Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde (1882)

Oscar Wilde: a Play by Lester Cohen

New York : Boni & Liveright, 1928

In 1928, Cohen penned the first play on the life of Oscar Wilde in English. He refers to it as having been 'written for presentation — rather than for reading', however it was inadvisable to produce it in climate of New York at the time. In the play's forward, he also makes it very clear that he intends to leave history to the historians. A significant amount of artistic license has been taken with the facts of history.

The story is focused on four major events: Marquess of  Queensberry's confrontation of Wilde regarding his relationship with Queensberry's son, Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas, a truncated telling of the trials — primarily focused on Wilde's libel suit against Queensberry and then a single trial for gross indecency, a short scene in prison, and finally Oscar in Paris following his two years at Reading Gaol.

Since the play doesn't intend to strictly follow actual events, major characters in the real-life drama have been replaced and/or renamed. Completely absent are Lady Wilde (Wilde's mother) and Constance (Wilde's wife). The character of Lady Diana, a jilted lover of sorts, serves the dual role of would-be savior and as the representation of society's opinion of Wilde and his behavior. The most comical addition to the cast of characters is Zadi, a servant girl who is brought in to replace Melville, a page, after rumors of Wilde's sexual behaviors are known. She is dressed in a gauzy harem costume which leaves nothing to the imagination and her presence is intended to throw the public off the track. The running joke is that the men who visit Oscar pay her little attention. Lord Alfred is written as a petulant and self absorbed young man determined to hurt his father regardless of how that may affect others. Oscar, on the other hand, is depicted as completely in Lord Alfred's control and unable to defy his wishes.

Cohen uses Wilde's style to great effect, creating conversations among the characters that are both witty and biting. For instance, when Lady Diana says 'Oh - I suppose I'm an idiot.', Wilde replies, 'You just go on making one discovery after another, don't you Diane?' What starts out as a comedy quickly turns dark during the trial scene. The 'sin' of excess must of course be punished. Repentance during incarceration soon follows.

Left: Oscar Wilde by David Peña
Buenos Aires : Sociedad Editorial Argentina, 1922
Right: Oskar Wilde : Sein Drama by Carl Sternheim
Potsdam : G. Kiepenheuer, 1925

Although Wilde did convert to Catholicism while in prison, Cohen might take that transformation a bit too far.  In particular, he suggests that Lord Alfred breaks with Oscar after he so spectacularly loses the libel suit against Queensberry. As well, after serving his prison term, Oscar thinks of their relationship as an anomaly when he 'lost [his] way in life - and stumbled into the slime'. We know from history that he did see Lord Alfred again after prison and he certainly had other liaisons before, after and during his relationship with him.

Oscar Wilde's ordeal became the subject of many plays starting in the early 1920s. Prior to Cohen's 1928 work, two non-English plays about Oscar Wilde were published: David Peña's Spanish play, Oscar Wilde, in 1922 and Carl Sternheim's German play, Oskar Wilde: Sein Drama in 1925. The French, with their more liberal attitudes regarding sexuality, helped to keep Oscar Wilde's story and his writings alive even as the British had consigned him to oblivion. As M. de Vedia y Mitra notes in the forward to Peña's work, the educated classes of Argentina had adopted the French language and their connection to Wilde's work was largely through French translations. During the period of the Wiemar Republic, Germany also maintained more liberal views on sexuality and staged productions of Wilde's work during that time. Sternheim's play elevated Wilde beyond simply the author of these plays, to a subject of theatrical production itself.

Bibliographies & Ratings: Cory (IV); Garde (OTP, C *); Mattachine Review (IV); Young (716)

A Portrait of John Singer Sargent by Giovanni Boldini

A Portrait of John Singer Sargent (c1884)
Giovanni Boldini (Italian, 1832-1931)
Oil on panel
27 x 22 cm

The Evenings : A Winter's Tale by Gerard Reve

London : Pushkin Press, 2017

"It was still dark, in the early morning hours of the twenty-second of December 1946..."

The Evenings (De Avonden in the original Dutch) was  published in 1947 when the author was just shy of 24 years old. It describes the final 10 evenings of 1946 in suburban Amsterdam from the perspective of  23-year-old Frits van Egters. The focus, as the title suggests, is on the evenings. The days are largely ignored as Frits is at work, a job that he describes as follows:

"I work in an office. I take cards out of a file. Once I have taken them out, I put them back in again. That is it."

Frits lives with his parents and spends much of his time avoiding the simmering conflict between them. He spends time with friends and seems to want a real connection with others but instinctively sabotages the possibility through his use of caustic humor. Others aren't sure how to interpret the humor, some ignore it, others join in.

While it isn't a perfect analogy, there's something of a Holden Caulfield in Frits, something of a lost soul wondering through town trying to find himself and avoiding his own feelings. While others seem to be getting back to some semblance of normal after World War II, Frits seems lost.

The Evenings isn't a gay novel per se, but Frits' interaction with the petty criminal Maurits offers the slightest suggestion that Maurits is gay and maybe that's part of why Frits puts the most effort into avoiding him throughout the novel. As well, the general feeling of being out of place that is so present in the novel speaks strongly to the gay experience.

A Little Boy is Safely Lost in Chicago by Fritz Peters

Chicago Tribune, December 4, 1949, H12

"With an expression compounded of fear, surprise, wonder and interest, the little boy searched the faces in the crowds hurrying past him, glanced occasionally upwards to be certain that he was under the big Marshall Field clock, and returned from time to time the questioning smiles of a few sympathetic passers-by. The important thing was that he was lost. The edge of excitement and fear was removed from his heart as well as his face when his mother found him, and the experience remained in his mind colored with faint regret and the knowledge that it was not entirely genuine."

Thus begins Fritz Peter's clearest memory of his early years in Chicago; of his mother taking him and his brother Tom shopping at the Marshall Field's toy department before Christmas and of her telling them to meet her under the big clock at the corner of State and Randolph streets "if you should get lost."

This reminiscence was published on December 4, 1949, 69 years ago today shortly after the release of his very successful novel, The World Next Door.

Illustration for Richard Wagner's Tannhauser by Willy Pogany

Illustration (c.1921)
Willy Pogany (Hungarian, 1882-1955)
From Tannhauser : A Dramatic Poem by Richard Wagner

Queer Saint : The Cultured Life of Peter Watson by Adrian Clark & Jeremy Dronfield

London : John Blake Publishing Ltd., 2015

I recently found this on my shelf. I purchased it in late 2015 but had put it aside. I should never have waited so long to read it! Clark and Dronfield have crafted an amazing biography that I read as voraciously as an intensely plotted novel. It includes everybody who was anybody of the time.

After Peter Watson finished at Eton, and having significant wealth, he traveled in Europe and the Americas, mostly with Cecil Beaton. Theirs was a solid friendship but Cecil always hoped for more. In the years leading up to World War II, like most gay artists and writers in Europe, Peter spent time in Berlin with the boys in the clubs à la Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories.

He had a home in Paris with an extensive art collection, including a particularly risqué work by Pavel Tchelitchew titled Bathers. The central nude figure seen from behind and below was modeled on Charles Henri Ford, best known for his novel written with Parker Tyler, The Young and the Evil. With the invasion of Paris by the Nazis, Peter was forced to flee and his art eventually fell victim to Nazi plunder.

Having returned to Britain for the duration of the war, Peter started a new literary and arts journal called Horizon. with Cyril Connolly and Stephen Spender. It became well known for promoting works by British artists and writers at a time when the country really needed it. Horizon was also a particularly important vehicle for promoting George Orwell and his essays on politics and the war.

After the war, Peter focused on British artists, particularly young up-and-coming ones, helping to launch the careers of Francis Bacon, John Craxton, and Lucian Freud, among others. He supported many artists with homes, studios and living expenses well into their careers. He was also instrumental and doggedly devoted to the creation of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.

The artists he was supporting weren't the only young men he supported. He had a long-standing romantic relationship with the now infamous Denham Fouts as well as Waldemar Hanson and Norman Fowler who was with Peter at the time of his mysterious death by drowning.

Peter Watson appeared as a character in two dishy novels, Lord Berners' The Girls of Radcliff Hall published in a private edition in 1932 where all of the characters are based on gay men but appear as lesbians in an all girls boarding school, and Michael Nelson's 1958 novel A Room in Chelsea Square originally published anonymously and taking aim at the relationships around Horizon (Peter Watson, Cyril Connolly, and Stephen Spender).