- há 15 minutos
A candid portrait of Oscar Wilde and his remarkable family, including revelations by his grandson Merlin Holland and Lady Alice Douglas, great-grandniece of Wilde's lover Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas. Martin Shaw is the voice of Oscar Wilde.
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00:07You, Wilde, have been the center of a circle of extensive corruption of the most hideous kind
00:14among young men. It is the worst case that I have ever tried. The sentence of the court
00:22is hard labor for two years.
00:30I always wanted to be openly proud of my grandfather, but it was never easy. And if you'd asked me
00:36whether I was proud of being Oscar Wilde's grandson ten years ago, I would have said,
00:43I have no feeling of pride.
00:47What they wanted was sleaze. They wanted a dig in the gutters. And they wanted to destroy
00:55everything that he stood for.
01:00The Valley of Reading Jail.
01:05In Reading Jail, by reading time, there is a pit of shame.
01:12It didn't lie to the wretched man, beaten by the feet of flame. In a burning, winding, sheet he lied.
01:24And his grave has got no name.
01:29No need to waste the foolish terror, or heed the windy sigh. The moon had killed the things he loved.
01:41And so, he had to die.
01:45All right.
01:46All right.
01:47All right.
01:48All right.
02:00All right.
02:03All right.
02:13Ladies and gentlemen, excuse me. Can we have silence, please?
02:25Today, the 16th of October, is a special day. It is Oscar Wilde's birthday, and the Café
02:34Royal is where Oscar and my great-great-uncle Bozy used to come in happier times. I'm sure
02:41that Oscar would approve of this exhibition, although he might shudder at the twist of
02:46historical connections, in that my family is sadly related to his downfall, and I have
02:53perhaps ended up working in prison because of the shadow through the generations. I'd
02:59like to propose a toast to all the people I've worked with in prison, and to Oscar Wilde,
03:05happy birthday.
03:07Hooray!
03:17We are 맛 Rhodes Hooray.
03:30Our 원� brick marches are filled with depression.
03:42The whole family was all but destroyed when they took Oscar Wilde to court and the name Wilde hasn't been
03:47used for a hundred years
03:51And it makes me sad to think that
03:54It can't be changed back. I
03:57was given the opportunity when I was 21 by my father, but I
04:02Thought I was too much my father's son rather than my grandfather's grandson. I'd known my father. I was proud
04:06of him
04:08But I'd like to think that one day it could be done. Maybe a hundred years on you know, all
04:12is forgiven
04:22I've been haunted all my life by the knowledge that it was my family who's responsible for Oscar Wilde's downfall
04:30For me personally growing up as
04:33As I suppose lady Alice Douglas was something that horrified me. I was a little punk rocker and the fear
04:40that anyone would ever find out that I was a lady
04:44Just ate me up and I tried to keep it a secret from people at school
04:52My great-great uncle was Lord Alfred Douglas and my great-great-grandfather was the Marquess of Queensbury and
04:59The man responsible for destroying Oscar
05:04It's something
05:05That I've always been terribly ashamed about and something that I've tried to hide from
05:10As a man sows so shall he reap the charity my dear Miss Prism charity none of us is perfect
05:16I myself am peculiarly susceptible to drafts
05:20Will the interment take place here?
05:24No, he seems to have expressed a desire to be buried in Paris in Paris
05:28Yes
05:29I fear that hardly points to any very serious state of mind at the last
05:34Will the interment take place on the next day?
05:34Yeah, dear
05:34Yes, dear
05:35Yes, dear
05:43Do the interment take place on the earth
05:46Do the interment take place on the other land?
06:01They were a professional family, but it was the professionals in Dublin then who were the great society.
06:09And he had all sorts of people around him, great conversationalists, people of learning, people of literature, artists.
06:19And it can't have failed to influence him.
06:29His mother, Speranza, was a larger-than-life sort of woman.
06:33She was an ardent nationalist and a revolutionary poet.
06:36I express the soul of a great nation. Nothing less would satisfy me.
06:43I who am the acknowledged voice in poetry of all the people of Ireland.
06:49She's always struck me as being a very proud woman, but quite flamboyant and witty with it.
06:54In fact, all the things which one finds in Oscar later on.
06:58It is only tradespeople who are respectable.
07:01We are above respectability.
07:08Oscar's intellectual brilliance almost certainly came from his father, Sir William.
07:12He was an outstanding ear and eye surgeon in Dublin at the time.
07:15Sort of father of modern medicine, really.
07:19But he wasn't without his fault.
07:21And the lure of the petticoat sometimes proved to be too strong.
07:25Oscar had seen his mother, bravely, stoically, living in a marriage where her husband chose other women for sexual delectation.
07:37And where, of course, her husband, arriving at the marriage, had illegitimate children already.
07:43So, you see, convention was hardly a current word in the Wild household.
07:59Oscar went off to a Protestant boarding school when he was nine, which Speranza liked to call the Eton of
08:05Ireland.
08:13I have forgotten all about my school days.
08:16I have a vague notion they were detestable.
08:21It's very significant, too, that he should have gone to a school, Portora, where no reference to Ireland whatsoever can
08:28be found in the curriculum.
08:31Which was in total contradiction to his early upbringing and his mother's nationalist sympathies.
08:37There's even a suspicion that his mother had him baptized a Catholic when he was quite young.
08:43So, he had violated the taboos of his entire caste, really, by being involved in his parents' enthusiasm for the
08:52folklore of the people of Ireland.
08:54Possibly if he was made a Catholic at the instance of his mother.
08:58And, in a sense, that starts him out on a regime throughout his life of defying convention.
09:04And of believing, I think, that there is something more worthwhile than seeking to conform very dubious laws as laid
09:10down by state authority.
09:13I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws.
09:19While he was at Portora, Oscar seems to have discovered the classics.
09:23And, within three years, he'd won himself a scholarship to Trinity Dublin, the Barclay Gold Medal for Greek while he
09:30was there, and another scholarship on to Oxford.
09:50I was the happiest man in the world when entering Magdalene for the first time.
09:55Oxford is paradise to me.
10:00My Irish accent is one of the things I forgot at Oxford.
10:06When he was at Oxford, Wilde made a great show of not doing any work,
10:11and of living up to his blue china, adoring his lilies, whatever you like,
10:16and poo-pooed the idea that he could do well.
10:20He's going to get a fourth in greats, he said.
10:23But it's quite clear from, for example, his Oxford notebooks, which have been published in a scholarly edition a few
10:30years ago,
10:31that he was reading extraordinarily widely and really interested in the very latest thought of his day.
10:39The longer one studies life and literature,
10:42the more strongly one feels that behind everything that is wonderful stands the individual.
10:53I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world,
10:57and I was going out into the world with that passion in my soul,
11:01and so indeed I went out, and so I lived.
11:08To everyone's surprise, except Oscar's, he got a first in his finals,
11:13and won the Nudigot Prize for poetry as well.
11:17Oh, Gloria, Gloria.
11:20Thank you a million times for your telegram.
11:23It is the first pleasant throb of joy I've had this year.
11:26Well, after all, we have a genius.
11:30With joy and pride, your loving mother.
11:36My dear old boy, you are the best of fellows to telegraph your congratulations.
11:42The Dons are astonished beyond words.
11:45The bad boy doing so well in the end.
11:52When Oscar came down from university, he made that famous remark just before coming down,
11:58I'm going to be famous, and if I can't be no famous, I shall be notorious.
12:04And he was determined that he was going to succeed.
12:07He went up to London calling himself a professor of aesthetics,
12:11and became a man about town.
12:14And I believe that at that moment he started, I suppose,
12:18what we'd call today a PR machine.
12:20You can read it through his letters.
12:22He's absolutely, there's an iron determination to succeed.
12:26If you're anxious for to shine in the high aesthetic line
12:29as a man of culture rare,
12:31you must get up all the germs of the transcendental terms
12:35and plump them everywhere.
12:37You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases
12:40of your complicated state of mind.
12:43The meaning doesn't matter if it's only idle chatter
12:46of a transcendental kind.
12:48He behaved as a dandy.
12:50He behaved in an aesthetic fashion.
12:53He was, I suppose, what we'd call today rather camp.
12:55If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me,
13:01why, what a very singularly deep young man this deep young man must be.
13:06Women are never disarmed by compliments.
13:08Men always are.
13:10That is the difference between the sexes.
13:13To be around Sarah Bernhardt,
13:15to go and fling lilies at Sarah Bernhardt's feet in Dover
13:18when she arrived in England was a tremendous publicity stunt.
13:21Dear Harold, I was very sorry you did not come to tea,
13:25as I could have introduced you to some very beautiful people.
13:29Mrs Langtree and Lady Lonsdale
13:31and a lot of very clever beings who would have tea with me.
13:34He found great empathy with these women.
13:37They were successful, they were beautiful, they were in the theatre,
13:41and he loved being around them.
13:42And all of this led to the famous lecture tour in America
13:48where Richard Dolly Cart of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas
13:52more or less hired him to go ahead of the opera patience
13:56to show the Americans what was supposed to be funny
14:00in the aesthetic poets' satirised impatience.
14:04So Wilde quite consciously went ahead as an example
14:08of the aesthetic idiot and had a lovely time.
14:12Then the sentimental passion of a vegetable fashion
14:15must excite your language spleen.
14:18An attachment a la plate for a bashful young potato
14:21or a not too French French bean.
14:23Though the philistans may jostle,
14:25you will rank as an apostle in the high aesthetic band.
14:28If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy
14:31or a milly in your medieval hand.
14:35And everyone will say,
14:38as you walk your flowery way.
14:41If he's content with a vegetable love
14:44which would certainly not suit me.
14:46Why what a most particularly pure young man
14:49this pure young man must be.
14:54He got off the boat and said he had nothing to declare
14:56except his genius and nothing he said after that
14:59failed to be recorded and quoted all over the place.
15:12My dear Norman, I have great success here.
15:15Nothing like it since Dickens they tell me.
15:18I am torn in bits by society.
15:22Immense receptions, wonderful dinners,
15:24crowds wait for my carriage.
15:27Girls very lovely, men simple and intellectual.
15:30I am now six feet high.
15:33My name on the placards printed in those primary colors
15:37against which I pass my life protesting.
15:40But still it is fame.
15:42And anything is better than virtuous obscurity.
15:45The Americans are the best politically educated people
15:48in the world.
15:49It is well worth one's while to go to a country
15:52which can teach us the beauty of the word freedom
15:54and the value of the thing liberty.
16:00They drove me out to see the great prison afterwards.
16:03Poor odd types of humanity in hideous striped dress
16:07making bricks in the sun.
16:10And all mean looking which consoled me.
16:13For I should hate to see a criminal with a noble face.
16:17He lectured very successfully.
16:20He also courted all the well-known American names.
16:24Well Whitman was of course himself gay, queer,
16:28or whatever you call it.
16:29And he was immensely impressed by the homage
16:33that the young Wilde paid to him.
16:35Mr. Oscar Wilde seemed to me like a great big splendid boy.
16:43So frank and outspoken and manly.
16:48The kiss of Walt Whitman is still on my lips.
16:54It was perhaps when he came back and did some British lecturing
17:00that he found himself closer and closer
17:03to a young lady called Constance Lloyd
17:05with whom he found he was falling very deeply in love.
17:11Cecily, ever since I first looked upon your wonderful
17:18and incomparable beauty, I have dared to love you
17:25wildly, passionately, devotedly, hopelessly.
17:31I don't think you should tell me you love me wildly,
17:35passionately, devotedly, hopelessly.
17:39Well, hopelessly doesn't seem to make much sense, does it?
17:44Cecily.
17:46I am going to be married to a beautiful girl called Constance Lloyd.
17:51A grave, slight violet-eyed little Artemis
17:55with great coils of heavy brown hair
17:57which makes her flower-like hair droop like a blossom.
18:01And wonderful ivory hands
18:03which draw music from the piano so sweet
18:07that the birds stop singing to listen to her.
18:10We are to be married in April.
18:13Prepare yourself for an astounding piece of news.
18:16I am engaged to Oscar Wilde and perfectly and insanely happy.
18:24His engagement to Constance came as a tremendous surprise,
18:27I think, to everyone.
18:30But I think it's unfair to say that it was either to deflect rumours
18:35or as a smokescreen for his nascent homosexuality.
18:38It's a great game people play.
18:40How far back can you trace Oscar's homosexuality?
18:42You only have to look at the letters that Wilde sent to Constance
18:48whenever he couldn't be with her,
18:49whenever he was lecturing in Edinburgh, Glasgow
18:52and even stranger places.
18:55That wasn't kidding, that wasn't put on.
18:58That was a love match.
18:59Although, sadly, it wasn't as time to last too long.
19:23Dear and beloved, here am I and you with the Antipodes.
19:29Oh, execrable facts that keep our lips from kissing,
19:33though our souls are one.
19:36What can I tell you by letter?
19:39Alas, nothing that I would tell you,
19:41for I feel your fingers in my hair and your cheek brushing mine.
19:45The air is full of the music of your voice.
19:48My soul and body seem no longer mine.
19:51I have no power to do anything but just love you.
19:55My whole life is yours to do as you will with.
19:58I will hold you fast with chains of love and devotion
20:02so that you shall never leave me.
20:09The baby is wonderful.
20:12He has a bridge to his nose,
20:14but the nurse says it's proof of genius.
20:17It also has a superb voice which he freely exercises.
20:21His style is essentially Wagnerian.
20:28My father had so much of the child in him
20:31that he delighted in playing our games.
20:33He would go down on all fours on the nursery floor,
20:37being in turn a lion, a wolf, a horse,
20:40caring nothing for his usually immaculate appearance.
20:43When he grew tired of playing,
20:45he would keep us quiet by telling us fairy stories
20:48or tales of adventure.
20:51Cyril once asked him why he had tears in his eyes
20:54when he told us the story of the selfish giant.
20:57And he replied that really beautiful things
21:00always made him cry.
21:05On the face of it, it was a typical Victorian marriage.
21:10What probably started to destroy it
21:13was Oscar's enormous intellectual capacity.
21:18I think that to live with Constance, who...
21:21She was well-read, she spoke several languages,
21:24she tried very hard to keep up with him,
21:26but he was intellectually on another plane altogether.
21:29And I think he needed the intellectual stimulus.
21:32But when, as far as we can gather,
21:36he and she found it impossible to have any more children
21:40for financial reasons,
21:41then he seems to have been led by his friend Robert Ross
21:43towards homosexuality.
21:46No doubt he always had a very strong homosexual direction.
21:51But, in fact, it was far from being his only sexual direction.
21:54I think we do have to be quite clear about that.
21:56The intensity of sensation was what mattered.
22:00And I believe that he was searching for sensations.
22:05And as part of the search for sensations,
22:08there was, in him, inevitably, there was a femininity,
22:14a homosexuality, if you like to call it that.
22:16And through this, he experienced Robbie Ross.
22:21The affair with Ross and the friendship with Ross, I think,
22:27made him much clearer where he wanted to go.
22:31I myself would sacrifice everything for a new experience.
22:35I would go to the stake for a sensation
22:38and be a sceptic to the last.
22:43I don't think his marriage was a sham at all.
22:45I think he loved his wife.
22:48I think it was quite a complicated and intricate relationship.
22:50He certainly loved his children.
22:53But he was bisexual.
22:55And it must have been very difficult for him to deal with that.
22:59And he dealt with it on the surface, recklessly,
23:05sometimes almost facetiously,
23:07as if daring it to be serious.
23:10He did not want to betray his wife.
23:12A little bit of fun and games with Robbie Ross
23:14didn't seem like a betrayal of his wife at all, I should have imagined.
23:18Marriage makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.
23:25Sometimes I feel Wilde had a sense of his own destiny,
23:29knew where he was going,
23:31knew what a tragedy his life was going to be.
23:33Sometimes he seems to be acting out his own view of his own tragedy.
23:40You have nothing to conceal, have you?
23:43Oh, nothing.
23:45But my dear Lady Chilton, I think, if you will allow me to say so,
23:50that in practical life...
23:52Of which you know so little, Lord Goring?
23:56Of which I know nothing by experience,
23:59though I know something by observation.
24:01I think that in practical life there is something about success,
24:06actual success, that is a little unscrupulous.
24:10Something about ambition that is unscrupulous always.
24:15Once a man has set his heart and soul on getting to a certain point,
24:18if he has to climb the crag, he climbs the crag.
24:22If he has to walk in the mire...
24:27Where?
24:29He walks in the mire.
24:33Of course, I'm only speaking generally about life.
24:37I hope so.
24:41Once you understand that Wilde's characters
24:45are not standing on opposite sides of the stage,
24:49competing in epigrams to see who can be funnier,
24:52but that, in fact, whenever any character invents an epigram,
24:57it is to mask an intense feeling,
25:00to control an intense feeling, to contain an intense feeling,
25:04then you can start to manufacture an inner life for the actor,
25:07and the real emotional truth of the melodrama
25:10starts to be revealed.
25:12To some extent, that's also true in The Importance.
25:17Kindly turn round, sweet child.
25:20No, the side view is what I want.
25:24Yes, quite as I expected.
25:26There are distinct social possibilities in your profile.
25:30The true weak points of our age
25:32are its want of principle and its want of profile.
25:36Chin a little higher, dear.
25:38Style largely depends on the way the chin is worn,
25:41and they are worn very high at present.
25:45Algernon?
25:46Yes, Aunt Augusta?
25:47There are distinct social possibilities in Miss Cardew's profile.
25:53Cecily is the sweetest, dearest, prettiest girl in the whole world,
25:57and I don't care tuppence for social possibilities.
25:59Never speak disrespectfully of society, Algernon.
26:03Only people who can't get into it do that.
26:09My great-great-uncle, Lord Alfred Douglas,
26:12was a young man who was at Oxford
26:15and who met Oscar Wilde and was greatly impressed with him,
26:19and it was the start of a very passionate love story, really.
26:25My friendship with Bosie began in May,
26:27when his brother appealed to me in a very pathetic letter,
26:31asking me to help Bosie in terrible trouble
26:33with people who were blackmailing him.
26:38What he saw in Bosie Douglas was youth, beauty.
26:43I think there was perhaps an element there of snobbery.
26:47People have talked about it.
26:48He was the son of a lord.
26:50Equally, on Bosie's side, there was...
26:52Bosie was an aspiring poet.
26:54Here was a man of letters who had succeeded,
26:57and there was an element in Bosie
26:59of being seen on Oscar's arm at the theatre.
27:05I think, to begin with, it was probably a mutual infatuation.
27:09Oscar Wilde needed to live on the edge of danger,
27:12whereas Bosie could plunge right into it.
27:15And, in some ways, probably that was his power over Oscar.
27:21Alfred Douglas Bosie had come from a very unhappy home life,
27:27where he'd tried to protect his mother from a brute of a father.
27:32The Marquess of Queensbury, who's my great-grandfather.
27:38And Oscar Wilde, in some ways, protected him from all this,
27:41but also gave him guidance as a father, as a teacher,
27:46and offered him a great deal of love.
27:53He was, in a sense, a mad, obsessive plaything.
27:57He was rather a hobby.
27:59Oscar went quite goofy about him in certain ways.
28:02And you can see it in the letters.
28:05He writes to Alfred Douglas in a very different way
28:08than the way he writes to anybody.
28:10Not that these are great love letters,
28:13but they're letters of somebody who, in the same way,
28:15could you imagine somebody who takes up woodwork as a hobby
28:17and keeps on going on about it?
28:19I mean, he started going on about Bosie in the same sort of way.
28:25My own boy, your sonnet is quite lovely,
28:29and it is a marvel that those red, rose-leaf lips of yours
28:34should have been made no less for music of song
28:37than for madness of kisses.
28:39Your slim, gilt soul walks between passion and poetry.
28:45I know Hyacinthus, whom Apollo loved so madly,
28:49was you in Greek days.
28:52Always with undying love.
28:55Yours, Oscar.
28:58He was fascinated by him.
28:59I think partly because there was, as part of Oscar,
29:03not so much a homosexual party.
29:04He certainly ended up very thoroughly gay,
29:06and certainly he was a homosexual martyr.
29:09There's no question about that.
29:10But I think himself, as regards Alfred Douglas in particular,
29:15that he was always looking, with some part of him,
29:18for the notion of involvement with a figure
29:20which would betray him.
29:23It's a consistent theme in his writing
29:25before he ever meets Douglas.
29:27You find it in the fairy stories.
29:28You find it in various other of the stories.
29:30The search, in a sense, for a kind of traitor.
29:36You have passions and thoughts
29:39that fill you with terror,
29:42dreams whose memory stains your cheek with shame.
29:47Yet those great sins take place only in your mind.
29:51The only way to get rid of a temptation
29:53is to give in to it.
29:57Bosie couldn't be Oscar Wilde.
29:59He couldn't speak as Oscar Wilde spoke.
30:03And that, for him, was a great humiliation.
30:06And so he loved this man more than anything.
30:09But there was also part of him that wanted to poison him,
30:12that wanted to kill him,
30:13because it showed him all his faults, where...
30:18And it made him realize that he could never be that,
30:21and that he was inadequate.
30:26Those of you must not make scenes with me.
30:28They kill me.
30:29They wreck the loveliness of life.
30:32I cannot see you so Greek and gracious,
30:36distorted with passion.
30:38I cannot listen to your curved lips saying hideous things to me.
30:43I would sooner be blackmailed by every renter in London
30:46than have you bitter, unjust, hating.
30:51That kind of fatal fascination drew him almost knowingly towards him.
30:56You see, people said that it was a case of Dorian Gray coming to life.
30:59Yes, but it wasn't so much that Bosie was beautiful
31:02and Dorian Gray was beautiful.
31:03It was that Dorian Gray was somebody
31:05who had a destructive quality about him.
31:15How sad.
31:18I shall grow old,
31:20but this picture will always remain young.
31:26If only it could be the other way round,
31:29and I could remain young
31:32while the picture grew old.
31:37For that, for that, I would give my soul.
31:44The portrait of Dorian Gray is a myth
31:48which stands like Odysseus
31:51or stands like Medusa.
31:54It's there.
31:54It's the most extraordinary capacity to invent a myth
31:58which will go on reverberating like that.
32:01It's wonderful.
32:02Don't, Basil!
32:05It would be murder.
32:10I'm glad you appreciate my work at last.
32:14Appreciate it?
32:16I am in love with it.
32:20Basil,
32:21it is part of myself.
32:28There is a paradox about Wilder
32:30during the time when he must have known
32:34that the net was closing in on him.
32:37He wrote some of his most joyous and extraordinary work,
32:42but it still has that dark undertow
32:45as it has an ideal husband.
32:48Lady Trilton, I have sometimes thought
32:50that perhaps you are a little hard
32:52in some of your views on life.
32:54I think that often you don't make sufficient allowances.
32:57In every nature there are elements of weakness,
32:59or worse than weakness.
33:04Supposing, for instance, that, oh, any public man,
33:07my father, or Lord Merton, or Robert, say,
33:11had years ago written some foolish letter to someone.
33:15What do you mean by a foolish letter?
33:17A letter gravely compromising one's position.
33:20I'm only putting an imaginary case.
33:22Robert is as incapable of doing a foolish thing
33:24as he is of doing a wrong thing.
33:30Nobody is incapable of doing a foolish thing.
33:35Nobody is incapable of doing a wrong thing.
33:47Wilde and Douglas stopped being lovers in a sexual sense quite soon,
33:51though they remained infatuated with each other
33:54in other kinds of ways.
33:56And I think that it's fairly clear
33:58that Douglas led Wilde into temptation.
34:00There wasn't very much physically between the two men,
34:04that they hunted in pairs and hunted for boys,
34:08and that they were more interested in boys
34:11when it came to physical sex,
34:13and each other when it came to ideas,
34:16friendship, the soul, all that.
34:20Wilde didn't start going with lower-class young men
34:23until he'd met Alfred Douglas.
34:25This was Alfred Douglas's idea.
34:28He described the dangers of the relationships
34:37of the rent boys as part of the excitement.
34:40This was feasting with panthers.
34:46People thought it dreadful of me
34:48to have entertained at dinner the evil things of life
34:51and to have found pleasure in their company.
34:54But they, from the point of view through which I,
34:58as an artist in life, approached them,
35:00they were delightfully suggestive and stimulating.
35:05It was like feasting with panthers.
35:09The danger was half the excitement.
35:17Alfred, your intimacy with this man Wilde must either cease
35:22or I will disown you.
35:24With my own eyes I saw you both in the most loathsome
35:29and disgusting relationship as expressed by your manner and expression.
35:34Never in my experience have I ever seen such a sight as that
35:39in your horrible features.
35:41No wonder people are talking as they are.
35:45Telegram from Alfred Douglas to the Marquess of Queensbury.
35:48What a funny little man you are.
35:51If I catch you again with that man,
35:55I will make a public scandal in a way you little dream of.
36:00If you try to assault me,
36:02I shall defend myself with a loaded revolver which I always carry.
36:06And if I shoot you, I shall be completely justified.
36:10When your father first began to attack me,
36:13it was as your private friend and in a private letter to you.
36:18As soon as I had read the letter with its obscene threats and coarse violences,
36:23I saw at once that a terrible danger was looming on the horizon of my troubled days.
36:30I told you I would not be the cat's paw between you both in your ancient hatred of each other.
36:38The whole of Oscar Wilde's downfall was heaped on his shoulder in that
36:44he was young, he acted very rashly, he had a feud with his father,
36:49he dragged Oscar Wilde into it and he never stopped to think of the consequences.
36:56Bows's father has left a card at my club with hideous words on it.
37:01For Oscar Wilde, posing as a sodomite.
37:06I don't see anything now but a criminal prosecution.
37:11My whole life seems ruined by this man.
37:15Well, there were three trials.
37:17In the first trial, Wilde prosecuted the Marquess of Queensbury
37:22because he was going around London saying and writing that Wilde was some kind of homosexual.
37:29And Wilde evidently felt he had to resist this accusation
37:33because otherwise the slander and the scandal would destroy his position.
37:38The charge that John Sholto Douglas, Marquess of Queensbury,
37:44did write and publish a false, scandalous and malicious libel
37:49that the said Oscar Wilde had committed the abominable crime of buggery.
37:56If he'd had his wits, half a wit about him,
38:00he would have known that Queensbury would dig up all the dirt on him.
38:04That he can have believed that this trial was going to be purely based
38:08on his relationship with Douglas is simply unthinkable.
38:13Inevitably, it all came out in court,
38:16and before long Oscar was having to defend his work as well as his lifestyle.
38:26In your introduction to Dorian Gray, you say,
38:30there is no such thing as a moral or immoral book.
38:35Books are well written or badly written.
38:40That expresses your view?
38:43My view on art, yes.
38:45A perverted novel might be a good book.
38:50I don't know what you mean by a perverted novel.
38:53Then I will suggest that Dorian Gray is open to the interpretation of being such a novel.
39:07I will never again tempt by a prayer any terrible power.
39:14If the picture is to alter, it is to alter.
39:19That is all.
39:24I will be to you the most magical of mirrors.
39:28As I have revealed to you your own body,
39:31so I shall reveal to you your own soul.
39:39Were these young men all about 20?
39:43Yes. I like the society of young men.
39:47Did you know that one Parker was a gentleman's valet,
39:52and the other a groom?
39:55I did not know it, but if I had, I should not have cared.
39:59And he was totally surprised when he found the kinds of witnesses that Queensbury could bring into the witness box.
40:04And so his counsel said to him halfway through,
40:07look, you know, this is ridiculous.
40:08We're going to lose in a big way, so we'll have to call it off.
40:11So they did that.
40:12And the consequence was that Wilde was then arrested and prosecuted by the state.
40:16And the second trial was inconclusive, and he, you know, he nearly got off.
40:25Mr. Wilde, what is the love that dare not speak its name?
40:31The love that dare not speak its name in this century is such a great affection of an elder for
40:39a younger man,
40:40such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy,
40:44and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare.
40:50It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect.
40:58It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood.
41:04And on account of it, I am placed where I am now.
41:10The jury couldn't agree, so they tried him a third time.
41:13And they brought in no other person than the solicitor general himself.
41:18They were absolutely determined they were going to secure a conviction.
41:28The charge that Oscar Wilde unlawfully did commit acts of gross indecency with Charles Parker,
41:36William Parker,
41:38William Parker,
41:39Frederick Atkins,
41:41Edward Shelley,
41:43Alfred Wood,
41:45Sidney Arthur...
41:49You, Wilde,
41:51have been the center of a circle of extensive corruption of the most hideous kind among young men.
41:59It is the worst case that I have ever tried.
42:03The sentence of the court is hard labor for two years.
42:12And I, may I say nothing, my lord?
42:24The royalist Puritan divide.
42:28I mean, we're mad, eccentric, romantic, with plumed feathers and abandoned lust on one hand.
42:34And we're tight-ass Puritans wanting everybody to be uniform and compelled them all to be the same on the
42:42other.
42:42And Wilde got jammed in the middle of that.
42:45And a lot of people have been jammed in the middle of it and go on being jammed in the
42:50middle of it.
42:51And if we look at our tabloid press, it's the same thing, isn't it?
42:56Read all about it. Buggery must stop.
42:59And enjoy a bit of reading about buggery.
43:02I mean, it's, that's the English.
43:05I think anybody who pokes fun at the English establishment and shows a flaw of some sort will get their
43:11comeuppance.
43:12You know, the, the, as Macaulay said, the English, one of their periodic fits of morality.
43:18But it wasn't only that, I think, when the English aristocracy close ranks against an outsider, you haven't got a
43:24hope in hell.
43:26Piss of filth, Mr. Wilde.
43:30Scumbag.
43:32I had to stand on the centre platform of Clapham Junction in convict's dress, and handcuffed for the world to
43:40look at.
43:41Of all possible objects, I was the most grotesque.
43:46When people saw me, they laughed.
43:49That was, of course, before they knew who I was.
43:54For a year after that was done to me, I wept every day, at the same hour, and for the
44:01same space of time.
44:05Wilde had to be killed. I think English society at that moment would have liked to have killed him.
44:11So they did the next best thing. They broke him on the wheel, they, they broke his health, they broke
44:17his talent, they degraded him.
44:19Completely ruined him. I mean, it is a sexual ethnic cleansing of the most disgusting kind.
44:28We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones, we turned the dusty drill.
44:35We banged the tins and balled the hymns and sweated on the mill.
44:41But in the heart of every man, terror was lying still.
44:49We who live in prison have to measure time by throbs of pain and the record of bitter moments.
44:56As I sit here in this dark cell in convict's clothes, a disgraced and ruined man, I blame myself.
45:09The effect on the family was absolutely devastating.
45:16When Oscar was arrested, Constance thought that she'd be able to ride it out.
45:20Her first thought was to go to Dublin and spend six months there.
45:24And then the whole thing blew in the New York newspapers.
45:28And I think she realised then that this was going to be very, very big.
45:32So she sent the boys off to the continent and she stayed until Oscar's last trial and his conviction and
45:37then she followed them.
45:41And the most, the first most distressing thing that happened to her was to be thrown out of a Swiss
45:46hotel,
45:47because she carried the name Wilde.
45:53What you say is what you mean in prison, yeah?
45:56You bring every emotion, you wouldn't on the outside, you wouldn't say so many words.
46:01I mean, the ballad I read in jail is the best piece of poetry personally that I have ever read,
46:05you know,
46:05and I've only picked that up since my dealings with you.
46:08I mean, I've written a lot of poetry, but I don't read a lot of poetry.
46:11I had to find out what it was like to have your freedom taken away from you.
46:16And that's, that's always been a great fear of mine.
46:20And that led me to apply for a job at Wormwood Scrubs and start working with men serving life sentences.
46:29And he of the swollen, purple throat, and he of the staring eyes,
46:35waits for the holy hands that took the thief to paradise,
46:41and a broken and a contrite heart to the Lord will not despise.
46:48He had crouched the buried prison walls, suddenly seemed to reel,
46:52and the sky above my head became like a cask of scorching steel.
46:56And though he was a soul in pain, my pain I could not feel.
47:00And thus we rust life's iron chain, degraded and alone.
47:07Some men curse and some men weep and some men make no moan.
47:12But God's eternal laws are kind and break the heart of stone.
47:22I don't think I have ever read such a Christian poem in my life in the fullest sense of that
47:26term.
47:27It's a poem with profound horror at the cruelty of human beings to one another.
47:32But it's also a poem of blazing faith of what the relationship should be of humanity to God.
47:41One of the effects of the trial and imprisonment was to give Constance custody of the boys.
47:53He says that more than anything he's prepared to accept poverty when he comes out.
47:58He's prepared to have to start all over again.
48:01But the one thing which affects him most deeply of all is the fact
48:04that he's probably not going to see his boys again.
48:06That they've been literally taken away from him.
48:11I do hope the court will see in me something more than a man with a tragic vice in his
48:17life.
48:19There is so much more in me.
48:21And I always was a good father to both my children.
48:25I love them dearly and was dearly loved by them.
48:30It would be better for them not to be forced to...
48:33What are the children? I must see Vivian.
48:35He shall certainly not visit you.
48:37Do you think I would allow my son...
48:39Our son?
48:39My son.
48:41To visit the man who spoiled my youth.
48:43Who ruined my life.
48:45Who has tainted every moment of my days.
48:48You don't realise what shame and suffering you've put upon me.
48:51Don't take my children away.
48:53Don't break my lovely links with humanity.
48:55Will you do me to be solitary while my son still live?
48:59If my two children are taken away from me by legal procedure,
49:03it will be a source of infinite distress to me.
49:06If the law should take upon itself to decide that I am one unfit to be with my own children,
49:14that is and always will remain to me grief without end or limit.
49:21We are doomed to be solitary while our sons still live.
49:27I envy the other men who tread the yard along with me.
49:31Their children wait for them, look for their coming.
49:35Will be sweet to them.
49:38I'm so sorry.
49:40Go away then, Constance.
49:42I release you.
49:44I do not know how to leave.
49:46You must take hold of those little hands, close your eyes and walk.
49:52I have killed you.
49:54Just as surely as if I had fed you poison from a spoon.
50:01I do not wish to sever myself entirely from Mr Wilde,
50:05who is in the very lowest depths of misery.
50:08And he is very repentant and minds most of all what he has brought on myself and the boys.
50:14By sticking to him now, I may save him from even worse.
50:19And I believe that he cares now for no one but myself and the children.
50:26I think that prison changed Oscar Wilde completely.
50:31The...
50:31He could never be...
50:33It killed him.
50:34He could never walk away from... from that pain.
50:44I am dazed by the wonderful wonder of the world.
50:49I feel as if I have been raised from the dead.
50:52The sun and the sea seem strange to me.
50:57Oh, beautiful.
50:59Beautiful world.
51:07They released Oscar from prison on the 19th of May, 1897.
51:11And he went straight over to France.
51:14Really, he had no choice.
51:15The disgrace was absolute.
51:19He totally misunderstood what life was going to be like when he came out.
51:24He believed that he...
51:25As he says somewhere, and I'm just quoting from memory, he says,
51:29I'd be quite happy to sleep in the summer on the grass under the stars,
51:33so long as there was love in my heart.
51:36But by the time he came out...
51:40I think he realised that life was going to be very, very difficult.
51:46People have said that Alfred Douglas deserted Oscar Wilde during his imprisonment,
51:52which actually isn't true.
51:53He wrote to him, he talked to many people and tried to communicate with him.
52:00After prison, they tried living together.
52:04But it was hopeless.
52:06They quarrelled dreadfully and parted forever.
52:11It is a blow, quite awful and paralysing, but it had to come.
52:16I know it is better that I should never see him again.
52:21I don't want to.
52:23He fills me with horror.
52:26But I think the most tragic thing about those last years
52:30was the three and a half years that he spent wandering around Europe.
52:36He was never completely penniless, but he was quite poor.
52:41My dear Robbie, the clothes are quite charming, suitable to my advanced age.
52:49The trousers are too tight around the waist.
52:52That is the result of my rarely having good dinners.
52:57Nothing fattens so much as a dinner at one...
52:59Would it bother you if I asked you to let me have my allowance for December now?
53:04A wretched innkeeper at Nojean threatens to sell Reggie's dressing case,
53:09my overcoat and two suits if I don't pay him by Saturday.
53:16My last meeting with Wilde was terrible.
53:20I was walking one morning along the streets of Paris
53:23when there lurched round the corner a tall, shabby man.
53:28Madame Melba, you don't know who I am.
53:32I'm Oscar Wilde, he said,
53:35and I'm going to do a terrible thing.
53:38I'm going to ask you for money.
53:42I took all I had from my purse, and he quickly took it, muttered a word of thanks, and was
53:48gone.
53:55And he was looking into a future bright with exactly what.
54:00His friends had shunned him.
54:02He had very little money.
54:05He tried to write, and it didn't seem to work.
54:15The two women he'd loved were gone.
54:18His mother had died while he was in prison,
54:21and Constance, who he never saw again, died after an operation on her spine.
54:29It's really awful. I don't know what to do.
54:34If we had only met once and kissed each other, it's too late.
54:40How awful life is.
54:49While Constance was still alive, there was still just a possibility that he might be able to see his children
54:56again.
54:57But with her death, the door was simply slammed in his face forever.
55:12I wrote when I did not know life.
55:16Now that I know life, I have no more to write.
55:34The wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death.
55:38One of us has to go.
56:01There's a sort of tragic inevitability about the whole story.
56:06Which, in a sense, I suppose, appealed to him as a classicist.
56:11It was the Greek fates.
56:13The fates rocked my cradle, he said.
56:16It was almost as if he knew that he was going to finish up as he did.
56:21But I wouldn't change a single thing.
56:23It's one of the great tragedies of modern history.
56:27It would be sad to change it.
56:37Exactly 100 years ago tonight, on a freezing St. Valentine's Day,
56:45The Importance of Being Earnest opened at the St. James Theatre.
56:51One hundred years later, we honour Wiles' genius by dedicating a panel in this new Poets' Corner Memorial window.
57:03And I welcome all who have come.
57:22You came to me to learn the pleasure of life and the pleasure of art.
57:30Perhaps, perhaps I am chosen to teach you something much more wonderful.
57:38The meaning of sorrow and its beauty.
57:45Your affectionate friend, Oscar Wilde.
57:50The name of our master is Jesus Christ.
58:00Jusqueline
58:02Christ.
58:03Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ away me, Christ to comfort and restore
58:20me.
58:24Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me,
58:43Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.
58:52Amen.
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