Gyles Brandreth’s Diary
Oscar Wilde was a genius but he’d be jailed today for # Metoo crimes
‘There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about,’ said Oscar Wilde famously, ‘and that is not being talked about.’
As President of the Oscar Wilde Society, I have been chuntering on about him again for a new (and rather good) BBC2 documentary, The Importance of Being Oscar, which revisits his story, his plays and, inevitably, his tragic fall from grace.
As you won’t need reminding, in 1895 Wilde was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for ‘gross indecency’. In the programme, distinguished thesps – Freddie Fox, Claire Skinner and Anna Chancellor among them – give us golden moments from his work, and others (including his grandson, Merlin Holland) talk about his private life.
Wilde is an acknowledged literary genius – The Importance of Being Earnest is arguably the best play written in the English language in the entire 19th century – and a gay icon whose grave in Paris is a place of pilgrimage visited by thousands every year.
We know his fate in 1895, but how would he have fared in the #Metoo world of 2019? I think he would have been arrested.
He was 40 at the time of his trial, an Establishment figure, a rich and successful, influential and educated man, and the rent boys with whom he was consorting were mostly lads, under the age of consent even by today’s standards. One was reckoned to be 14; others were 15 and 16.
The prosecution case would be that Wilde was using his power, his position and his wealth to take advantage of vulnerable boys. Yes, if he was put on trial today, we might well be sending him to prison all over again.
Wilde was a flawed genius. I find him (and his circle) infinitely fascinating. I have written seven Victorian murder mysteries in which he and his (real-life) friend Arthur Conan Doyle are my detectives.
On 24 May, I am presiding at a dinner at the Savile Club marking the 150th birthday of Robbie Ross, Wilde’s literary executor and, by most accounts, his first male lover. I have already ordered my food for the dinner and I don’t think Oscar would have approved. I am a vegetarian. It is the one thing I have in common with Jeremy Corbyn.
Oscar saw a definite link between vegetarianism and revolutionary socialism. ‘It is strange that the most violent republicans I know are all vegetarians,’ he wrote in one of his letters. ‘Brussels sprouts seem to make people bloodthirsty, and those who live on lentils and artichokes are always calling for the gore of the aristocracy, and for the severed heads of kings.’
In Rupert Everett’s fine film about Wilde’s last years, The Happy Prince, the part of Robbie Ross is played by a brilliant young actor, Edwin Thomas.
I know Ned and recently attended the funeral of his father, Michael Thomas, another fine actor, who died in March, aged only 67.
Because the father had known he was dying, he had been closely involved in the planning of the funeral and everything about it, from the cardboard coffin to the singing of Bring Me Sunshine, was beautifully done. The most moving part was Edwin’s eulogy. The way he spoke of his father provoked laughter, tears and admiration in equal measure. I’d never heard a better eulogy – and I’ve heard a few. How could it be so good, we all wondered? And then Edwin explained. His father, being an actor, had asked his son, being an actor, to give him a preview – a full rehearsal, a complete dry-run of the whole eulogy – just three weeks before. Dad had applauded. With the tears streaming down our faces, we applauded, too.
I have spent a fair bit of time with actors lately. On 17 March, I did a charity fundraiser with the great Dame Judi Dench at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. Because of the St Patrick’s Day parade taking place at the time, the streets around the theatre were closed. Dame Judi, 84, was dropped off outside a strip club in Brewer Street, Soho. As she stepped out of her car, half a mile from the theatre, the heavens opened and hailstones rained down on her. ‘Isn’t this fun?’ she exclaimed. What’s more remarkable is that she meant it.
Later that same week, as Chancellor of the University of Chester, I presented an honorary degree to another remarkable actress, Dame Patricia Routledge, now 90, but as formidable as ever she was in her Hyacinth Bucket heyday.
In a superb address to the undergraduates, she told them how, as a young actress, she had asked a seasoned director what made the difference between a good actor and a great one? He had said the question could be answered with a single word: ‘Risk.’
She gazed down at the 800 young faces looking up at her and said, ‘Whatever you do with your lives, take risks.’