Queer Ancestor Spotlight: Oscar Wilde

Queer Ancestor Spotlight
Written By White Rose Witching

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet, playwright, and a major literary and political figure in LGBTQ+ history. He is best remembered for works such as The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest. His trial for gross indecency is considered one of the first “celebrity” trials.

This Queer Ancestor Spotlight is deeply personal for me. Oscar Wilde was one of the first historical queer figures I ever learned about, and it was not through any formal education. Although I was exposed to some of his works in school the story of the man, specifically his queer identity and the trial that ruined him, were never discussed. I was in college when a friend’s random aside sent me down a rabbit-hole. Ever since I have seen Wilde as a personal “queer patron saint" who dared to be themselves even knowing what it might cost.

Oscar Wilde, c1882, photograph by Napoleon Sarony

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin on October 16, 1854. He had many siblings and half-siblings, and close to his younger sister Isola Francesca Emily, who died at nine years old of meningitis. Wilde’ poem “Requiescat” is written in her memory:

"Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow
Speak gently, she can hear
the daisies grow"

Wilde attended Trinity College, Dublin from 1871 to 1874. During his time in college he further developed an interest in Greek literature. Wilde also joined the University Philosophical Society where members discussed intellectual and artistic subjects. It was in this venue that his aestheticism would begin to emerge. Following his time at Trinity College he won a half-scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, which he attended from 1874 to 1878. During his time at Magdalene College he was attracted to the Apollo Masonic Lodge at Oxford because of its secrecy, dress, and ritual. He petitioned for entry and was soon raised to the “Sublime Degree of Master Mason.” Wilde’s engagement with Freemasonry faded once he left Oxford.

During his time in college Wilde embraced the ideals of aestheticism and decadence. He wore his hair long and was openly derisive of “manly” sports. The book Studies in the History of the Renaissance by Walter Pater had a profound influence on Wilde as it argued that man should hold beauty above all else. Wilde also decorated his room at college with peacock feathers, sunflowers, blue china, and other refined items. He famously once remarked to his friends, “I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china.”

After leaving college Wilde traveled and wrote extensively. In 1881 he met Constance Lloyd, the daughter of a wealthy Queen’s Counsel. He proposed in 1884 and they were married on May 29th at the St. James Church, Paddington, in London. The couple renovated their home at great expense to match their luxurious tastes. They had two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan. It was during his wife’s pregnancy with their second son that Wilde met Robert Ross, who was an openly homosexual journalist and critic. He is believed to have become Wilde’s first male lover.

The Picture of Dorian Gray was published in the July 1890 edition of Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine. It was immediately criticized for its portrayal of decadence and homosexual allusions. Although Wilde defended his work it was heavily revised for book publication in 1891, removing overtly decadent and homo-erotic passages. It has been suggested that one of Wilde’s lovers from his aesthetic circles, John Gray, was the inspiration for the character of Dorian Gray although their relationship began following the initial serialization in the magazine.

In 1891 Wilde was introduced to Lord Alfred Douglas, known as “Bosie” to his friends. He was handsome, refined, and wealthy and by 1893 Bosie and Wilde were consorting regularly. Wilde used his earnings as a playwright to indulge Bosie’s every whim. It was Bosie who introduced Wilde to the Victorian underground of gay prostitution. Wilde would infrequently engage with working-class male prostitutes but in De Profundis, a letter written during his imprisonment, he spoke to the thrill he received stepping out of his aesthete circle of lovers: “It was like feasting with panthers; the danger was half the excitement.” Bosie was the son of the Marquess of Queensbury, the man who would inevitably bring about Wilde’s fall from grace.

In February 1895 Wilde debuted The Importance of Being Earnest at the St. James Theatre in London. This play is considered Wilde’s masterpiece and solidified his artistic fame and reputation. In this same month, however, the Marquess of Queensbury left his calling card at Wilde’s social club, the Albemarle. It was addressed “For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite [sic]”. This amounted to a public accusation of Wilde for the crime of sodomy, for which he initiated a private prosecution against the Marquess for libel.

Under the 1843 Libel Act the Marquess could avoid conviction if he could prove his accusation was true and that there was a public benefit to having made the accusation openly. To this end, he hired private detectives to investigate Wilde’s personal life. Given the Marquess’ knowledge of Wilde’s affair with his son it can be assumed he knew the detectives would be successful in uncovering Wilde’s secret life. The detectives uncovered Wilde’s association with male prostitutes, cross-dressers, and homosexual brothels. All of this caused the libel trial to become a media sensation as information made its way to the press. While at trial the defense announced it had located several male prostitutes to testify they had had sex with Wilde. To avoid this, and on the advice of his lawyers, Wilde dropped the prosecution and the Marquess was found not guilty. The court declared the accusation against Wilde for “posing as a Somdomite[sic]” was “true in substance and fact.”

Following this trial a warrant was issued for Wilde’s arrest on charges of sodomy and gross indecency. He ignored pleas from friends urging him to flee to France and was arrested on April 6, 1895. The trial began later that month. Under cross-examination Wilde was asked to expand upon “the love that dare not speak its name”, a reference to a line in the poem “Two Loves” written by Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas. Wilde responded:

“"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 that 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 older and a younger man, when the older 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.”

The trial ended with the jury unable to reach a verdict and Wilde was allowed to post bail. At a final trial both Wilde and Bosie were found guilty of gross indecency, and on May 25, 1895, were convicted and sentenced to two years’ hard labor. Wilde was first sent to Newgate Prison in London, and after several transfers arrived at Reading Gaolin November 1895. He would remain here until his release on May 18, 1897. While at Reading he witnessed the execution of Charles Thomas Woolridge which inspired him to later write The Ballad of Reading Gaol, which would initially be published under the pseudonym ‘C33’, his cell number at Reading Gaol. He also wrote a 50,000 word letter to Bosie in which he explored their relationship, his career and place in Victorian society, his fall and imprisonment, and his spirituality. This was partially published in 1905 as De Profundis, and the complete letter was not published until 1962.

An excerpt from De Profundis I find especially powerful is:

“When first I was put into prison some people advised me to try and forget who I was. It was ruinous advice. It is only by realising what I am that I have found comfort of any kind. Now I am advised by others to try on my release to forget that I have ever been in a prison at all. I know that would be equally fatal. It would mean that I would always be haunted by an intolerable sense of disgrace, and that those things that are meant for me as much as for anybody else – the beauty of the sun and moon, the pageant of the seasons, the music of daybreak and the silence of great nights, the rain falling through the leaves, or the dew creeping over the grass and making it silver – would all be tainted for me, and lose their healing power, and their power of communicating joy. To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.”

Upon his release from prison Wilde sailed for France. He would never return to England. He spent the last three years of his life in exile, his health suffering greatly from his time in prison. He wrote letters to British newspapers describing the conditions of the prisons and advocating for penal reform. Wilde was briefly reunited with Bosie and they lived together in Naples, but threats from their families to cut off all funds forced them apart.

In November of 1900 Wilde developed meningitis. His former lover, Robert Ross, arrived on November 29 and sent for a priest to conditionally baptize Wilde into the Catholic Church. Wilde died on November 30.

Oscar Wilde was originally buried in the Wilde was initially buried in the Cimetière de Bagneux outside Paris. In 1909 his remains were disinterred and transferred to Père Lachaise Cemetery. His tomb was designed by Sir Jacob Epstein and commission by Robert Ross, who’s own ashes are interred in a small compartment. The angel was originally sculpted with male genitalia which were at first censored by French authorities and then later stolen. In 2000 a multimedia artist, Leon Johnson, installed a silver prosthesis as a replacement. The epitaph on the tomb is from The Ballad of Reading Gaol:

“And alien tears will fill for him
Pity's long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn”

In 2017 Wilde was among the 50,000 men pardoned for homosexual acts under what is informally known as the Alan Turing Law.

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