Wilde about the boy
It was an emotional night at the New Sheridan Club’s April meeting, as it was quite possibly the last time we would gather at the Wheatsheaf on Rathbone Place, our home since the Club’s inception in 2006. (And if you count the year of old Sheridan Club meetings too, then it’s a full 20 years we were in residence.) The pub has been sold to the Nicholson’s chain and is closing for refurbishment; after it reopens, it’s possible that the new owner will let us back, but David, the current landlord, thinks they will prefer to use the room for dining. We had a bumper attendance for this historic meeting, and as a thank-you to David we made him an honorary member of the club and presented him with Club tie.
Our talk was from Eugenie Rhodes, giving us a history of the rise and fall of Oscar Wilde, from his early attempts as publishing poetry, his mission to the US on a speaking tour as an ambassador for the aesthetic movement, and his attempts to strike a balance between louche posturing and actual literary productivity, leading up to his most successful period and its crowning glory, "The Importance of Being Earnest". But along with his literary success Eugenie also charted his association—and infatuation—with Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas. Bosie’s father, the Marquess of Queensbury, actually quite liked Wilde the first time they met, but at a subsequent meeting Queensbury now saw both his son and Wilde camping it up outrageously and came to think of the writer as a bad influence. Queensbury wanted to throw rotten fruit at the stage during a performance of Wilde’s latest play, but when he was denied entry he instead delivered the bouquet to Wilde’s club, the Albermarle, with a card addressed to Wilde “posing as a sodomite”. (He actually famously wrote “somdomite”—Queensbury was not a man of letters.) The matter may have ended there, except that Bosie persuaded Wilde to sue for libel. This was doomed, given that it would inevitably come out that Wilde was indeed a sodomite, after which he was arrested and charged with gross indecency. The police actually gave Wilde plenty of time to flee the country, but when he preferred to sit around drinking hock and selzer they had no choice but to arrest him.
Many thanks to Eugenie for a knowledgeable and expertly delivered talk. You can see a video of it at youtu.be/RDtjgUgDC5Q. You can see more photos from the evening at https://www.flickr.com/photos/sheridanclub/albums/72177720324853386.
