#Oscar wilde lord alfred douglas trial

“I want you to tell me which is original, Mr. This is from The Green Carnation, a novel that satirized Bosie as Lord Reggie and Wilde as Mr. Many people describe them as being mirror images of each other.

#Oscar wilde lord alfred douglas trial

Contemporary accounts before the trial that brought Wilde down seem to suggest that Bosie had a similar vain charm. Wilde must have had a certain wink, a certain tone, that made these boasts seem charming. We love him for saying “I have nothing to declare but my genius.” In his day, there were those who detested Oscar Wilde for his pretension, vanity and arrogance. I can’t tell you why, but I find his arrogance amusing and charming. It was easy to get on his good side, just complement his poetry and he would be impressed by your wisdom. His most notable flaws are his vanity and arrogance. He had a fierce judgmental streak which is easier to recognize when he is arguing from the conservative side, but it was always there even in his youth when he was proclaiming, to the extent that Victorian society allowed, the beauty of same sex love and carnal pleasure. He seems to be everything at once and all of it in the extreme. There are sides of him that are distasteful and sides that are noble, romantic and beautiful. As I read more I found myself in a love/hate relationship with him. If we were reminded of this more often, maybe the world would be a better place.Īfter I wolfed down the Shaw/Douglas book like a bag of cookies, I wanted to know more about Bosie. Without falling into complete fuzzy moral relativism, the triumph of love over ideology is an important and compelling story, as compelling as the triumph of the right over the wrong. And the truth is you could find both of those kinds of people on every side of every issue, and in the long run I thought you might even have more in common with people who care about stuff than you have with people who side with you on an issue or two as they’re going through time.”ĭouglas and Shaw were two people who were bonded in affection as a pair of souls who gave a damn about stuff. There are a lot of people who I love who have views that oppose my own.Īrlo Guthrie put it this way: “I came out of that whole time (the 1960s) thinking I’d only met two kinds of people, that’s people who give a damn and people that don’t. My first thought was “I hate that person.” After a moment’s reflection I realized that I probably would really like the person if I met him. Recently I was driving, and in front of me was an SUV covered in bumper stickers espousing the opposite of everything I believe to be moral and good.

I found the correspondence to be uplifting for this reason. What I loved most about the correspondence between the far right Douglas and the far left Shaw is that it is a story you don’t hear much these days, the story of two people who disagree on everything and who continue to hold great affection for one another.

He has a sense of humor about his prodigious character flaws. Although he is self-aggrandizing, he is also witty and self-aware. He has tantrums, he flatters, he is vain and easily hurt, he begs to be loved and appreciated as much as he appreciates his own worth. Yet I have rarely encountered a personality that asserts itself with such force from beyond the grave.īosie (as he was called) has a Peter Pan quality which Shaw dubs his “infantile complex,” a term that Bosie embraced. Douglas was in his 60s at the time, his beauty faded, his infamous temper cooled a bit. It began when I read his correspondence with George Bernard Shaw. (This may be the only thing I will ever have in common with Oscar Wilde.) I had started some colorization of Wilde and Douglas on my own, this one is going to inspire me a lot.Lately I find I am fascinated by Lord Alfred Douglas. I think the tones are absolutely beautiful and that there is a strong appeal in this image. The photo was probably taken in 1893, color for photos was rare but possible. So, may be, this is one the very few remaining images of Oscar Wilde and his beautiful lover Lord Alfred Douglas, in color. It surely hasn't the artificial tones of a recolorization, and I doubt it has been photoshoped because the original magazine I found it in, was too old for computer artwork.īesides, most of the computer artwork done on Oscar Wilde's photos have been rather coarse, even for the publication of the Wilde Album, some years ago. I don't know if the original photograhy was colorized at the time it was taken, or lately. So, I was bouncing to find in a magazine this reproduction I'm fascinated by the man, the writer, his time, his life, his lovers.