The Rest Is History - 342: The Trials of Oscar Wilde: Downfall and Prison

Episode Date: June 19, 2023

It’s 1895, and with the libel case brought against the Marquess of Queensbury having collapsed, Oscar Wilde is now arrested and charged with committing acts of “gross indecency”. With former lovers, hotel servants and chambermaids lining up to give evidence, and the evening papers, night after night full of scandalous allegations, turning the general public against him, Wilde must now face a trial brought about through his own poor judgement. In this second episode on the trials of Oscar Wilde, Tom and Dominic explore Wilde’s downfall, his time in jail, and his final years. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. I can't spell it right. So you just give a fake name, your cafe name, Julia. But the more you use it, the more it feels like you're in witness protection. Wait a minute. What kind of espresso drinks does Julia like anyway? Is it too late to change your latte order? But with an espresso machine by KitchenAid, you wouldn't be thinking any of this because you could have just made your espresso at home.

Shop now at KitchenAid.ca The love that dare not speak its name in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood,

that it may be described as the love that dare not speak its name, and on account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man when the elder man has intellect and the younger man has all the joy, hope, and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it. So Dominic, that was the celebrated speech given by Oscar Wilde at his second trial, completely off the cuff, where he is defending himself against a charge of gross indecency that has been brought to him in the wake of the collapse of the libel

trial that he has brought against the Marquess of Queensbury, who is the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, Bosie. And in that speech, he is pretty clearly talking about himself and Bosie and denying that there is anything indecent about it at all. It's an amazing speech, Tom. It was said at the time that it was the finest speech of an accused man since that of St. Paul before Herod Agrippa. And it is a very, very extraordinarily elegant, articulate, indeed moving defence.

Of course, as Wilde's biographer, Matthew Sturgis, absolutely wonderful biography, Oscar, as he points out, the problem is that actually Wilde is not on trial for his relationship with Bosie. He's on trial for his misdemeanors, as they would have called it at the time, with a succession of 17 and 18 year old office boys, clerks, waiters, servants, to whom this description does not really apply. Well, although I think, again, Wilde would perhaps dispute that. And he argues that actually in his relationship with young men who are, in the language of the age, very much his intellectual and social inferiors, there is a kind of communion that he is kind of sharing his culture, he's sharing his tastes and educating them. So this is actually kind of the argument that he is kind of sharing his culture. He's sharing his tastes and educating them. So this is actually kind of the argument that he is making.

But before we get to that, let's just remind our listeners of where we left this tragedy. So Oscar Wilde's libel case has collapsed against the marks of Queensbury. A writ for his arrest has been issued. Two plainclothes policemen have come to the Cadogan Hotel and taken him away. And he is driven to Scotland Yard. He is charged under section 11 of the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act with committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons. And he is taken to Bow Street Police Station, booked, taken down to a cell for the night. And at St. James Theatre, where the importance of being earnest,

his great comedy has been the toast of London, his name is quietly being removed from the advertisements and the playbills. Yes. So we're in the year 1895. And Tom, we should say, you and I are still in this park in Washington, D.C., where we were last time.

So if you hear the sounds of children crying, they've spotted tom holland tv's tom holland and they're terrified he's going to do one of his impersonations at them no risk of that but uh yes so the day after he has been taken to bow street police station the very next day the committal proceedings begin at the upper courtroom at bow street police court now hotel and uh sir edward Carson, who we discussed last time, the future politician who was the Marcus of Queensbys barrister, he is not the Crown barrister this time.

It's his junior, Charles Gill. Charles Gill brings out the case against Wilde, and he brings it out very methodically. He says, we have a succession of witnesses. We have details of all these assignations. The witnesses describe their encounters with Wilde. He says, we have a succession of witnesses. We have details of all these assignations. The witnesses describe their encounters with Wilde. Then there's a succession.

I mean, the case against him, Tom, even at this stage, it's obvious they've got a very, very compelling case against him. They have ruthlessly, methodically compiled the witnesses, but they also have not just the boys or the young men, but they have the people who work to the hotels to the chambermaids and they have chambermaids they have servants i mean the most famous story is the chambermaid at the savoy who says she was shocked she she says it's at this point she tells the story she went into world's room and she found the bed sheets and his night shirt smeared with vaseline uh semen and what she describes as soil and i think those kinds of details i mean those are the kinds of details that find their way into the press and mean that

for night after night the evening papers are full of scandal of allegations and we should emphasize that actually the the records of the trial and of the accusations are not fully reported in the paper because it is seen as being too scandalous for, you know, gentlemen to read. Right. But not only that, though, Tom, we should also emphasize the public mood at this point is very, very anti-Wild. So the newspapers are calling for his prosecution. There are crowds that cheered the Marcus of Queensbury while its libel case was dropped. The National Observer, for example, says Britain owes a deep debt of gratitude to the Marcus of Queensby

for destroying the high priest of the decadence. There must be another trial at the Old Bailey or a coroner's inquest, the latter for choice. And of the decadence of the hideous conceptions of the meaning of art, there must be an absolute end. So at this point,

it's very clear that this is not just a case about Oscar Wilde. It's a case that has now, as we talked last time, it's about politics, about a liberal government that's kind of in its death throes. It is a case about, there's a backlash against artistic decadence, against a sense of elitism, aestheticism. But I think in part, it's also about a sense of insecurity about what exactly Wilde is being accused of. So he is being accused of gross indecency. There's a sense that, which is absolutely a kind of venerable one going back centuries and centuries and centuries, that what in law is called sodomy, it's a moral offence.

It's something that people choose to do in the way that they might choose to do murder or theft or something like that. But this is being challenged by a novel new understanding of sexuality that is coming in from Germany, where psychologists have invented this portmanteau term, fusion of Greek and Latin, homosexuality. This idea that actually, if you commit the act of sodomy, you are likely to be doing it. It's not because you're a sinner. It's because you have a medical condition that is called homosexuality. And how exactly that is to be framed and processed and understood, you know, this is a live challenge at the time that these trials are happening.

And I think, so there's a kind of sense of moral confusion and uncertainty as well, which provides kind of part of the background to this. So Wilde has moved to Holloway Prison. It's often thought, and we'll talk about this a lot in today's episode, it's often thought that Wilde is singled out for special treatment because the establishment wants to make an example of him, and they come down, as it were, especially hard on him. That's not the case. So even at this point, he has a special cell at Holloway. He's allowed to have food from a restaurant. He's given books, can read letters. He has a succession of visitors. His one great visitor is Bosie, Lord Alfred Douglas, who we described as this terrible...

A baggage. A baggage, just putting it mildly. He's basically the worst man in the world. Wilde describes him as a slim thing, gold-haired like an angel who stands always at my side, moving in the gloom like a white flower. So. So fair to say that there are, you know, rival opinions on Bosie. What we can say about Bosie is that Bosie is so devoted to Wilde and is such a decent fellow that he leaves London for France just before the trial begins. Anyway, so the trial begins on Friday, the 26th of April, 1895.

Mr. Justice Arthur Charles is presiding. He is a conservative. He is a failed conservative politician. But a surprising thing about this second trial is that it's pretty obvious, and I think we're not giving the game away, by saying right from the beginning, Mr. Justice Charles is biased towards Wilde. Yeah, it's really unexpected, isn't it? That's not what the popular sense of the trial is at all.

Because what happens in the next sort of five days is you have a succession of witnesses. I'll just give you a brief flavour of it by reading an extract from Matthew Sturgis' biography. So you have William Parker telling of how, over dinner at Kettner's, his brother had repeatedly accepted preserved cherries from Wilde's own mouth. Alfred Ward recounting how, over dinner at Kettner's, his brother had repeatedly accepted preserved cherries from Wilde's own mouth.

Alfred Wood recounting how, during dinner in a private room at the Florence restaurant, Wilde had put his hand inside Wood's trousers. Fred Atkins describing how he'd come back from the Moulin Rouge to find Wilde in bed with Maurice Schwaber. Edward Shelley reluctantly confessing that Wilde had kissed and embraced him after supper at the Auvergne Hotel. And so it goes on and on and on. You have a succession of witnesses.

Now, Sir Edward Clarke, to his great credit, Wilde's barrister from the previous, from the failed libel case, to whom Wilde had lied, by the way. Sir Edward Clarke incredibly gallantly says, I and my team will give our services to you for free to defend you in this case. Sir Edward Clarke's argument is these people are liars. They are blackmailing Wilde. The Crown case is based on a pack of lies.

These people are condemned out of their own mouths as criminals, as lowlifes, as all this kind of thing. So the case is not, oh, Wilde did it and he was right to do it. It's that he didn't do it at all, isn't it? And this is the context where he gives the love that dare not speak its name yeah speech it's implying that to the degree that there is this um relationship that he has with men it's ennobling and purifying and it is not sexual yeah and on the fourth day sredwell clark wilde's barrister gives this very rousing defense world he says mr wilde is not an ordinary man um you know you shouldn't

condemn him on the basis of his writings he has been incredibly open with these young men generous to them which i think is absolutely true i think so i mean he has been generous and he has been kind and he says uh you know there was nothing indecent about his relationships which is not true with these men at all. And so we get to the fifth day. That's Wednesday, the 1st of May. And Sir Arthur Charles, the judge, has to give his summing up. And I think this is extraordinary.

His summing up is very clearly partisan towards Oscar Wilde. He says, you know, don't judge him by his writings. Sometimes his writing, if I may be allowed to criticize his writings myself, they are silly, but wicked. No. Then he goes on to say, is it plausible that a man such as Oscar Wilde would have been so reckless? Yeah. I mean, that's the key thing he's saying, because he cannot fathom that Wilde would have brought the libel or done any you know yeah if any of this had been true and he says is it plausible that he would have had boys in his bed in the savoy and there would have been so little attempt at concealment i mean of course we know because we

did episode one that it is plausible but to the judge this failed tory mp or would be mp it seems utterly unlikely that an intelligent man would have behaved in such a catastrophically reckless... He points out, Wilde has the right to ask you to remember that he is a man of highly intellectual gifts, a person whom people would suppose incapable of such acts. And again, that is buying into Wilde's argument in that great speech, that there's something of Plato and Shakespeare and Michelangelo about this. Yeah. So he is accepting what Wilde says.

So the jury go out. They go out at half past one. The hours go by. The jury call for lunch. And then finally, at quarter past five, the jury come back into court. And as if this wasn't the stuff of Hollywood already, they deliver their verdict. There is no agreement. There is no verdict. They can't agree. The government's lawyer, or the Crown's lawyer, Charles Gill, says, we will undoubtedly call for another trial.

And while it is sent out, there is going to be trial number three. Now, at this point, there is some discussion. Some MPs, an Irish nationalist MP, T.M. Healey, says to the Solicitor General, Sir Frank Lockwood, do not put Wilde on trial again. And the Solicitor General actually says, I would not do so but for the abominable rumours against Lord Rosebery, against the Prime Minister. Yeah, so this is what we were talking about in the first episode, this sense that the Prime Minister, Lord Rosebery, has been involved in a same-sex relationship with the eldest son of the Marquess of Queensbury. So it is all a kind of great matrix of innuendo, supposition, that kind of reaches to the absolute top of the government. It does indeed. Now, Sir Edward Carson, Wilde's old Trinity College Dublin classmate, often seen as the villain of this great drama, he apparently also appeals to

the government and says to them, I don't think you should put Wilde on trial again. So Lord Rosebery, he himself says to Herbert Asquith, his home secretary, at whose table Wilde had dined, should we let him off? Should we just let this go? And Asquith says, we can't. If we do so, we will lose the election. And Dominic, just to reiterate, Rosebery at this point is in a state of prostration. And even though the election is approaching, he is basically just kind of lying in a dark room. Not least because in the press, there are now stories saying this is part of a conspiracy.

There is this huge network of gay men, as we would call them, sodomitical men, as they would have called them in the 1890s, who have covered this up and they're trying to get Wilde off. So the government feel they actually can't let this go. I think they wish, deep down, that Wilde would go to France. And his friends are still saying... Right. And so the key thing is, is that at this point, bail is posted for Wilde and Wilde is granted bail. So again, there seems to be a kind of encouragement from the authorities to Wilde, to go away, go to France. But he doesn't. And maybe one of the reasons is that his mother,

Speranza, to whom Wilde is devoted, says that if he flees, she will no longer regard him as her son. Whereas if he stays, and even if he goes to prison, she will still love him. So maybe part of it so he's just frozen he's at his friends the levitons they put him up in i mean it's just an unbelievable detail they put him up in the child's nursery and he's just sitting there on the floor surrounded by rocking horses and you know spinning tops and all these kinds of things um rabbits and and stuffed toys and his his lawyers come to consult him in the nursery and he's sitting there and he's just a broken man and they and they deliver the news they say you know it's the government are not going to let you off in fact the solicitor general's frank lockwood

has announced that he is going to prosecute this third trial personally he's going to do this personally because the crown want to make an end of this now. They want to do it. Wilde is still represented by Sir Edward Clarke, still doing it for free. I mean, extraordinary that he's giving up so much time for free because he feels so bad about the first trial, in which his own client had lied to him, by the way. Meanwhile, Wilde has to pay costs. Wilde is bankrupt, effectively. Because Bosie had promised to fund it and has skedaddled to the continent,

leaving Wilde in every way to face the music. So the trial opens on the 22nd of May. I mean all this is within just a few weeks. Yeah. That's what makes it so dramatic

that it's sort of day after day new. And it's detail of a kind that you know Victorian newspapers are not used to handling and it's just coming out week after week

after week. So the 22nd of May case they return to the Old bailey uh wild is kind of a broken man at this point so we talked before about the sort of um the sort of foppish flippancy the arrogance almost with which he conducted himself at the very beginning of the first case is all gone he is haggard he is quiet he is withdrawn he knows that the sort of disaster he's still hoping though isn't he because the trial goes ahead and i mean we don't need to reiterate it because basically it's a

rehashing of everything that's gone before and there is now he's clinging to the hope that perhaps the jury will kind of see things as as the previous jury had done and you know because if it's again there is no decision reached then i think it will be abandoned and so as they're waiting for the the verdict um lockwood says to clark you'll dine your man in paris tomorrow but clark himself says no i don't think so yeah this is extraordinary the solicitor general who's determined to prosecute the case personally on saturday the 25th of may as they're waiting for the verdict that he actually thinks i probably haven't won this i probably haven't secured it not least because once again it's a different judge this time he's less pro wild but he's not excessively anti-wild i mean his summing

up is pretty sort of he doesn't really veer one way or the other although as we will see when the verdict is delivered and it turns out that Wilde has been found guilty. They've gone for two hours, haven't they? They've gone for two hours, the jury. As the minutes tick by, Wilde's team become optimistic. The longer the jury are out, the more chances there is that they can't agree. The government aren't going to bring a third trial on top of the libel trial. They come back in and they just say on count after count, guilty.

I think one count he's found not guilty, but all the rest he's found guilty. And it's then that Justice Wills, you know, puts on the equivalent of a black cap and declares that it is the worst case I have ever tried. That you wild have been the center of a circle of extensive corruption of the most hideous kind among young men. It is impossible to doubt and he then delivers a sentence which is the heaviest that he can legally deliver two years imprisonment with hard labor and in my judgment he says it is totally inadequate for such a case as this so you've you've missed your vocation. You would have made a splendid late Victorian hanging judge of the Lady Bracknell kind. I'm probably being unfair to Justice Wills. I'm sure he didn't sound like that.

But when you read that, I mean, it's kind of very, very devastating reaction. And for Wilde, I mean, he slumps and he, I mean, it's so moving because this man who has made his living and his fame and his reputation out of his brilliance with words, he briefly seems unable to speak. And then he cries out, and I may I say nothing, my Lord. And he can't. The justice, the judge kind of waves him silent. And Wilde is hurried out of the dock, down the stairs. Just on the trials. I mean, our sympathy, obviously, is drawn to Wilde.

You know, he is the victim in all this. It would be unnatural for a 21st century listener not to feel sorry for this man. But of course, the truth is, Wilde is partly the author of his own demise because of his own recklessness. He's the author of his own demise because he brought that libel case against the marcus

of greensby i suppose you would say in his defense he felt that he was trapped he felt he had to settle the issue he felt there was nothing else he could do but of course on the merits of the case he is to use your expression tom he is banged to rights yeah he is i mean he did by the standards of the day commit all these misdemeanors with these blokes. And, you know, it's not a miscarriage of justice that he is. Would you agree, Tom, that he's found guilty? Yeah, I mean, under the law of the time, he clearly is guilty. And the entire country basically agrees.

The overwhelming support for the verdict. I mean, there are voices that are still raised in Wales defence. So WB Yates, who is a friend of his, you know, the great poet, he describes the whole thing as an orgy of Philistine rancour, which I think is a perspective with which people now would have more sympathy. Just on that Philistine rancour, though, what WB Yates is objecting to is not the law, the entire moral structure of Victorian England. It's the fact that he thinks Wilde is an artist, Wilde is special, and therefore Wilde should not be judged like ordinary men. Am I right? Yeah, but I think that there is a sense that Britain is peculiarly Philistine in its opinions and its judgments. And I think that, yeah, to a degree, it's a kind of mixture. And this is going to be important for the kind of the legacy of these trials,

that the blurring of wild status as a great writer and an artist and his status as someone who has been identified in the public mind with homosexuality at precisely the time when the concept of homosexuality is starting to come in as something that people in society understand is going to be really crucial for understanding its long-term impact. But I think it also, the press reaction speaks to something that people in Britain certainly would still recognise is a feature of British public life. And it's articulated by Bosie, who says of the verdict that is given on Wilde, when the great British public has made up its

great British mind to crush any particular unfortunate whom it holds in its power it generally succeeds in gaining its object bozzi i have to say it's probably the worst person we've ever talked about on the rest of history i i can't stand perhaps from hitler yeah he's not as bad as hitler but bozzi behaves so badly throughout doesn't he offering saying he'll pay and then he never quite does it and running away to fr, leaving his mate to face the music. And of course, Bosie, who's been responsible for some of the most, you know, the most reckless behavior. Anyway, this is by the by.

This is just me ranting now. Anyway, so let's take a break now. Wilde has been convicted. He's been taken down to the cells. When we come back, we'll talk about what his life was like in prison. Yeah, very good. Chiara. It means smart in italian too bad your barista can't spell it right so you just give a fake name your cafe name julia but the more you use it the more it feels like you're in witness protection wait a minute what kind of espresso drinks does jul like anyway? Is it too late to change your latte order?

But with an espresso machine by KitchenAid, you wouldn't be thinking any of this because you could have just made your espresso at home. Shop now at KitchenAid.ca. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews,

splash of showbiz gossip and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. welcome back to the rest is history uh we're into the final act of this great drama involving oscar wilde he's now a prisoner of the crown he's taken initially to newgate and then to pentonville so i'm and important to say world was sentenced to two years with hard labor but right from the beginning they say you don't have to do the hard labor. You can just do light labor because, you know, you're not physically fit for the hard labor.

And I think there is a sense, even at this point, among people who are not necessarily terribly sympathetic to Wilde, that he is different from other prisoners. And he will not have to be subjected to every single rigor of the penal system that others are subjected to yeah and i think that that reflects an understanding that for wild the punishment is peculiarly awful so there are people who write to the papers and say that it will be worse for him than it would be for a bill sykes you know the the murderer from um from for all of the twist i.e that for someone of wild sensibilities and background the sufferings that are imposed on convicts you know far far greater

but i think distinctively for wild he is you know he is in solitary confinement he's not allowed to talk there is a prohibition on communication between prisoners ande is a man who all his life has spoken. Conversation is his great, you know, the thing that he is peculiarly brilliant at. Exactly, as Matthew Sturgis says, Tom, Wilde, who had lived for conversation, for social intercourse, for intellectual stimulation, for beauty, for comfort, for good food and ease,

had lost them all absolutely and at a stroke. The horror of it overwhelmed him. And of course, he is famous as an Eastie to someone whose taste is exquisite. And everything about being processed into prison is the absolute opposite of that. So he is, you know, he's given the convict's uniform with the arrows on it. His hair is shaved. He's stopped him from getting lice. He's fed, what is he? He's given bromide of potassium, which is designed to suppress the libido. Which it does. It does suppress your libido. And that, all prisoners were given that, you know, to suppress the libido. Which it does. It does suppress your libido

and all prisoners were given that to basically make them sexually inactive. Yeah. While they were... I mean, one of the prison chaplains,

by the way, in Wales, I can't remember which prison it is, says of him that he suspects that he's been spending all his time

masturbating in prison and claims that his cell... Yes, the details and questions about this are taken all the way up to the cabinet room. Yeah. I mean, astonishing. Is Wilde masturbating too much in his cell it turns out that he isn't

but while does get terrible diarrhea terrible dysentery his health collapses even in those first days and weeks in in prison there's a terrible story that um they get very little exercise they're going around the prison yard and the man in front of him whispers to him they're not allowed to speak the man in front whispers says i'm very sorry for you mr wild and wild is so overwhelmed by this that he shouts out oh thank you thank you and he is then he's punished of course you're not allowed to speak and and wild is the great individualist wild is the person who um refuses to accept that he is one of the crowd you know, this is the whole essence of his artistic and emotional life.

But now even his name has been taken away from him. He just has a number. That is who he is. He's absorbed into the kind of the processing of this terrifying penal system. Well, that sense of erasure, Tom. So his plays, by the way, have been taken off. They've been taken off even in America.

The Western Mail, Welsh newspaper, this thing about what being erased this is what the leader said when he was imprisoned oscar wilde will never again be anything but a memory a beacon light set up to warn youth from the dangers that lurk in a life of ease and pleasure his personality has been wiped out from the haunts of men and his name has become a byword and a reproach yeah so that sense that uh that actually in the press we will now just he's been he's been cancelled actually it has been but interestingly not by the lib the governing liberal establishment this is what's so intriguing isn't it that still there are people high up in the government who seem to be looking out for him. So on the 12th of June, so he's not even two weeks into his sentence, we talked about Herbert Asquith, the Home Secretary, future Prime Minister.

One of his two or three best friends, another Liberal MP, Richard Haldane, future War Minister, he comes to Sea Wild in prison, makes a special trip to see him, and talks to him about books, about literature, and says, listen, we're going to do what we can for you. We will get you books. What books would you like? Wilde says very foolishly, I'd like some of the novels of Gustav Flaubert. And Haldane says to him, well, he was in fact prosecuted himself for indecency. So I'm not convinced that those are the ideal books for you to be delivered, but they agree that he will have St. Augustine,

Cardinal Newman, Walter Pater's Renaissance, which is very, a big history of Rome. Yeah. He will get special treatment because other prisoners are not allowed books. But Haldane says, we will bring you the books.

Haldane talks to asquith they said they have they commission a report to see if wild is being properly treated is he being unfairly treated the head of the prison commission is a man called evelyn ruggles bryce of course he is and uh and he also says let's make you know we must we don't want to kill him we don't want him to be to be bullied. We must make sure that he is a special person. He is an exceptional talent, and we must make sure that he does actually get the special treatment that his status deserves. Now that, I have to say, Tom, until we researched this, I had no sense that anybody was looking out for him at all. So there are certain figures within the prison system who are clearly kind of very doctrinaire, apply the absolute letter of the law, who have no sympathy for Wilde whatsoever. But again and again, there are figures, so governors, warders, who do feel sympathy for him and express that sympathy.

And actually, the true hostility is coming from the public. And so there is one particularly notorious episode that illustrates this where he is being transferred from london to redding jail well the fact he's being transferred at all tom he's been transferred to a country prison because the authorities think he'll be better off in a country prison and they don't want to crush him in a city prison go on sorry i interrupted you And so he is taken to Clapham Junction railway station and he is forced to stand between his warders for half an hour on one of the platforms at Clapham Junction and people recognise him. And a large crowd gathers around him and they laugh and jeer and one man spits at him. And Wilde writes later that for a year after that was done to me, I wept every day at the same hour and

for the same space of time. Yes, it's very moving actually. Anyway, off he goes to Reading. He's there for the last 18 months of his sentence. Life is a bit better off in Reading. It's cleaner air. It was built on the site of a leper colony. Really? That's a good fact. He becomes a

leper in the eyes of the public. He doesn't like the governor, Lieutenant Colonel Isaacson. He describes him as a man with the eyes of a leper in the eyes of the public. He doesn't like the governor, Lieutenant Colonel Isaacson. He describes him as a man with the eyes of a ferret, the body of an ape, and the soul of a rat. Yes, but then Isaacson gets replaced by a new governor, Major James O. Nelson, who Wilde says is the most Christ-like man he'd ever met. Because he, I mean, basically, it may be that nelson is the person who stops wild from maybe from dying from from having a complete breakdown because he does treat him with with incredible kindness and empathy because most of the people in in reading prison

are people from the reading and the surrounding villages who have been guilty of misdemeanors thefts you know they're working class young blokes. And for Major Nelson, Wilde is actually a treat. They have regular meetings, they chat about books. He says to Wilde, why don't you decide what books you should have in the prison library? He allows Wilde to have a notebook, to have a pen. Yeah, he is allowed to write. And the great thing that he writes in this time is a letter to Bosie, which stretches to 100 pages, which again, quite contrary to the law, you're not allowed to take anything you write in prison, you're not allowed to take out with you. Wilde does end up taking it out with him. And he gives it to Robert Ross, who becomes his literary executor. And in

due course, this is given the name De Profis and it's one of the the most moving pieces of of writing that the wild did absolutely kind of key part of the canon so that is testimony to the fact that wild is not being peculiarly persecuted in prison in fact quite the opposite and and wild himself in you know he in reading jail he becomes very popular not just with the with the governor but with his fellow inmates as well so i think he comes out really well from the the story of him in reading jail he he's very he's kind he's kind to the other prisoners he is unjudgmental and democratic in his relations with the warders he talks to them about books they get him to help them win newspaper competitions yeah so he wins for the one bloke he wins a silver tea service

and a grand piano yeah by helping him fill in make all these witticisms to win these competitions and i think that what that shows is that his claim that the young men who he had been sleeping with that he had treated them as equals that he had treated them with kindness that he had shared his conversation with art about art and literature and so on as he he would with people of his own class and background, is actually true. Yeah, it's true, but it's not the whole story, right? Of course not. Of course not. He's in a position of power. He was in a position of power over these boys. I mean, I absolutely accept that.

Listen, everybody who listens to this podcast will have a different view of this story. I think when you contemplate the story of this very rich, successful, articulate man having these relationships they're not really relationships are they having these brief assignations with very young 16 17 18 year old boys or young men who are poor who you know there are two ways you can interpret that one you can say it's fine they're having fun let them on. Another is to say there is a power dynamic there with which we in the 21st century are uncomfortable. so on that point,

very interesting. WT, is it Stead? Yes. Stead, who is a campaigning newspaper editor. He highlights what he calls the white slave trade, the exploitation of young girls by rich and powerful men.

What is it? The maiden tribute of the modern babylon and stead has led a campaign to raise the age of consent for girls from 13 to 16 which he has done i think in the the 1880s and his commentary on the wild trial and conviction is to say, you have sentenced Wilde for his sleeping with young men, 16, 17, 18, but you are not charging men who are sleeping with female prostitutes of the same age. And he's making this point not to defend Wilde, but to highlight the fact that women are as subject to the exploitation by powerful men as as boys are yeah and i guess that that is actually a perspective that perhaps you know people still hold to in the 21st century yeah i think that's i think you're

not wrong tom i think i think these are very you know these are very complicated issues and actually i wouldn't want to pronounce like a sort of sermonising vicar to the listeners because every listener will... Or indeed campaigners for the Me Too movement or, I don't know, Stonewall or whatever because they are also people who are holding a moral position.

Morality has become, it's not just the preserve of vicars in the 21st century, but it's still very moral. It's an incredibly complex, ambivalent moral case. So we should, I think, before we just sum up what the long-term impact of this, and I think it does have a very, very big impact on the history of sexuality in Britain in particular,

in the 20th century. Well gets released. Yeah, 18th of May. So 18th, 19th of May. Again, the establishment don't want to humiliate him. So there's a lot of subterfuge. Basically, they move him to Pentonville.

And there's a wonderful story, actually, Tom. I love this story from Matthew Sturgis's brilliant biography, which I can't recommend enough. Basically, he's smuggled out of Reading Prison.

He's going to be put on a train at Twyford to move him to London. And he's standing on the platform with his flank by his wardersers who are escorting him and he's there kind of incognito and it's the first time of course he's been out of the prison and he stands there on the platform it's a lovely day he sees a tree and he shouts oh beautiful world oh beautiful world he waves his arms and warder harrison says now mr wild you mustn't give yourself away like that you're the only man in england who would talk like that in a railway station which i think abusively captures the relationship between wild and his warders who are amused by him you know they like him actually

yeah and what does come out from from this period is so likable doesn't he he's always likable i mean right the way through he is likable i think i would say lovable actually and that's what makes the ambivalences around his his record so complex i mean he is a lovable person i think the interesting thing there tom he comes out of prison and he's he's very keen that he says to his friends i'm a reformed character i behave badly i'm a reformed character i won't you, you know, go near young men again. I'm a changed man. And then, of course, over time. Can't help it.

He can't help it. Because he goes abroad and he meets up with Bosie again. Bosie again. And, of course, he's been declared bankrupt while he's in prison. Yeah. So he has no money. So he's reliant on his wife. His wife, they have a formal, not a divorce, but a separation.

Yeah. And she is giving him an allowance on the some on the understanding that he won't get back with bozy but he can't help it bozy basically kind of seduces him knowing this so again but their relationship now is very it's poisoned isn't it it's tempestuous yeah they're always rowing you know there's a sense of the fun has gone out of it for them i guess and they split up irrevocably and wilde spends the last year of his life uh in penury he dies in paris he's gone back into the old ways so um matthew sturgis says uh his monthly allowance was dedicated more to rent boys than to rent so he's kind of gone back to the old picking up young men again all that sort of uh stuff and he

dies he has an ear infection, doesn't he? Yeah, which he got from falling down in prison. And spreads into his brain, basically. Very sort of grim ending. He dies on the 30th of November, 1900, in penury, as you said, penniless,

surrounded by his friends. So a lot of his friends are very loyal to him, aren't they? Yeah. He's a man who inspires loyalty. Yeah, loyalty. But yeah, the martyrdom. The martyrdom is what remains, right? The sense that he has been... Well, it's not just the martyrdom the martyrdom is what remains right the sense that

he has been well it's not just the martyrdom i think much more important than that initially is the said this before the association of wild with this novel and evolving concept of there being something called homosexuality which is kind of entering public discourse in britain at exactly this time and the concrete you know hasn't yet set but it sets in a kind of wild shape mold yeah and that means that for mainstream british opinion in the early years of the 20th century the concept of homosexuality wears the appearance of wild dandyism aestheticism flamboyance campness yeah but also a certain association with kind of pederastic and predatory and this of course is terrible for gay people because it associates them with sexual practices that are not at all

a given for gay people yeah and that the legacy of the wild trial explains why Britain is peculiarly hostile to gay people in the 20th century, really up until the 60s. I was going to say, you see that, think about 50s, 60s Britain

in the, I don't know, the Sunday pictorial or the mirror and the campaigns they would run against immoral men, against pansies

as they would call them. I mean, the Sunday, what was it, one Sunday paper in the early 50s had a big double page spread a series, in fact, called How to Spot a Homo. men against pansies as they would call them yeah i mean the sunday was it the one paid sunday paper in the early 50s had a big double page spread a series in fact called how to spot a homo and it was kind of fondness for the theater uh dandyish clothes liking flowers and it's all wild it's all us go out exactly and that i think i think you're absolutely right that that rubs up against a sort of Puritanism in British culture,

a distrust of difference, of flamboyance, of aestheticism. But against that, the element of the martyrdom. But more than that, although when Wilde comes out of prison, he does express a kind of repentance, it doesn't last long and he dies unrepentant for what he has done and what he has been um he he doesn't feel a shame about his sexual identity he actually kind of glories in it yeah and he embodies a sense of pride in what he is that i think in the the later decades of the 20th century becoming you know crucially important for the way that gay identity evolves and emancipates itself from this kind of legacy of hatred it makes him an icon doesn't it yeah i mean he is as famous now i know you love his works you love his plays

in particular but he is probably i would say more famous now as a martyr than he is as a writer do you think that's fair i know you love his stuff I think his status as a martyr is dependent on the fact that he is a genius. I think without that, he wouldn't have the stature and the standing that he does. But we've been very, very harsh on Bosie. But I just want to maybe end this episode

by reading something that Bosie wrote in a letter to a literary journal three weeks after Wilde's conviction, which I think he does speak for attitudes that now have become completely normative. So this is a private letter written to an MP who had been very hostile to Wilde. And Bosey writes about what he calls Uranian love love the same sex love what we would call gay love i guess um these tastes are perfectly natural congenital tendencies in certain people a very large minority and the law has no right to interfere with these people provided they do not harm other people that is to say when there is neither seduction of minors or brutalization

and where there is no public outrage or morals and i guess that that is pretty much where the consensus is now it is a kind of irony upon irony because bozzi later in life as it were converted and became a catholic a very fervent opponent of homosexuality and an anti-semite a ferocious anti-semite so and and a further irony he libels winston churchill and gets sent to prison for it. Yeah. And there was some case with Arthur Ransom, wasn't there? The author of Swallows and Amazons.

Such a strange... Yeah. A strange... His afterlife is very strange. Yeah. Sort of strange kind of maelstrom of allegations, rumors, court cases and... And ironies. The strangest thing of all, Tom, has been recording this episode in this park in Washington, D.C.,

where basically there are just a stream of families going to a baseball game. And here we are. We've been having to cut short our discussions of Oscar Wilde's nocturnal activities every now and again as people are passing. Dirty sheets. Yeah.

And so on. We've done a lot of Restless History episodes in odd circumstances, but I think that I can safely say this is the oddest. Anyway, thank you so much Tom.

Thank you Dominic. Thank you everybody for listening and we will pack up our kit and go off and sample the delights of Washington

and we will see you all next time. Bye bye. Bye bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com