Part 6

WITNESS.--"Hardly that, I think. He wrote some verses occasionally for the 'Chameleon,' and, indeed, for other papers."

Mr. GILL.--"The poems in question were somewhat peculiar?"

WITNESS.--"They certainly were not mere commonplaces like so much that is labelled poetry."

Mr. GILL.--"The tone of them met with your critical approval?"

WITNESS.--"It was not for me to approve or disapprove. I leave that to the Reviews."

Mr. GILL.--"At the trial Queensberry and Wilde you described them as 'beautiful poems'?"

WITNESS.--"I said something tantamount to that. The verses were original in theme and construction, and I admired them."

Mr. GILL.--"In one of the sonnets by Lord A. Douglas a peculiar use is made of the word 'shame'?"

WITNESS.--"I have noticed the line you refer to."

Mr. GILL.--"What significance would you attach to the use of that word in connection with the idea of the poem?"

WITNESS.--"I can hardly take it upon myself to explain the thoughts of another man."

Mr. GILL.--"You were remarkably friendly with the author? Perhaps he vouchsafed you an explanation?"

WITNESS.--"On one occasion he did."

Mr. GILL.--"I should like to hear it."

WITNESS.--"Lord Alfred explained that the word 'shame' was used in the sense of modesty, _i. e._ to feel shame or not to feel shame."

Mr. GILL.--"You can, perhaps, understand that such verses as these would not be acceptable to the reader with an ordinarily balanced mind?"

WITNESS.--"I am not prepared to say. It appears to me to be a question of taste, temperament and individuality. I should say that one man's poetry is another man's poison!" (Loud laughter.)

Mr. GILL.--"I daresay! There is another sonnet. What construction can be put on the line, 'I am the love that dare not speak its name'?"

WITNESS.--"I think the writer's meaning is quite unambiguous. The love he alluded to was that between an elder and younger man, as between David and Jonathan; such love as Plato made the basis of his philosophy; such as was sung in the sonnets of Shakespeare and Michael Angelo; that deep spiritual affection that was as pure as it was perfect. It pervaded great works of art like those of Michael Angelo and Shakespeare. Such as 'passeth the love of woman.' It was beautiful, it was pure, it was noble, it was intellectual--this love of an elder man with his experience of life, and the younger with all the joy and hope of life before him."

The witness made this speech with great emphasis and some signs of emotion, and there came from the gallery, at its conclusion, a medley of applause and hisses which his lordship at once ordered to be suppressed.

Mr. GILL.--"I wish to call your attention to the style of your correspondence with Lord A. Douglas."

WITNESS.--"I am ready. I am never ashamed of the style of any of my writings."

Mr. GILL.--"You are fortunate--or shall I say shameless? I refer to passages 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-constituted being would address such expressions to a younger man?"

WITNESS.--"I am not, happily, I think, an ordinarily constituted being."

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

WITNESS.--"There is, I assure 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 Shelley?"

WITNESS.--"Yes."

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

WITNESS.--"Their evidence as to my association 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 God?"

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 friendship 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 class 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 analysing 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 circumstances 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.

"Fix your minds," concluded Sir Edward earnestly, "firmly on the tests that ought to be applied to the evidence as a whole before you can condemn a fellow-man to a charge like this. Remember all that this charge implied, of implacable ruin and inevitable disgrace. Then I trust that the result of your deliberations will be to gratify those thousand hopes that are waiting upon your verdict. I trust that verdict will clear from this fearful imputation one of the most accomplished and renowned men-of-letters of to-day."

At the end of this peroration, there was some slight applause at the back of the court, but it was hushed almost at once. Wilde had paid great attention to the speech on his behalf and on one or two occasions had pressed his hands to his eyes as if expressing some not unnatural emotion. The speech concluded, however, he resumed his customary attitude and awaited with apparent firmness all that might befall.

Mr. Grain then rose to address the jury on behalf of Taylor. He submitted that there was really no case against his client. An endeavour had been made to prove that Taylor was in the habit of introducing to Wilde youths whom he knew to be amenable to the practices of the latter and that he got paid for this degrading work. The attempt to establish this disgusting association between Taylor and Wilde had completely broken down. He was, it is true, acquainted with Parker, Wood and Atkins. He had seen them constantly in restaurants and music-halls, and they had at first forced themselves upon his notice and thus got acquainted with a man whom they designed for blackmail. All the resources of the Crown had been unable to produce any corroboration of the charges made by these witnesses. How had Taylor got his livelihood, it might be asked? He was perfectly prepared to answer the question. He had been living on an allowance made him by members of his late father's firm, a firm with which all there present were familiar. Was it in the least degree likely that such scenes as the witnesses described, with such apparent candour and such wealth of filthy detail, could have taken place in Taylor's own apartments? It was incredible that a man could thus risk almost certain discovery. In conclusion, he confidently looked for the acquittal of his client, who was guilty of nothing more than having made imprudent acquaintances and having trusted too much to the descriptions of themselves given by others.

Mr. Gill then replied for the prosecution in a closely-reasoned and most able speech, which occupied two hours in delivery and which created an enormous impression in the crowded court. He commented at great length upon the evidence. He contended that in a case of this description corroboration was of comparatively minor importance, for it was not in the least likely that acts of the kind alleged would be practised before a third party who might afterwards swear to the fact. Therefore, when the witnesses described what had transpired when they and the prisoners were alone, he did not think that corroboration could possibly be given. There was not likely to be an eye-witness of the facts. But in respect to many things he declared the evidence was corroborated. Whatever the character of these youths might be, they had given evidence as to certain facts and no cross-examination, however adroit, however vigorous, had shaken their testimony, or caused them to waver about that which was evidently firmly implanted in their memories. A man might conceivably come forward and commit perjury. But these youths were accusing themselves, in accusing another, of shameful and infamous acts, and this they would hardly do if it were not the truth. Wilde had made presents to these youths and it was noticeable that the gifts were invariably made after he had been alone, at some rooms or other, with one or another of the lads. In the circumstances, even a silver cigarette-case was corroboration. His learned friend had protested against any evil construction being placed upon these gifts and these dinners; but, in the name of common-sense, what other construction was possible? When they heard of a man like Wilde, presumably of refined and cultured tastes, who might if he wished, enjoy the society of the best and most cultivated men and women in London, accompanying to Nice and other places on the Continent, uninformed, unintellectual and vulgar, ill-bred youths of the type of Charles Parker, then, in Heaven's name what were they to think? All those visits, all those dinners, all those gifts, were corroboration. They served to confirm the truth of the statements made by the youths who confessed to the commission of acts for which the things he had quoted were positive and actual payment.

In the case of the witness Sidney Mavor, it was clear that Wilde had, in some way, continued to disgust this youth. Some acts of Wilde, either towards himself, or towards others, had offended him. Was not the letter which Mavor had addressed to the prisoner, desiring the cessation of their friendship, corrobation?

(At this moment his Lordship interposed, and said that although the evidence of this witness was clearly of importance, he had denied that he had been guilty of impropriety, and he did not think the count in reference to Mavor could stand. After some discussion this count was struck out of the indictment).

Before concluding Mr. Gill stated that he had withdrawn the conspiracy count to prevent any embarrassment to Sir Edward Clarke, who had complained that he was affected in his defence by the counts being joined. Mr. Gill said, in conclusion, that it was the duty of the jury to express their verdict without fear or favour. They owed a duty to Society, however sorry they might feel themselves at the moral downfall of an eminent man, to protect Society from such scandals by removing from its heart a sore which could not fail in time to corrupt and taint it all.

Mr. Justice Charles then commenced his summing-up. His lordship at the outset said he thought Mr. Gill had taken a wise course in withdrawing the conspiracy counts and thus relieving them all of an embarrassing position. He did not see why the conspiracy counts need have been inserted at all, and he should direct the jury to return a verdict of acquittal on those charges as well as upon one other count against Taylor, to which he would further allude, and upon which no sufficient evidence had been given.

He, the learned judge, asked the jury to apply their minds solely to the evidence which had been given. Any pre-conceived notion which they might have formed from reading about the case he urged them to dismiss from their minds, and to deal with the case as it had been presented to them by the witnesses.

His Lordship went on to ask the jury not to attach too much importance to the uncorroborated evidence of accomplices in such cases as these. Had there been no corroboration in this case it would have been his duty to instruct the jury accordingly; but he was clearly of opinion that there was corroboration to all the witnesses; not, it is true, the conspiracy testimony of eye-witnesses, but corroboration of the narrative generally.

Three of the witnesses, Chas. Parker, Wood and Atkins, were not only accomplices, but they had been properly described by Sir Edward Clarke as persons of bad character. Atkins, out of his own mouth, was convicted of having told the most gross and deliberate falsehoods. The jury knew how this matter came before them as the outcome of the trial of Lord Queensberry for alleged libel.

The learned judge proceeded to outline the features of the Queensberry trial, commenting most upon what was called the literary part of Wilde's examination in that case. The judge said that he had not read "Dorian Gray", but extracts were read at the former trial and the present jury had a general idea of the story. He did not think they ought to base any unfavourable inference upon the fact that Wilde was the author of that work. It would not be fair to do so, for while it was true that there were many great writers, such for instance as Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens, who never penned an offensive line, there were other great authors whose pens dealt with subjects not so innocent.

As for Wilde's aphorisms in the "Chameleon", some were amusing, some were cynical, and some were, if he might be allowed to say so, simple, but there was nothing _in per se_, to convict Wilde of indecent practices. However, the same paper contained a very indecent contribution; "The Priest and the Acolyte." Mr. Wilde had nothing to do with that. In the "Chameleon" also appeared two poems by Lord Alfred Douglas, one called "In Praise of Shame", and the other called "Two Loves." It was said that these sonnets had an immoral tendency and that Wilde approved them. He was examined at great length about these sonnets, and was also asked about the two letters written by him to Lord Alfred Douglas--letters that had been written before the publication of the above mentioned poems.

In the previous case Mr. Carson had insisted that these letters were indecent. On the other hand, Wilde had told them that he was not ashamed of them, as they were intended in the nature of prose poems and breathed the pure love of one man for another, such a love as David had for Jonathan, and such as Plato described as the beginning of wisdom.

He would next deal with the actual charges, and would first call their attention to the offence alleged to have been committed with Edward Shelley at the beginning of 1892. Shelley was undoubtedly in the position of an accomplice, but his evidence was corroborated. He was not, however, tainted with the offences with which Parker, Wood and Atkins were connected. He seemed to be a person of some education and a fondness for Literature. As to Shelley's visit to the Albemarle Hotel, the jury were the best judges of the demeanour of the witness. Wilde denied all the allegations of indecency though he admitted the other parts of the young man's story. His Lordship called attention to the letters written by Shelley to Wilde in 1892, 1893 and 1894. It was, he said, a very anxious part of the jury's task to account for the tone of these letters, and for Shelley's conduct generally. It became a question as to whether or no his mind was disordered. He felt bound to say that though there was evidence of great excitability, to talk of either Shelley or Mavor as an insane youth was an exaggeration, but it would be for the jury to draw their own conclusions.

Passing to the case of Atkins, the judge drew attention to his meeting with Taylor in November 1892, to the dinner at the Café Florence, at which Wilde, Taylor, Atkins and Lord A. Douglas were present, and to the visit of Atkins to Paris in company with Wilde.

After dwelling on the circumstances of that visit, his lordship referred to Wilde's two visits to Atkins in Osnaburgh Street in December 1893. Wilde explained the Paris visit by saying that Schwabe had arranged to take Atkins to Paris, but being unable to leave at the time appointed he asked Wilde to take charge of the youth, and he did so out of friendship for Schwabe. Wilde further denied that he was much in Atkins' company when in Paris. Atkins certainly was an unreliable witness and had obviously given an incorrect version of his relations with Burton. He told the grossest falsehoods with regard to their arrest, and was convicted out of his own mouth when recalled by Sir E. Clarke. It was for the jury to decide how much of Atkins's evidence they might safely believe.