People of Note: Oscar Wilde

“Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.”

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, the Irish playwright, poet and novelist, was born in 1854 in Dublin to surgeon Sir William Wilde and poet (and Irish nationalist) Jane Francesca Elgee. Known for his quick wit, his humorous observations of modern culture, and his barbed tongue, he lived in infamy as both a tastemaker (for the hip) and a taste-breaker (for the fuddy-duddies).

Wilde studied first at Trinity College in Dublin (1871-74) and then at Oxford (1874-78), where he joined the Aesthetic Movement (a group with the shared goal of making art of life.)

Upon returning to Dublin in 1878, Young Oscar fell in love with Florence Balcombe. She, in turn, became engaged to Bram Stoker (of Dracula fame). Heartbroken, Wilde fled Ireland and vowed never to return (he went back only twice for brief visits during his lifetime). He spent the majority of his life in London and Paris, and for a short time the United States.

In London, Wilde met Constance Lloyd, daughter of a wealthy Queen’s Consul, and married her in 1884. They lived in luxury and had two sons.

I apologize for boring everyone with domestic trivialities. They seem inconsequential, considering Wilde produced some of the most profound, witty, and enduring works of his generation. Literary achievements such as The Importance of Being Earnest (1895 - play), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891 – novel) and The Ballad of Reading Gaol (Jail) (1898 – poem) are admired and often quoted to this day. Check out this passage, taken from The Ballad of Reading Gaol:

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife,
because The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.

It’s genius, yet here I am talking about Oscar Wilde married so and so on such and such a date. Why? Because domestic gossip is central to the Oscar Wilde story.

Oscar Wilde’s sexuality, you see, was constantly being called into question. Sometimes he was labeled bisexual, sometimes homosexual. Wilde himself described his sexuality as something akin to the male love inspired by the Greek man/boy relationship (known as pederasticism - yikes).

Theories about when Wilde was introduced to homosexuality vary. Many believe he started exploring his own sexuality while at Oxford. By the late 1870’s he had befriended a group of pederastic poets and homosexual law-reformers. In 1882 Wilde met American poet Walt Whitman on a trip to the US, and wrote to a friend that there was “no doubt” about Whitman’s sexual orientation, claiming that “I still have the kiss of Whitman on my lips.”

Trouble starting brewing for Wilde when he was introduced to 22-year-old Oxford student Lord Alfred Douglas in 1891. They developed an immediate friendship, intellectually and emotionally intimate, but not initially sexual. Their friendship turned romantic only briefly, ending soon after it began when Wilde realized that Douglas consented only to please him, and Douglas recognized the reality that he was too old to suit Wilde’s interests.

In spite of this snafu, Wilde and Douglas remained openly living together, and Wilde began looking into homosexual law reform with his upper-class social group (it was a criminal offense in England at the time).

Lord Alfred’s father, John Sholto Douglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensbury, did not look favorably upon his son’s relationship with Wilde, believing that Alfred had been corrupted by, as he labeled upper-class homosexuals, “a snob queer.”

The Marquess plotted a smear campaign against Wilde in an attempt to end the relationship. Known for traveling with a group of brutish bodyguards, he threatened Wilde on several occasions. He planned to throw a bouquet of turnips at Wilde during the opening of The Importance of Being Earnest, but Wilde was tipped off and the Marquess was barred entrance. Finally, while Wilde was vacationing in Monte Carlo, the Marquess left a calling card with an inscription accusing Wilde of sodomy at Wilde’s club (all interviews and first-hand accounts indicate that Wilde never engaged in sodomy).

This was the final straw for Wilde, and he sought criminal libel charges. The trial quickly escalated into a media sideshow as the Marquess’s defense team paraded Wilde’s dirty laundry for all to see in an effort to discredit his case. They revealed Wilde’s association with blackmailers, rent boys, cross dressers and homosexuals. They made public Wilde’s private letters to Lord Alfred, calling the wording inappropriate. The Picture of Dorian Gray came under fierce moral criticism.

Wilde’s prosecution eventually dropped the case after the defense team threatened to bring rent boys to the stand to testify against the writer.

But the problems for Wilde had just begun. After he left the court a warrant was issued for his arrest and he was taken into custody for gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 (“homosexual acts not amounting to buggery”). At Wilde’s prompting, Lord Alfred fled to Paris before the trial began.

In 1895 Wilde was convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years hard labor.

Prison wasn’t kind to Wilde, and upon his release he retreated into self-imposed exile, penniless and sickly. He died November 30, 1900 of cerebral meningitis, though not before being received into the Roman Catholic Church.

On an artistic level, Wilde has few peers to match his quick wit, his unique understanding of human nature or his strong voice. He fearlessly and unapologetically flouted cultural norms and in consequence will forever live on in infamy. Agree with his lifestyle or not, Oscar Wilde is certainly a person of note.

Thanks for reading.

PS. Thanks to everyone for the feedback on the Thanksgiving post. I’ll let you know what comes of it. I’m not sure how much of the Zot I’ll be able to work in. It is for a broad, probably older audience, and I don’t imagine they’re quite ready for the revolution. In time, Zizzle-Zotians. In time.