Same Sex Love, 1700–1957 by Gill Rossini

Author:Gill Rossini
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books
Published: 2017-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Wilde, master of the poetic, was applauded for this statement, although there were a few who hissed him too, and the prosecutor, Edward Carson, was not impressed by his beautiful words, scorning Wilde’s involvement with the working-class boys he ‘picked up’ as evidence of the gutter behaviour of an effeminate poseur. This trial ended with a hung jury and so Wilde had to endure yet another beginning on 22 May; three days later he was finally convicted. Coincidentally, it was Queen Victoria’s birthday, and both the spectators at the court and subsequently the press, lambasted Wilde and his co-defendant, Alfred Taylor, for their unpatriotic activities.

There is little doubt that Wilde was made an example of, although his sentence was not out of the ordinary – the maximum sentence of two years hard labour, during which Wilde had to endure oakum picking (the pulling apart of short lengths of rope in order to recycle it) – but he became so ill that he was put on lighter duties instead. He left prison in 1897 a physically broken and spiritually defeated man, abandoned Britain and ended the last few years of his life abroad, dying in Paris in 1900. An attempted reconciliation with Bosie did not work although they did spend some time together; Oscar was hurt and wretched, and felt that Bosie had not stood by him when it mattered. Henry Labouchere, who had put forward the amendment that essentially brought about Oscar’s downfall, wrote of his disappointment that Wilde had received so short a sentence – Labouchere had originally proposed a maximum seven-year sentence in his amendment but this was rejected by parliament.

The impact of these trials on Wilde, his associates and his family was crushing. His wife Constance divorced him and he was never to see his beloved children again, despite his being a doting and delightful father. Most of Wilde’s friends either deserted him in an emotional sense, or fled the country for fear of getting caught up in a follow-up persecution of his circle of acquaintance. Some friends remained loyal; one did not run away and in fact he visited Wilde in prison – More Adey. To the furious disappointment of Constance, Wilde welcomed these visits from his eccentric but devoted friend. Constance wrote to her husband: ‘I require you to assure me that you will never see him again, or any of that kind.’ Nevertheless, on 19 May 1897, it was Adey who was waiting for Oscar at the gates of Reading Gaol on his release. Robert ‘Robbie’ Ross, another of Wilde’s loyal and devoted friends, also visited Wilde in prison, reciting to Oscar the poems from A. E. Housman’s poetry collection A Shropshire Lad, which were partly inspired by the trial and imprisonment of Wilde as well as other influences that had affected the homosexual poet. When Oscar was released from prison, Housman sent him a copy of the book.

The trial was big news, and came at a time when more and more working-class and

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