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The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde: The First Uncensored Transcript of The Trial of Oscar Wilde vs. John Douglas (Marquess of Queensberry), 1895

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It wasn't a capital trial, but the 1895 libel proceedings of Oscar Wilde against the Marquess of Queensberry were in their way tragic and terrible. Entering the trial, Wilde was a celebrity and a playwright with the magnificently silly _The Importance of Being Ernest_ in successful performance in London and New York. Afterwards, he was pursued, tried, convicted, and imprisoned at hard labor for the then crime of homosexuality. It is a story that has been told many times and turned into dramas. Those of us who love Wilde's writing and outrageous wit will always wonder what would have happened if he had been able to write and live as he wished, instead of being ruined and sent to an early death. Amazingly, the trial record has until now been unavailable. There were summaries, and publication of extracts, but only with _The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde: The First Uncensored Transcript of the Trial of Oscar Wilde vs. John Douglas (Marquess of Queensberry)_, 1895 (Fourth Estate) do we have a full record. In 2000, an anonymous source donated a transcript of the trial to the British Library. It was authenticated, and has now been edited by Merlin Holland, Wilde's grandson. Anyone interested in Wilde's life and writing will be fascinated by this verbatim record which puts judge, prosecutor, defender, and of course Wilde himself on the stage of the Old Bailey to play out their roles verbatim.

Holland has a useful introduction to recall the details of how Wilde was snared into legal doom, spurred by his young man Lord Alfred Douglas ("Bosie") to bother Bosie's abominable father Queensberry. When, after several skirmishes, Queensberry left his calling card at Wilde's club, with the words "To Oscar Wilde posing as somdomite" (spelling was one of the Marquess's shortcomings), Wilde should have thrown it into the fire. Instead, egged on by Bosie, he took Queensberry to court for libel. It was the mistake of his life.; as Holland writes, "If I could ask my grandfather a single question, it would have to be, 'Why on earth did you do it?'" Wilde did not take advice that he leave the country, and so sealed his own doom. Most of the pages of this book are the words from the trial, and most of those words come from the bouts with Wilde in the witness box. Initially he seemed to enjoy his role in the events, and gave as good as he got. For much of the repartee reported here, the transcriber notes: "(_laughter_.)" and "(_more laughter_.)" But an eventual flippant answer overthrew Wilde on the stand, although his case could not have been won. When Carson asked about a companion, "Did you ever kiss him?" Wilde replied, "Oh, no, never in my life; he was a peculiarly plain boy." It was not long after that Wilde and his lawyers withdrew the charges, and Queensberry was declared not guilty.

If Queensbury was not guilty of libel, it was reasonable to think that his accusations were truthful, and with the evidence already gathered, Queensberry assisted in a speedy arrest of Wilde, who once again had refused advice that he leave the country. The subsequent trials, one with a hung jury and one finding him guilty of gross indecency, are not covered in this volume. Wilde had two years of hard labor, and three sad years of exile before his death in Paris in 1900. He produced the mordant "Ballad of Reading Gaol" but little else during these years, and while there are plenty of examples that his wit remained in conversation, we were robbed of subsequent examples of the delicious laughter that had come from each of his successively improving plays. This is a useful book as full documentation of the first trial, and Holland has given helpful notes throughout. Those who admire Wilde, however, will find it more than useful. Wilde was brilliant at Greek and admired Greek drama and life, and it is no exaggeration that the transcript of the trial, reading as it does like a piece of period theater, has all the marks of a classic tragedy.

What's amazing is that, we have heard for many years about the unparalleled wit and charm of Wilde in conversation, yet until now we of course have been denied this experience. Reading these verbatim transcripts, hundreds of pages long and recently unearthed, we are given the opportunity to do this almost virtually, for the Wildean voice comes through loud and clear, with perfect crispness and distinction. This libel trial, the first of three of the Oscar Wilde trials, is almost a conversation between two persons, and the defence counsel, Carson, though incredibly scornful and insolent, is almost as intelligent and quite as good at debate as Wilde, so it's a splendid match of brains. The outcome is disheartening, though, and throughout you can't help pounding the desk and murmuring out loud, oh, Oscar, how could you have been so stupid! Or -- don't go there! So he becomes real in a way he hasn't previously, not even in the best biographies available. Queensberry and Alfred Douglas come off, in hindsight, as monsters of privilege in only quasi-human form. And poor Edward Shelley, it is plain, deserves a book of his own.

I HAVE NEVER READ OSCAR WILDE'S POETRY. THIS BOOK - PRESENTED IN TRIAL-TRANSCRIPT FORM - DEALS WITH THE LIBEL CASE OF JOHN DOUGLAS (KNOWN AS QUEENSBERRY). SINCE QUEENSBERRY HAD NO FIRST-HAND KNOWLEDGE OF MR. WILDE'S PERSONAL ACTIVITIES, HE PUBLICALLY ACCUSED HIM OF "POSING AS A SODOMITE." THROUGHOUT THE TRIAL - ON DIRECT/CROSS EXAMINATIONS - MR. WILDE VEHEMENTLY DENIED ANY ENGAGEMENT IN HOMOSEXUAL ACTIVITY. AFTER FINDING OUT THE DEFENSE TEAM PLANNED TO CALL SEVERAL OF HIS "PARTNERS" AS WITNESSES, MR. WILDE ALLOWED QUEENSBERRY TO OBTAIN A "NOT-GUILTY" VERDICT. [What an embarassing whimp!]. THE "NOT-GUILTY" VERDICT LED TO PROSECUTION OF MR. WILDE. HIS SECOND TRIAL ENDED WITH A HUNG JURY. AFTER THE THIRD TRIAL MR. WILDE WAS CONVICTED AND SENTENCED TO TWO YEARS OF HARD LABOR (25 MAY 1895). AFTER HIS RELEASE (19 MAY 1897), HE DIED IN PARIS (30 NOVEMBER 1900). [I am extremely disappointed with the outcome of this book. I was prepared to give Mr. Wilde major "kudos." As it turned-out, Mr. Wilde is a major l-i-a-r!]. THIS BOOK WAS COMPILED BY MERLIN HOLLAND - MR. WILDE'S GRANDSON. AFTER MR. WILDE'S CONVICTION IN 1895, CYRIL (HIS SON; HOLLAND'S FATHER) SPENT SOME TIME IN IRELAND AND EVENTUALLY, MOVED TO SWITZERLAND. CYRIL NEVER SAW HIS FATHER AGAIN. [I feel sorry for Mr. Holland's childhood; if he knew, he probably got tired of hearing about "nasty ol' granddaddy"]. THIS BOOK IS BASED ON A LONGHAND MANUSCRIPT (AUTHENTICATED) OF THE COMPLETE QUEENSBERRY TRIAL HOLLAND SAW ON DISPLAY AT THE BRITISH LIBRARY IN 2000. THE "CHAIN OF EVENTS" LEADING TO THE LIBEL CASE BEGAN AFTER MR. WILDE WAS "HANDED" A CARD BY A DESK CLERK AT A MEN'S CLUB. THIS CARD [QUEENSBERRY'S CARD] AND A FEW COURT RECEIPTS ARE THE ONLY ITEMS WHICH HAVE BEEN PRESERVED IN OFFICIAL COURT RECORDS. [WHILE READING THIS BOOK I STRONGLY SUGGEST KEEPING A PEN AND NOTEPAD HANDY; NAMES, DATES AND EVENTS CONSTANTLY GO "BACK-AND-FORTH." TAKING NOTES WILL HELP TO KEEP EVENTS CLEAR]. "Liar...liar...pants on fire!" IS A PERFECT SUMMARY.

Very fascinating, I've read bios on the case for a college thesis, but never the "actual transcripts." Highly recommend if a fan or not.

As this book makes abundantly clear, Alfred Douglas is to blame. Al wanted to get back at his unstable and angry father through Wilde. Alfred forced his lap dog Wilde to ignore everyone else's advice and pursue a criminal charge against his father the Marquess of Queensbury.

THe MArquess at that time had come through a vicious divorce trial, and suffered the suicide of an older son who was being blackmailed for intimate relations over many years with the new Prime Minister. The Marquess reacted unwisely in forbidding any friendship between Al and Oscar, and in moving not only to throw vegetables upon the stage on the opening night of The Importance, but also leaving a slanderous if somewhat illegible card at Oscar's club.

Oscar lived to regret that owing to his extravagance in setting up Al and Al's intimate pal in an expensive hotel, he could not pay the hotel bill and thus leave for a planned trip to Paris to practice Salome. Instead he remained in London and received the unfortunate card. His most trusted legal friend had already been retained by the Marquess and thus could not give Oscar the good advice he needed to ignore the card and discard it. Instead he followed Al's insistence in charging Al's father the Marquess, and the rest in the tight knit British aristocracy and ruling class, as flamboyantly revealed in Oscar's plays, was inexorable and inevitable. IN fact Oscar's trials become his finest performance and most indeniable proof of the utter and unmentionable corruption, vice, immorality and hypocrisy of the BRitish ruling class. But what a profound and absolute price he paid for revealing this.

This nevertheless was his life's mission. The son of Irish Catholic nationailsts, he was raised in Protestant Schools, including Trinity in Dublin where he was classmate to the one who would so cruelly cross-examine as recorded here. He then went on to Oxford, and London, serving subversively and amazing his fake friends. He perhaps believed he could dazzle the British courts but was quickly silenced, and the events must speak clearly for themselves. As for the British system of injustice, as BRitish Barrister and author of the Rumpole series John Mortimer displays in his brilliant foreword to this book, res ipse loquitur. Mortimer concludes: " . . .when any merciful prosecutor or Home Secretary might have decied that he had suffered enough, it let him down badly and he was finally convicted. Passing the ridiculous sentence of two years' hard labour, Mr. Justice WIlls said that men who could do as Oscar WIlde did were 'dead to all sense of shame.' This judge, who had presided over cases of rape and murder, seriously maintained that Wilde's offense was 'the worst I have ever tried.' When the verdict and sentence were announced ( . . .) the truth had been exposed but it was still a shameful day for British Justice (p. xiii)."

Needless to say that prosecutor who had so viciously treated Wilde despite their co-nationality went on to a highly successful legal career. Reading these transcripts reveal how gifted a barrister he was and how very poorly served was Mr. Wilde in this absolute diversion of the interests of justice, in which Wilde could bring a libel case against a member of the British aristocracy and wind up in prison himself, doing hard labour and losing everythnig he had including his beloved wife and sons.

This nevertheless stands as Mr. Wilde's greatest revelation of British corruption, which Anglo America now eagerly imitates, and thus which we must now read as a cautionary tale with great attention.

And we must deeply thank and congratulate Wilde's grandson in researching in a keenly academic manner this book from forgotten and hidden court documents and associated texts, and in writing the brilliant introduction and notes, a scholarly feat which he humbly denies and ascribes to others in his very generous acknowledgements.

Please note the Bitish edition of this book irrelevantly includes in the title Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess; do not buy needlessly twice unless a fervent collector of all things Wilde, which is emminently understandable and as matter of course forgiveable. Nevertheless, in light of Mr. Wilde's Irish nationalist parentage, and his central image in Salome, and in citing his own description of the Marquess of Queensberry this superfluous title makes itself sweet icing upon a bitter cake.

This is a wonderful book if you are only interested in reading the actual transcript from Oscar's trial. Indeed, the book is excellent in that respect. However, I would say it is a book to avoid if you are a fan of Lord Alfred Douglas. It seems to me that this book, like so many before it, is trying to make Alfred Douglas the scapegoat. There was a reason Bosie wanted Oscar to take his father to trial, they WOULD have won. It was a carefully laid out plan and Oscar, not Bosie, is the one who went astray from it. Lord Alfred was to take the witness box and testify against his father. When he was finished telling all that his father had done, what sort of man he was, they felt sure no jury would side with him. However, just before Bosie was about to take the witness box, Oscar refused to allow him. He knew what it would mean by his refusing to allow Bosie to take the stand, he understood very well what it would mean, but he said Bosie should never have to do such a thing. Lord Alfred himself spent a great deal of time lamenting Oscar's decision, and wondering why on earth he changed his mind. He seems to think that Oscar had been talking to Robert Ross and he and Ross had come up with another plan. Ross however, is a compulsive liar, and was probably the worst person Oscar could have trusted.

Oscar's sons, and his grandsons, lived with a false impression of Robert Ross, and therefore with a false impression of Lord Alfred Douglas. I am sickened that these misconceptions live on even now, so long after their deaths. I am sick of Lord Alfred being made out to be a monster, some evil, wicked boy who destroyed Oscar Wilde. Oscar was a very intelligent man, was he not? Don't you think he knew what he was doing? "I must say to myself that I ruined myself and that no man great or small can be ruined but by his own hand."-Oscar Wilde. I'm just tired of the blame being shoveled solely onto Lord Alfred. He wasn't a monster, and I wish people would stop trying to portray him as if he was one.

Oscar Wilde was a handsome man in 1892, as the photo of him in this books clearly indicates. He was a brilliant playwright and daubled in poetry. However, as the drawing of his arrest at the Cadogan Hotel on April 13, 1895, he was an arrogant, dandified "gentleman." He had been accused of a horrible charge and should have accepted his fate. To crave justice from libel, he laid himself and his reputation open to scrutiny and disaster.
Why his grandson would want all of this sordidness known now is impossible to comprehend. Some things are better left forgotten or not said. Wilde felt that the charge (however right it might be) called for a defense of justification. It turned out to be the opposite as the self-destructive genius only continued to lie with charm, entertaining the audience but not the court.

Those who start libel actions often emerge with their reputations and lives in tatters. Libel actions are meant to be cases for re-establishing reputations, confounding gossip and allowing the litigant to emerge in a state of unblemished purity (John Mortimer). The most famous libel case of all led Oscar Wilde directly to jail. He left behind a devoted wife and two sons. The grandson who released this detailed account of the trial to try to figure out "Why on earth did you do it?"

There are photographs of some of the persons involved and of the evidence used against him. It is proposed that perhaps he really didn't think he had done anything wrong. After all, many important people of that time got away with the same thing of which he was accussed. To learn what it is, you must read this book.

I'd heard rumors about his sexual persuasion previously, but this stuff went a little too far to please my sensibilities. The Judge maintained that men who could do as he did were 'dead to all sense of shame' and declared that this offence was 'the worst I have ever tried.'

Poor Oscar, his ego got in the way; his pride was too great to accept the fact that he had been 'found out.' In going to court, he laid open his past and destroyed his future. He hurt not only himself but his family as well. Why can't people just let the sordid past lay dormant?