A walk on the Wilde side: life in the red
A peek into Oscar Wilde’s bank records shows just how lavish and elaborate his taste really was. Sophie Christie reports
Oscar Wilde famously said that anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination. The extent of the Irish writer’s mental creativity has now been revealed – and any financial frivolity accused of today’s “avocadoloving” millennials pales in comparison.
Bank records from Barclays’ archives, seen exclusively by The Daily Telegraph, show that Wilde’s lavish spending had sent him into debt several times by the age of 23.
Wilde studied “Greats”, a course combining classics and ancient philosophy, at Oxford University’s Magdalen College between 1874 and 1878. He had won a “demyship”, a half-scholarship, worth £95 a year for up to five years. By his third year, the Irish playwright had “twice suffered the fashionable indignity of being called up before the Vicechancellor’s Court, which had the power to enforce tradesmen’s unpaid debts”, according to Richard Ellmann’s biography.
One of these occasions was for a debt of £20 – around £1,200 today – that was owed to the Oxford tailor Muir for items including a “fancy Angora suit”. The other was for part of a £16 debt owed to Osmond, the jeweller, mainly for Masonic regalia.
Much of Wilde’s spending went on clothes, music and china (he was an avid collector). Records of his student account with Parsons, Thomson & Co, which merged with Barclays in 1900, show that he spent £2 10s on concerts on February 2 1875, and three days later spent £9 6s on china, ornaments, coffee cups and a decanter at Spiers Emporium. Like other tradesmen of the time, Spiers allowed students to buy on credit, but the owners were eventually forced to sue Wilde in the Vice-chancellor’s Court for unpaid bills.
Wilde’s spending reflects his growing interest in Freemasonry, with bank account entries showing payments of £3 3s to the Apollo University Lodge on January 24 1876, and £1 10s to Churchill Lodge, another reputable university Masonic lodge that Wilde joined in 1875. He was eventually expelled from both lodges for non-payment of fees, effectively ending his Masonic activities.
Wilde also paid “Bodley” the sum of
‘Fancy clothes, jewellery and china – he often struggled to pay his dues’
£10 in February 1875 and another £30 in March. Bodley is likely not to be the Bodleian Library, but JEC Bodley, son of the Staffordshire pottery business magnate and a friend of Wilde from Oxford who, as an official in one of the lodges there, sparked Wilde’s interest in Freemasonry.
Wilde’s expenditure during his Oxford years, which would have been made by cheque or by written or oral instruction to the bank, also went towards expensive tailored suits, drinking in taverns, and stamps for his personal letters. The most expensive outgoing shown on his bank account was in March 1877 for £42 (almost £3,000 in today’s money) to St Stephen’s Club, a political members’ club in London.
While the majority of named payees on Wilde’s ledger are fellow students and friends, as well as Oxford and London tradesmen who sold to him on credit, he also sent money to family members, including his elder brother, Willie, who was a heavy drinker and had spiralled into debt. Barclays’ ledger shows that on March 24 1877 he sent £2 7s to “WW” (William Wilde). A year later he made a payment of £5 to “Lady Wilde”, his mother, who was short of cash after her husband’s death in 1876.
Despite his healthy scholarship income of £95 a year, as well as occasional payments of up to £595 a year from his parents, Wilde’s elaborate taste in clothing and Masonic jewellery meant he often struggled to pay his dues. The financial troubles of his student years would foreshadow the rest of his life, and appeared as a common theme in his comic writing about society. As his character Lord Alfred Rufford says of his gold-tipped cigarettes in Woman of No Importance, “They are awfully expensive. I can only afford them when I’m in debt.”
Wilde was eventually forced to declare bankruptcy in 1895, while The Importance of Being Earnest was being performed in London, after unsuccessfully attempting to sue the Marquess of Queensberry for libel. The Marquess, the father of Wilde’s lover, had accused him of sodomy.
Queensberry’s acquittal left Wilde responsible for his opponent’s legal costs. Many of his possessions had to be sold off, including the production rights to The Importance of Being Earnest and Lady Windermere’s Fan.
At the very least, these struggles kept Wilde busy. As Lord Alfred said: “If I hadn’t my debts I shouldn’t have anything to think about.”
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