CLICK TO PLAY The Importance of Being Oscar
Read by Clive Greenwood
“There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about” – Lord Alfred Douglas
Teddington, 1920
I am four years older now than Oscar was when he died. It’s a queer thing, to outlive one’s own fame. And fame it was, once, though notoriety, indeed infamy, is what it became. I shared Oscar’s infamy – though not his disgrace – in full after the scandal broke, and I daresay I should not like to attract that sort of attention again, which is why I live quietly and anonymously in Teddington these days.
Being cut in the street was once a social threat, not a physical one, but after the Queensberry trial in 1895, the gloves, as it were, were off. Nobody ever stops to consider that Oscar had it rather easy by comparison with me: he was locked away from Society for Society’s own good, and thus he did not have to wallow in its opprobrium every day, as I did. While Oscar trod the endless punishment wheel in gaol, I could scarcely move in Bloomsbury for doors slamming in my face. Which of us suffered more is a moot point. The question is, which of us deserved to?
If you ever wish to discover which of your friends are truly loyal, I can strongly recommend becoming embroiled in a public trial between your father and your lover, involving testimony from the commonest renters in Piccadilly. Oscar referred to his assignations with these grasping little beasts as “feasting with panthers” – after he was sent to prison, I would have been lucky to share a meal with a jackal. Still, I forgave him, eventually; what choice did I have?
Of course, one hardly needs to go as far as Reading Gaol to be cast into the outer darkness, culturally speaking – Reading Station is quite far enough. But Oscar felt his shame keenly, and, as spoiled children blame their parents for their own faults, so he blamed me for his downfall. I didn’t visit him there; I had my own problems with which to wrestle. I did write him a rather severe letter, which was later appropriated by Robbie Ross and published, with a few amendments, as De Profundis. It’s rather ironic that the world now sees that document as damning and scolding me – but it’s also fitting that yet again, my work should be published under Oscar’s name, even though the literary reputation I helped him build now lies in tatters.
To be perfectly fair (and unless one can be perfectly beastly, one ought always to be perfectly fair) I must concede that Oscar did contribute materially to much of my work. As a spokesman for my plays, I could not have asked for a better; though his epigrams were usually culled from my dinner conversation the night before, his presentation was immaculate, and he had just the right dash and panache to make people believe that he really was the author of Lady Windermere, The Importance of Being Earnest, and the rest. Writing, you see, for a son of the aristocracy, is not so much a career choice as a death sentence – especially when one’s father is the Mad Marquess of Queensberry.
I wanted to write, I burned to write – yet if I wrote as myself, I was limited to a few poems in shortlived aesthetic journals nobody would read: perhaps stretching to a privately-printed slim volume when I had sufficient sonnets. This was not enough for me; but to avoid my father’s ire, I had to find a plausible frontman under whose name I could publish my real work. And in the heady summer of 1891, when I was still an undergraduate at Magdalen, wondering how to follow my passion for stage drama without Pater cutting me off penniless – I found him.
I sense a little scepticism. No matter, I am used to it. Oh, I know what you are thinking: could Alfred Douglas, with all his breeding and beauty, really be a literary genius too? Surely it’s easier to see him as a destructive leech on a greater man’s talent; to dismiss him as a dangerous and selfish beau garcon sans merci; an homme fatale, out for all he could get and more, and not caring how he got it? Well, yes, that opinion is very much easier to hold, which is why it’s so popular. But as Oscar never said, common knowledge is what the majority believe; truth is what the minority know.
Consider the evidence: pre-Bosie, despite all the velvet and flounce and lecture tours, all darling Oscar managed to produce was three collections of tales more fey than fairy, an essay or two, and The Picture of Dorian Gray – which is amusing enough as such things go, but it’s hardly what he’s remembered for now, is it? If it weren’t for the plays – my plays – Dorian would be a footnote in fin-de-siecle literature, notable primarily for the thinly-disguised portraits of Oscar’s friends and enemies. If it weren’t for me, and my undeclared genius, Wilde would be largely forgotten, his Parisian grave overgrown, his jade and granite statues still uncarved: just another minor Decadent with sodomitical leanings. And in 1895, you couldn’t throw a bread roll in Kettner’s without hitting ten of that sort.
Yes, I took advantage of the poor fellow, but I also took pity on him. How could I not? Nobody walks the London streets in velvet pantaloons and a green carnation unless they are an attention-seeker of the most extreme sort, prepared to do literally anything to be noticed. It was alarming how desperately Oscar longed for success – real, popular success, not just the patronising approval of Beardsley, Ruskin et al. Oh, he dreamed of taking on Society at its own game, of holding a mirror up to its own ugly face and making it laugh at what it saw! Alas, dear Oscar’s reach was notable for ever exceeding his grasp, and it wasn’t until I came along, saw the mutual opportunities in a creative partnership, and made my proposition, that both of us got what we wanted.
Not that our road together was entirely free of potholes; Wilde was something of a Celtic bumpkin when we met, and needed strict, stern instruction to render him presentable. He had a repellent way of eating bacon, I recall, which I swiftly trained him out of (I blame it on his rural upbringing) – but table manners aside, ours was a perfect alliance, for a while – until Oscar’s much-quoted inability to resist temptation got the better of the poor imbecile.
While I was upstairs at the Cadogan, scribbling away long into the night on the first act of Husband or turning a phrase in Earnest until it gleamed, Oscar was out at all hours, spending our literary earnings on his frightful boys. I never imagined when I introduced him to the monosyllabic Alberts and Johnnies and Charlies of Soho that he would consider them more charming, even, than he did me. But it was the beginning of the end: I suppose that with these horny-handed stable-lads and aitch-dropping Cockney sparrows, he had found his level, and he stayed there.
I won’t pretend I wasn’t disappointed; I did rather love him, at first, you see. Whatever his other faults, Oscar was awfully sweet and simply marvellous fun; not to mention his skill and enthusiasm at making the “love that dare not speak its name”. (My phrase, incidentally – one of the few I’m correctly credited with: go on, look it up). But I chose to ignore his crass infidelities and my hurt feelings for the sake of the work, and frankly, the money.
For without Oscar, and moreover without my half of our royalties, in the eyes of the world, I was nothing but a poor posh poof. The acknowledged author of A Woman of No Importance could have set the world at defiance and walked away from his increasingly profligate and promiscuous partner without a backward glance – but I was not the acknowledged author. How I shuddered when I realised that the gilded cage I had built for myself had no door – and must be smashed entirely if I were ever to escape.
My father had always been quick to anger, and Oscar had always been absurdly sensitive and proud, as well as having a somewhat long-distance relationship with reality. So when Papa left the card for Mr. Wilde at the Earnest premiere, insinuating that his behaviour led many to think him a homosexual, Oscar blew his top entirely. Insisted on suing for libel when, to give the mad old bastard my father his due, he was speaking nothing but the truth. I tried to stop Oscar, but not, I confess, too hard; I told him it would be the end of his career … but not, I own, too loudly. If my freedom must be bought at the price of his – well, hadn’t he got himself into this mess? Hadn’t he become drunk on the fame my talent had won him? And did I really need him any more? Couldn’t I come out from behind the Wildean mask, confess my deception and publish under my own name? Wouldn’t the public embrace me too?
You know the answer, of course, to that last question. I might have written the plays, but Oscar had put his genius into his life and thereby created a legend more powerful than mere words on a page. I feel for poor Francis Bacon, or whichever aristocrat really wrote Shakespeare’s plays: his genius will go forever unacknowledged, as mine has. I wonder, sometimes, whether history will judge me – or whether it will simply forget me, as it has so many, recalling me if at all as a footnote to my protégé’s glittering career. Here in my bachelor flat in Teddington I while the days away, neglectful and almost entirely neglected.
I say almost: I have one friend, Noel, a boy actor whose career I have been following. He knows who I was once, and whom I knew, and is really rather morbidly interested in the details. He seems to have inclinations that way himself, if I am any judge – and I am – and needs a confidante, or will soon.
I may tell him the truth one day; I may even offer to make something of him. Because there is something stirring in me which I haven’t felt for 25 years: the desire to write a play. I haven’t an outline yet, only a few titles swirling in my head: Hay Fever, Blithe Spirit, Present Laughter; something sweet and summery for this new decade, to wash away the bitter taste of the war. I’ll discuss the matter with young Mr. Coward when he comes for tea. I’m sure he’ll have some ideas.
(c) Diane Payne, 2013
Diane Payne writes serious journalism and curious fiction. She lives in Manchester and has worked in the media for far too long. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in several US and UK magazines, including the Triangulation anthology, Creeping Horror, and Dead Good.
Clive Greenwood just filmed new children's TV show Little Fergie and appears in two upcoming features: Mob Handed and Young Pretender. He returns to Kent Rep as Tranio in Taming of the Shrew this summer and co-wrote Goodbye: the (after)life of Cook and Moore (Gilded Balloon and Leicester Square Theatre).
clive-greenwood@hotmail.co.uk / www.spotlight.com/9094-6721-0711
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