The Trial of Oscar Wilde Part 11

Mr. GILL.--"You are fortunate--or shall I say shameless? I refer to pa.s.sages in two letters in particular."

WITNESS.--"Kindly quote them."

Mr. GILL.--"In letter number one. You use this expression: 'Your slim gilt soul,' and you refer to Lord Alfred's "rose-leaf lips."

WITNESS.--"The letter is really a sort of prose sonnet in answer to an acknowledgement of one I had received from Lord Alfred."

Mr. GILL.--"Do you think that an ordinarily-const.i.tuted being would address such expressions to a younger man?"

WITNESS.--"I am not, happily, I think, an ordinarily const.i.tuted being."

Mr. GILL.--"It is agreeable to be able to agree with you, Mr. Wilde."

(Laughter).

WITNESS.--"There is, I a.s.sure you, nothing in either letter of which I need be ashamed."

Mr. GILL.--"You have heard the evidence of the lad Charles Parker?"

WITNESS.--"Yes."

Mr. GILL.--"Of Atkins?"

WITNESS.--"Yes."

Mr. GILL.--"Of Sh.e.l.ley?"

WITNESS.--"Yes."

Mr. GILL.--"And these witnesses have, you say, lied throughout?"

WITNESS.--"Their evidence as to my a.s.sociation with them, as to the dinners taking place and the small presents I gave them, is mostly true.

But there is not a particle of truth in that part of the evidence which alleged improper behaviour."

Mr. GILL.--"Why did you take up with these youths?"

WITNESS.--"I am a lover of youth." (Laughter).

Mr. GILL.--"You exalt youth as a sort of G.o.d?"

WITNESS.--"I like to study the young in everything. There is something fascinating in youthfulness."

Mr. GILL.--"So you would prefer puppies to dogs, and kittens to cats?"

(Laughter).

WITNESS.--"I think so. I should enjoy, for instance, the society of a beardless, briefless, barrister quite as much as that of the most accomplished Q. C." (Loud laughter).

Mr. GILL.--"I hope the former, whom I represent in large numbers, will appreciate the compliment." (More laughter). "These youths were much inferior to you in station?"

WITNESS.--"I never enquired, nor did I care, what station they occupied. I found them, for the most part, bright and entertaining. I found their conversation a change. It acted as a kind of mental tonic."

Mr. GILL.--"You saw nothing peculiar or suggestive in the arrangement of Taylor's rooms?"

WITNESS.--"I cannot say that I did. They were Bohemian. That is all. I have seen stranger rooms."

Mr. GILL.--"You never suspected the relations that might exist between Taylor and his young friends?"

WITNESS.--"I had no need to suspect anything. Taylor's relations with his friends appeared to me to be quite normal."

Mr. GILL.--"You have attended to the evidence of the witness Mavor?"

WITNESS.--"I have."

Mr. GILL.--"Is it true or false?"

WITNESS.--"It is mainly true, but false inferences have been drawn from it as from most of the evidence. Truth may be found, I believe, at the bottom of a well. It is, apparently difficult to find it in a court of law."

(Laughter.)

Mr. GILL.--"Nevertheless we endeavour to extract it. Did the witness Mavor write you expressing a wish to break off the acquaintance?"

WITNESS.--"I received a rather unaccountable and impertinent letter from him for which he afterwards expressed great regret."

Mr. GILL.--"Why should he have written it if your conduct had altogether been blameless?"

WITNESS.--"I do not profess to be able to explain the motives of most of the witnesses. Mavor may have been told some falsehood about me. His father was greatly incensed at his conduct at this time, and, I believe, attributed his son's erratic courses to his friends.h.i.+p with me. I do not think Mavor altogether to blame. Pressure was brought to bear upon him and he was not then quite right in his mind."

Mr. GILL.--"You made handsome presents to these young fellows?"

WITNESS.--"Pardon me, I differ. I gave two or three of them a cigarette-case. Boys of that cla.s.s smoke a good deal of cigarettes. I have a weakness for presenting my acquitances with cigarette-cases."

Mr. GILL.--"Rather an expensive habit if indulged in indiscriminately."

WITNESS.--"Less extravagant than giving jewelled-garters to ladies."

(Laughter).

When a few more unimportant questions had been asked, Wilde left the witness-box, returning to the dock with the same air of what may be described as serious easiness. The impression created by his replies was not, upon the whole, favorable to his cause.

His place was taken by the prisoner Taylor. He said that he was thirty-three years of age and was educated at Marlborough. When he was twenty-one he came into 45,000. In a few years he ran through this fortune, and at about the time he went to Chapel Street, he was made a bankrupt. The charges made against him of misconduct were entirely unfounded. He was asked point-blank if he had not been given to sodomy from his early youth, and if he had not been expelled from a public-school for being caught in a compromising situation with a small boy in the lavatory. Taylor was also asked if he had not actually obtained a living since his bankruptcy by procuring lads and young men for rich gentlemen whom he knew to be given to this vice. He was also asked if he had not extracted large sums of money from wealthy men by threatening to accuse them of immoralities. To all these plain questions he returned in direct answer, "No."

After the luncheon interval, Sir Edward Clark rose to address the jury in defence of Oscar Wilde. He began by carefully a.n.a.lysing the evidence. He declared that the wretches who had come forward to admit their own disgrace were shameless creatures incapable of one manly thought or one manly action. They were, without exception, blackmailers. They lived by luring men to their rooms, generally, on the pretence that a beautiful girl would be provided for them on their arrival. Once in their clutches, these victims could only get away by paying a large sum of money unless they were prepared to face and deny the most disgraceful charges. Innocent men constantly paid rather than face the odium attached to the breath even of such scandals. They had, moreover, wives and children, daughters, maybe or a sister whose honour or name they were obliged to consider.

Therefore they usually submitted to be fleeced and in this way, this wretched Wood and the abject Atkins had been able to go about the West-end well-fed and well-dressed. These youths had been introduced to Wilde. They were pleasant-spoken enough and outwardly decent in their language and conduct. Wilde was taken in by them and permitted himself to enjoy their society. He did not defend Wilde for this; he had unquestionably shown imprudence, but a man of his temperament could not be judged by the standards of the average individual. These youths had come forward to make these charges in a conspiracy to ruin his client.

Was it likely, he asked, that a man of Wilde's cleverness would put himself so completely in the power of these harpies as he would be if guilty of only a tenth of the enormities they alleged against him? If Wilde practised these acts so openly and so flagrantly--if he allowed the facts to come to the knowledge of so many--then he was a fool who was not fit to be at large. If the evidence was to be credited, these acts of gross indecency which culminated in actual crime were done in so open a manner as to compel the attention of landladies and housemaids. He was not himself--and he thanked Heaven for it--versed in the acts of those who committed these crimes against nature. He did not know under what circ.u.mstances they could be practised. But he believed that this was a vice which, because of the horror and repulsion it excited, because of the fury it provoked against those guilty of it, was conducted with the utmost possible secrecy. He respectfully submitted that no jury could find a man guilty on the evidence of these tainted witnesses.

Take the testimony, he said, of Atkins. This young man had denied that he had ever been charged at a police station with alleging blackmail. Yet he was able to prove that he had grossly perjured himself in this and other directions. That was a sample of the evidence and Atkins was a type of the witnesses.

The only one of these youths who had ever attempted to get a decent living or who was not an experienced blackmailer was Mavor, and he had denied that Wilde had ever been guilty of any impropriety with him.

The prosecution had sought to make capital out of two letters written by Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas. He pointed out a fact which was of considerable importance, namely, that Wilde had produced one of these letters himself. Was that the act of a man who had reason to fear the contents of a letter being known? Wilde never made any secret of visiting Taylor's rooms. He found there society which afforded him variety and change. Wilde made no secret of giving dinners to some of the witnesses.

He thought that they were poorly off and that a good dinner at a restaurant did not often come their way. On only one occasion did he hire a private room. The dinners were perfectly open and above-board. Wilde was an extraordinary man and he had written letters which might seem high-flown, extravagant, exaggerated, absurd if they liked; but he was not afraid or ashamed to produce these letters. The witnesses Charles Parker, Alfred Wood and Atkins had been proved to have previously been guilty of blackmailing of this kind and upon their uncorroborated evidence surely the jury would not convict the prisoner on such terrible charges.