Oscar Wilde: A Life From Beginning to End (Irish History Book 3) by Hourly History

Author:Hourly History [History, Hourly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hourly History
Published: 2018-08-28T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

The Sodomy Trials

“What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

—Oscar Wilde

Wilde had always been seen as a man who sparked controversy. He pushed the limits of what society would accept from him with the way he wrote, the opinions he shared, and the way he dressed. He didn’t have much belief in restrictions and limits, and the way he lived showed evidence of that.

In the middle of 1891, Wilde had been introduced to a man named Lord Alfred Douglas. Douglas would be at the center of the trouble that started brewing around Wilde. The two men were quite attracted to one another, and Wilde was reportedly infatuated with Douglas. They entered into an extramarital affair. They were having sex throughout the affair, and Wilde was spoiling Douglas with the money he was making from his plays. The plays were paying Wilde well, so he wasn’t afraid to give Douglas everything he wanted. Wilde wasn’t much for being discreet about things, but Douglas was even less careful. He wasn’t good at hiding things in public.

Douglas ended up showing Wilde a whole new world when the world of gay prostitution in the Victorian underground was revealed to him. He started spending time with different sorts of people, people who weren’t educated and into literature or social movements. He would even meet up with someone, dote on him with gifts and dining, and then the two would go to a hotel room for the rest of the night. Wilde didn’t let go of his normal everyday life where he socialized with people in the world of aesthetics and literature; he kind of started living a double life. The two lives stayed as separate as he could make them. He described this division in his life later on when he wrote De Profundis, by saying “It was like feasting with panthers; the danger was half the excitement.”

But since Douglas and Wilde weren’t very discreet about their torrid love affair, someone became interested in stopping what was going on. The Marquess of Queensberry, Douglas’s father, was not happy about the affair between his son and Wilde. John Douglas questioned the two men many times about what they were doing together and the nature of their relationship. He was a known atheist who could be quite crass in the way he spoke to people. The Marquess and his son did not get along much of the time, but whenever the questions would come up about the relationship Douglas had with Wilde, Wilde was able to calm the Marquess and ease his mind enough to get the subject to drop.

Eventually, there came a time when the Marquess wouldn’t be pacified anymore. He showed up at Wilde’s home unannounced to confront his son’s lover about how he felt about the situation. He told Wilde, “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 my son again in any public restaurant I will thrash you.

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