upper lip and severe side whiskers made the little man look exactly like a nonconformist parson of the old days, but his tone and manner were modern — quiet and conversational. The charge, he said, was that the defendant had published a false and malicious libel against Mr. Oscar Wilde. The libel was in the form of a card which Lord Queensberry had left at a club to which Mr. Oscar Wilde belonged: it could not be justified unless the statements written on the card were true. It would, however, have been possible to have excused the card by a strong feeling, a mistaken feeling, on the part of a father, but the plea which the defendant had brought before the Court raised graver issues. He said that the statement was true and was made for the public benefit. There were besides a series of accusations in the plea (everyone held his breath), mentioning names of persons, and it was said with regard to these persons that Mr. Wilde had solicited them to commit a grave offence and that he had been guilty with each and all of them of indecent practices. . . . ” My heart seemed to stop. My worst forebodings were more than justified. Vaguely I heard Clarke’s voice, “grave responsibility . . . serious allegations . . . credible witnesses . . . Mr. Oscar Wilde was the son of Sir William Wilde . . . ” the voice droned on and I awoke to feverish clearness of brain. Queensberry had turned the defence into a prosecution. Why had he taken the risk? Who had given him the new and precise information? I felt that there was nothing before Oscar but ruin absolute. Could anything be done? Even now he could go abroad — even now. I resolved once more to try and induce him to fly.

My interest turned from these passionate imaginings to the actual. Would Sir Edward Clarke fight the case as it should be fought? He had begun to tell of the friendship between Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas; the friendship too between Oscar Wilde and Lady Queensberry, who on her own petition had been divorced from the Marquis; would he go on to paint the terrible ill-feeling that existed between Lord Alfred Douglas and his father, and show how Oscar had been dragged into the bitter family squabble? To the legal mind this had but little to do with the case.

We got, instead, a dry relation of the facts which have already been set forth in this history. Wright, the porter of the Albemarle Club, was called to say that Lord Queensberry had handed him the card produced. Witness had looked at the card; did not understand it; but put it in an envelope and gave it to Mr. Wilde.

Mr. Oscar Wilde was then called and went into the witness box. He looked a little grave but was composed and serious. Sir Edward Clarke took him briefly through the incidents of his life: his successes at school and the University; the attempts made to blackmail him, the insults of Lord Queensberry, and then directed his attention to the allegations in the plea impugning his conduct with different persons. Mr. Oscar Wilde declared that there was no truth in any of these statements. Hereupon Sir Edward Clarke sat down. Mr. Carson rose and the death duel began.

Mr. Carson brought out that Oscar Wilde was forty years of age and Lord Alfred Douglas twenty-four. Down to the interview in Tite Street Lord Queensberry had been friendly with Mr. Wilde.

“Had Mr. Wilde written in a publication called The Chameleon?”

“Yes.”

“Had he written there a story called ‘The Priest and the Acolyte’?”

“No.”

“Was that story immoral?”

Oscar amused everyone by replying:

“Much worse than immoral, it was badly written,” but feeling that this gibe was too light for the occasion he added:

“It was altogether offensive and perfect twaddle.”

He admitted at once that he did not express his disapproval of it; it was “beneath him to concern himself with the effusions of an illiterate undergraduate.”

“Did Mr. Wilde ever consider the effect in his writings of inciting to immorality?”

Oscar declared that he aimed neither at good nor evil, but tried to make a beautiful thing. When questioned as to the immorality in thought in the article in The Chameleon, he retorted “that there is no such thing as morality or immorality in thought.” A hum of understanding and approval ran through the court; the intellect is profoundly amoral.

Again and again he scored in this way off Mr. Carson.

“No work of art ever puts forward views; views belong to the Philistines and not to artists.” . . .

“What do you think of this view?”

“I don’t think of any views except my own.”

All this while Mr. Carson had been hitting at a man on his own level; but Oscar Wilde was above him and not one of his blows had taken effect. Every moment, too, Oscar grew more and more at his ease, and the combat seemed to be turning completely in his favour. Mr. Carson at length took up “Dorian Gray” and began cross-examining on passages in it.

“You talk about one man adoring another. Did you ever adore any man?”

“No,” replied Oscar quietly, “I have never adored anyone but myself.”

The Court roared with laughter. Oscar went on:

“There are people in the world, I regret to say, who cannot understand the deep affection that an artist can feel for a friend with a beautiful personality.”

He was then questioned about his letter (already quoted here) to Lord Alfred Douglas. It was a prose-poem, he said, written in answer to a sonnet. He had not written to other people in the same strain, not even to Lord Alfred Douglas again: he did not repeat himself in style.

Mr. Carson read another letter from Oscar Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas, which paints their relations with extraordinary exactness. Here it is:

SAVOY HOTEL,
VICTORIA EMBANKMENT, LONDON.

DEAREST OF ALL BOYS —

Your letter was delightful, red and yellow wine to me; but I am sad and out of sorts. Bosie, you must not make scenes with me. They kill me, they wreck the loveliness of life. I cannot see you, so Greek and gracious, distorted with passion. I cannot listen to your curved lips saying hideous things to me. I would sooner (‘here a word is indecipherable,’ Mr. Carson went on, ‘but I will ask the witness’)12 — than have you bitter, unjust, hating. . . . I must see you soon. You are the divine thing I want, the thing of genius and beauty; but I don’t know how to do it. Shall I come to Salisbury? My bill here is ￡49 for a week. I have also got a new sitting-room. . . . Why are you not here, my dear, my wonderful boy? I fear I must leave — no money, no credit, and a heart of lead.

YOUR OWN OSCAR.

Oscar said that it was an expression of his tender admiration for Lord Alfred Douglas.

“You have said,” Mr. Carson went on, “that all the statements about persons in the plea of justification were false. Do you still hold to that assertion?”

“I do.”

Mr. Carson then paused and looked at the Judge. Justice Collins shuffled his papers together and announced that the cross-examination would be continued on the morrow. As the Judge went out, all the tongues in the court broke loose. Oscar was surrounded by friends congratulating him and rejoicing.

I was not so happy and went away to think the matter out. I tried to keep up my courage by recalling the humorous things Oscar had said during the cross-examination. I recalled too the dull commonplaces of Mr. Carson. I tried to persuade myself that it was all going on very well. But in the back of my mind I realised that Oscar’s answers, characteristic and clever as many of them were, had not impressed the jury, were indeed rather calculated to alienate them. He had taken the purely artistic standpoint, had not attempted to go higher and reach a synthesis which would conciliate the Philistine jurymen as well as the thinking public, and the Judge.

Mr. Carson was in closer touch with the jury, being nearer their intellectual level, and there was a terrible menace in his last words. To-morrow, I said to myself, he will begin to examine about persons and not books. He did not win on the literary question, but he was right to bring it in. The passages he had quoted, and especially Oscar’s letters to Lord Alfred Douglas, had created a strong prejudice in the minds of the jury. They ought not to have had this effect, I thought, but they had. My contempt for Courts of law deepened: those twelve jurymen were anything but the peers of the accused: how could they judge him?
* * * * *

The second day of the trial was very different from the first. There seemed to be a gloom over the Court. Oscar went into the box as if it had been the dock; he had lost all his spring. Mr. Carson settled down to the cross-examination with apparent zest. It was evident from his mere manner that he was coming to what he regarded as the strong part of his case. He began by examining Oscar as to his intimacy with a person named Taylor.

“Has Taylor been to your house and to your chambers?”

“Yes.”

“Have you been to Taylor’s rooms to afternoon tea parties?”

“Yes.”

“Did Taylor’s rooms strike you as peculiar?”

“They were pretty rooms.”

“Have you ever seen them lit by anything else but candles even in the day time?”

“I think so. I’m not sure.”

“Have you ever met there a young man called Wood?”

“On one occasion.”

“Have you ever met Sidney Mavor there at tea?”

“It is possible.”

“What was your connection with Taylor?”

“Taylor was a friend, a young man of intelligence and education: he had been to a good English school.”

“Did you know Taylor was being watched by the police?”

“No.”

“Did you know that Taylor was arrested with a man named Parker in a raid made last year on a house in Fitzroy Square?”

“I read of it in the newspaper.”

“Did that cause you to drop your acquaintance with Taylor?”

“No; Taylor explained to me that he had gone there to a dance, and that the magistrate had dismissed the case against him.”

“Did you get Taylor to arrange dinners for you to meet young men?”

“No; I have dined with Taylor at a restaurant.”

“How many young men has Taylor introduced to you?”

“Five in all.”

“Did you give money or presents to these five?”

“I may have done.”

“Did they give you anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Among the five men Taylor introduced you to, was one named Parker?”

“Yes.”

“Did you get on friendly terms with him?”

“Yes.”

“Did you call him ‘Charlie’ and allow him to call you ‘Oscar’?”

“Yes.”

“How old was Parker?”

“I don’t keep a census of people’s ages. It would be vulgar to ask people their age.”

“Where did you first meet Parker?”

“I invited Taylor to Kettner’s13 on the occasion of my birthday, and told him to bring what friends he liked. He brought Parker and his brother.”

“Did you know Parker was a gentleman’s servant out of work, and his brother a groom?”

“No; I did not.”

“But you did know that Parker was not a literary character or an artist, and that culture was not his strong point?”

“I did.”

“What was there in common between you and Charlie Parker?”

“I like people who are young, bright, happy, careless and original. I do not like them sensible, and I do not like them old; I don’t like social distinctions of any kind, and the mere fact of youth is so wonderful to me that I would sooner talk to a young man for half an hour than be cross examined by an elderly Q.C.”

Everyone smiled at this retort.

“Had you chambers in St. James’s Place?”

“Yes, from October, ‘93, to April, ‘94.”

“Did Charlie Parker go and have tea with you there?”

“Yes.”

“Did you give him money?”

“I gave him three or four pounds because he said he was hard up.”

“What did he give you in return?”

“Nothing.”

“Did you give Charlie Parker a silver cigarette case at Christmas?”

“I did.”

“Did you visit him one night at 12:30 at Park Walk, Chelsea?”

“I did not.”

“Did you write him any beautiful prose-poems?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Did you know that Charlie Parker had enlisted in the Army?”

“I have heard so.”

“When you heard that Taylor was arrested wha............