Sex and hypocrisy have always been bedmates, but never more than in Victorian England. In the “Gay Nineties” promiscuity was widely accepted in all social classes, although the aristocracy hid its lust behind a strict code of propriety. Country house parties catered to infidelities with the approval of the Prince of Wales, himself a notorious womanizer

Spencer, Frederick J.

VCU Scholars Compass

The Gay Nineties: Oscar Wilde Reconsidered FREDERICK J. SPENCER, MD Pro fessor and Chairman, Department of Preventive Medicine, Medical College of Virginia , Health Sciences Division of Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia Sex and hypocrisy have always been bed-mates, but never more than in Victorian Eng-land. In the " Gay Nineties" promiscuity was widely accepted in all social classes, although the aristocracy hid its lust behind a strict code of propriety. Country house parties catered to in-fidelities with the approval of the Prince of Wales , himself a notorious womanizer . The sexual athleticism of His Royal High-ness , Albert Edward, has been covered in innu-merable books. 1 Protected from women by the vigilance of his mother until he was 20 years old, he was introduced to the delights of the bed in Ireland by an actress/camp follower of the Grenadier Guards. The bevy of mistresses that followed resulted in one court case and several · minor scandals . His future queen , Alexandria , withstood his dalliances with dignity, finally sending for Mrs Alice Keppel, his last and firm-est mistress, when he was on his death bed, re-marking at the same time that "He always loved me the best ." In 1890, the word " gay" was used for heterosexual relationships with prostitutes , today 's use not coming into effect until the 1 930s, and only into common use in the past ten to 1 5 years. 2 The "Gay Lothario " of 1 7 0 3 was certainly no homosexual. 3 So the "Gay Nineties" were very gay indeed, in the old-fash-ioned sense of the word. As Mrs Patrick Camp-bell is supposed to have said , "You can do what you like as long as you don't frighten the horses.'' But sodomy was another matter. This most despicable crime of all-the ' 'abominable crime of buggery ' '-was the indictment brought against Oscar Wilde in 1895. 4 Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland on 16 October 1 854 . His father, Sir William Wilde , the son of a doctor, was a pioneer otorhinolaryngologist and opthalmologist , a combination of specialties which existed well into the twentieth century . Among Sir William 's innovations were angled nasal forceps and " Wilde's Incision ," a deep opening of the mastoid air cells in the treatment of acute mastoiditis. 5 He was also a noted Irish antiquary and archaeologist. Unprofessionally, his sexual promiscuity led to several illegitimate children and to a prosecution for molesting a fe-male patient of dubious virtue; she was awarded % d in damages-the smallest pos-sible sum! Oscar Wilde 's mother, known as Spe-ranza, was an accomplished poet and the au-thor of several revolutionary pamphlets, a suf-ficient reason for her nom-de-plume, even if women authors had been socially acceptable in the 1850s.6 Oscar was the second of Lady Wilde's children , and his elder brother, William , later known as " Wuffalo Will ," became a notori-ous and intemperate man-about-town . 7 It is said that Oscar 's mother wanted a daughter and showed her disappointment by dressing him in girl 's clothes until the birth of her third child , a daughter, Isola, when Oscar was three years old. 8 Much has been made of a picture of Wilde in a girl 's dress at the age of two , the infer-ence being that it was a conditioning factor in his homosexuality, but it is doubtful if it played a significant part in his sexual development as this mode of dressing boys was not uncommon in Victorian Ireland. 9 SPENCER: THE GAY NINETIES: OSCAR WILDE RECONSIDERED / 67 After preliminary schooling , Oscar Wilde went to Trinity College , Dublin and thence to Oxford where he acquired two things: a first-class degree-and syphilis from a local harlot by the name of "Old Jess." The resultant mercury therapy left him with blackened, cari-ous teeth for the rest of his life. From Oxford he went to London , where his flamboyant dress and brilliant conversation brought him notori-ety, soon enhanced by a more solid reputation as an author of plays, prose, and poetry. In January 1882, Wilde came to North America, landing in New York where he was be-sieged by a curious public and press. When asked by customs officials if he had anything to declare , he said , "Only my genius ." He reached Richmond on 11 July , notice of his lec-ture appearing for the first time in the Richmond Whig on 28 June 1882, and announcing that tickets priced at $1 . 00 for seats in the dress circle and front stalls and 50¢ elsewhere were available from Ramos and Moses. The report of the lecture in the Daily Dis-patch of 12 July 1882, under the headline, " HOW THE GREAT APOSTLE OF AESTHETIC-ISM LOOKED," is devoted more to Wilde 's dress than to his words: " Mr Wilde was dressed in the oft-described silk small clothes , including knee-breeches, &t. , silk velvet surtout, old style , satin-lined . There was pending from his neck a long array of white dimity corrugated into nu-merous ruffles and extending some distance down the diaphragm. Mr. Wilde 's appearance was greeted with slight applause . . . . His hair, which was of brown texture , was parted in the middle and worn in ringlets over ample shoul-ders suggesting Buffalo Bill , only the aesthete is by no means so comely a specimen of man-hood as the great Indian scout and prairie war-rior. " The critic continued by noting , '' An allu-sion to beautiful women and their influence was recognized ... as having a personal application to that section of the fair sex present , and was received with vociferous acclaim .' ' On his return to England , Wilde continued his career as a brilliant writer and critic , meeting the cream of aristocratic London , including James McNeill Whistler , the American ex-patriate painter . 10 Whistler 's reputation as a conversationalist equaled Wilde's, and they be-came great friends . Wilde , however, extended his criticism to art, and this enraged Whistler 68 / WILDE: THE GAY NINETIES who , with some justification , considered that Wilde's knowledge of painting did not qualify him as an art critic. Their open hostility led to the famous story of how Wilde, on hearing Whistler make some particularly witty remark, said, " Jimmy, I wish I'd said that." Whistler re-plied, " You will , Oscar, you will." The Gay 90s In 1891 , Oscar Wilde , at the height of his career, met Lord Alfred Douglas , son of the Eighth Marquess of Oueensberry . The Marquess, familiarly known as " Q," is best known for the Marquess of Oueensberry's Rules, which brought some decorum into the prize ring of the day and remain the basis of modern boxing refereeing. 1 1 Oscar and Lord Al-fred , or "Bosie " as he was known , soon be-came close friends to the disgust of "Q," who was better known as a bullying sportsman than as a doting father . The Oueensberrys were no-torious for their sexual escapades , particularly " Old 0 ," the Fourth Marquess, who , in his eighties, erected a bow window in Piccadilly so that he could ogle passing girls . This family failing , however, did not lead to " Q's" accepting Wilde 's advances to Lord Alfred , and the Marquess, with one of his prize fighters , went to Wilde 's house to order him to leave his son alone. After some angry words, Wilde showed " Q" to the door, telling his ser-vant that he was never to admit this " most infa-mous brute in London " to his house again . Oueensberry, in a frenzy , planned to ruin the first night of Wilde's play, The Importance of Being Earnest, but was prevented from entering the theatre by a cordon of police, thoughtfully recruited by Wilde . Frustrated, "Q" stormed into the Alber-marle Club and gave his card to the hall porter with instructions that it be handed to Wilde when he next came in; on the back of the card was written , "For Oscar Wilde posing as som-domite. '' The usual explanation of the incorrect spelling is that the enraged ''Q'' misspelt "sodomite," but perhaps spelling was not his strong point . Wilde received the card about two weeks later and unwisely sued the Marquess of Oueensberry for criminal libel. The trial attracted the greatest legal minds of the day, and by brutal cross examination , " Q's" counsel showed that the libelous state-ment was almost certainly true. Wilde 's defend-ing counsel declared his intention to withdraw from the case, first in private to Wilde, and the next day in court. The Marquess was immedi-ately acquitted, and his lawyers referred the evi-dence adduced at the trial to the Director of Public Prosecutions. Wilde left the court at noon on the fifth of April , 1895 and was arrested at 6:30 PM that evening. There is no doubt that he could have fled the country, and was indeed advised to do so, but he vacil lated helplessly, and the last train for the continent left without him. At his trial , the jury could not agree on a verdict, but on retrial, he was convicted of committing "acts of gross indecency'' and sentenced to two years hard labour. In passing sentence, Mr Jus-tice Wills said that it was the worst case he had ever tried , accused Oscar Wilde of being " the centre of a circle of extensive corruption of the most hideous kind ," and added that he was "expected to pass the severest sentence that the law allows'' although it was ''totally in-adequate for such a case as this ." 12 Broken in spirit and health upon leaving prison, Wilde went to France and died there in 1900. The cause of his death has been attrib-uted to neurosyphilis or to an intracranial suppu-ration from otitis media. He had sustained an ear injury in prison with subsequent and recur-rent drainage. 13 His bones were reinterred in the famous Pere-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris in 1909. In 1912, Jacob Epstein, then an avant-garde sculptor, was commissioned to create a suitable tombstone for Oscar Wilde; his re-sponse was to hew an immense winged sphinx from a 20-ton block of Hopton Wood stone. This was transported to Paris and placed over Wilde's grave, but the nakedness of the sphinx 's genitals was considered indecent by the Paris gendarmerie, who refused to let Ep-stein complete his work. 14 There is a story, per-haps apocryphal, that two English ladies were so incensed by the tombstone's offending or-gans that they stoned them, some of the chips ending up in the cemetery office as pa-perweights! Oscar Wilde was bisexual, and his mar-riage in 1 884 was followed by the birth of two sons within two years. No satisfactory ex-planation of his deviation has been given~ and theories still abound to explain it, as indeed they do for all homosexuality. Suffice it to say that in the 1 890s-the decade of " decadence"-li-cence of all kinds was condoned by the follow-ers of aestheticism, and Wilde, who was no drinker or drug taker, suffered the penalty of being branded with the most heinous offence of all in Victorian eyes. Had he ignored Oueens-berry 's action, he might well have continued his career in peace, as did many of his " decadent" colleagues, despite their excesses. That Oscar Wilde has been forgiven by society became evident in 1954, the centenary of his birth , when the London County Council unveiled a plaque affixed to the wall of the house he occupied at the time of his trials. Appropriately, the ceremony was conducted by Sir Compton Mackenzie, the flamboyant au-thor, who once said , " All my life I've lived hand to mouth . Damned good hand to mouth , mind you.,, 1s What is to be learned from repeating the tale of Oscar Wi lde? Perhaps only that the un-usually harsh penalties imposed on homosexu-als must now be redressed by an enlightened humanity. Today, consenting homosexuals may live together openly in Britain; in this country, prosecutions of homosexual offenders have be-come rare , and as a recent Time essay said, "It is true that America has a great deal to be ashamed of in its treatment of homosexual citi-zens .. .. The best public pol icy toward homo-sexuals is no policy at all-no sodomy laws, no special interventions pro or con. On matters of consensual adult sex, the law is, or should be, blind . '' 16 The words that Oscar Wilde wrote to Lord Alfred Douglas from Reading Gaol could today well apply to the world : " Perhaps I am chosen to teach you something much more wonderful , the meaning of Sorrow, and its beauty." 11 REFERENCES 1 . The most specific is PEARSON, J Edward the Rake. New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975. 2. PARTRIDGE, E. A Dic tionary of Slang and Uncon-ventional English. 7 ED. New York, Macmillan, 1970. 3. Brewer 's Dic tionary of Phrase and Fable (Rev. Ivor H. Evans) New York, Harper and Row, 1970. "A gay Lothario ... a seducer of women .. . from Rowe's . The Fair Penitent(1703)." 4. The indictment against the Marquess of Oueensberry in the first trial said that he had libeled Wilde by ac-WILDE: THE GAY NINETIES / 69 cusing him " of committing the abominable crime of buggery with mankind to the great scandal and dis-grace of the said Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde to the evil example of all others in the like case of-fending and against the peace of our said Lady the Queen Her Crown and Dignity'' (Quoted from 1 2). The entry under "ABOMINABLE CRIME" in a recent reference work reads "Formerly used in Acts of Par-liament in Referring to Buggery." (Scott, Sir H. The Concise Encyclopedia of Crime and Criminals. New York, Hawthorn, 1961 .) 5 . STEVENSON, RS AND GUTHRIE, D. A History of Oto-Lar-yngology, Edinburgh, Livingstone, 1949. 6. The Bronte sisters published their first works under male pseudonyms, and George Eliot's real name was Mary Ann Evans. 7. Willie Wilde became a journalist and lived in New York after marrying Mrs Frank Leslie, the owner of Leslie 's Illustrated Newspaper. She soon divorced him and he died in London in 1898. 8. Isola Wilde died in 1867. 9. HYDE, HM Oscar Wilde. New York, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1975. 70 / WILDE: THE GAY NINETIES 1 0. Whistler himself was involved in a libel suit against John _Ruskin who had written scathingly of one of his works. As in Sir William Wilde 's case, he was awarded 1 / 4 d in damages. 11. "Q," an accomplished lightweight boxer, drew up his rules in 1866 with another aristocratic sportsman, Lord Lonsdale, and John Graham .Chambers of the Lon-don Amateur Athletic Club (often confused with Arthur Chambers, lightweight champion of the world). 12. HYDE, HM The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde. New York, University Books, 1956. 13. CRITCHLEY, M. Oscar Wilde. A Medical Appreciation. Medical History, 1, 299, 1958. 14. EPSTEIN, SIR J Epstein: An Autobiography. 2 ed. Lon-don, Vista Books, 1963. 15. Daily Telegraph . London, 29 August 1973 . 16. LEE, J. Homosexuality: Tolerance vs. Approval, Time, 113, 48, January 8, 1979. 17. HART-DAVIS, R. The Letters of Oscar Wilde. New York , Harcourt, Brace and World, 1962. Wilde's letter was published as De Profundis and contains his account of his relationship with "Bosie. " 

The Gay Nineties: Oscar Wilde Reconsidered

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The Gay Nineties: Oscar Wilde Reconsidered

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