Oscar Wilde was one of the best known celebrities of the late 19th Century. He was a prolific writer, from prose, to poetry, to playwrighting. He often incorporated themes of beauty, decadence, and hiding ones true feelings in his writings. These were all incorporated into his novel, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (1890).
It’s three main characters clearly based on Wilde himself. In fact he was quoted as saying:
“Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry is what the world thinks of me: Dorian is what I would like to be—in other ages.”
His masterpiece, the farce “The Importance of Being Earnest” also features autobiographical elements. In the play, the two main characters practice “bunburying" (keeping two different personas, one for town, the other for country so they can escape the conventional Victorian social rules).
Wilde married Constance Lloyd on May 29, 1884 and they went on to have two sons. She was an author as well, and the two maintained separate social lives. Wilde was said to have warned his sons about naughty boys who made their mamas cry. They in turn asked him what happened to absent papas who made mamas cry.
Like his characters, Wilde had a second life, he was a practicing homosexual. His most infamous male partner was Alfred “Bosie” Douglas, the son of John Douglas. (The elder Douglas is associated with the Marquess of Queensberry Rules of sportsmanship.)
Bosie was said to have been handsome and spoilt, and he often quarreled with his father.
Wilde was infatuated with Bosie and agreed to his every whim. In turn, young Douglas introduced Wilde to the Victorian underground of gay prostitution. Wilde and Douglas both indulged themselves with a series of young working-class male prostitutes. Wilde later described the debauchery as:
“It was like feasting with panthers; the danger was half the excitement... “
The elder Douglas’s hostility towards his son, soon shifted to Wilde. In June 1894, he arrived at Wilde’s home without an invitation and declared:
“I do not say that you are it, but you look it, and pose at it, which is just as bad. And if I catch you and my son again in any public restaurant I will thrash you.”
Their quarrels continued but in February 1895, the elder Douglas left a card for him at his club, writing, “"For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite.”
The Younger Douglas encouraged Wilde to sue his father for slander and libel (sodomy was a criminal offense in England until 1967). Against the advice of his friends, Wilde proceeded with the court case against Boise’s father.
But private detectives easily gathered evidence about Wilde’s association with blackmailers, cross-dressers, and male prostitutes.
The elder Douglas won the court case and Wilde was liable for all court costs - bankrupting him. With all of Wilde’s sordid history made public, the British court issued a warrant for his arrest on charges of sodomy and gross indecency.
The criminal case against Wilde was grueling and unmerciful. On May 25 1895, Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years of hard labour.
Wilde served his sentence, first at Newgate Prison known for its “hard labour, hard fare and hard beds”. In November 1895, he collapsed from illness and hunger, and ruptured his right ear drum in the fall. After two months in an infirmary, he was transferred to Reading Gaol. There he was simply identified as C.3.3 – the occupant of the third cell on the third floor of C ward.
While at Reading, another prisoner arrived to be executed for murdering his wife. Wilde was inspired to write “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”.
The poem describes the execution then moves to a more symbolic focus on all prisoners. He doesn’t justify the crimes nor laws that convicted them. But instead illustrates the brutal punishment that all convicts share.
When Wilde was released from prison, he moved to France. At first he lived on the meager allowance provided by his wife. She have him only three pounds a week to discourage the lifestyle that had led to his disgrace.
Wilde and his wife never divorced, but she changed her last name and that of their sons to Holland. She also forced Wilde to give up his parental rights then moved with them Switzerland. His sons never saw their father again.
Wilde was able to published the “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” poem and it sold very well, providing him additional income.
Oscar Wilde died of cerebral meningitis on November 30, 1900 at the age of 46. Some have speculated that the cause was due to Syphilis. But there’s evidence to suggest the meningitis was triggered from the fall and ruptured ear drum he incurred in prison.
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