Cool Zone Media.
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, which is a podcast that comes out twice a week where I talk about people that I think are cool who did cool stuff? And this week is an archetypical episode where I really like the person I'm talking about and the person I'm talking to, who is Chelsea Weber Smith, host of American Hysteria, which is another podcast.
Hey, so happy to be back. I am loving this series so far. It is right up, my allie, So thank you so much for having me.
Hell yeah, happy to have you. That sounded fake. That's not true, It's not fake. Yeah. I hate my job. No, I love my job, Tim Hard I know, I know, I'm really bad at So Sophie Hi is the producer. Hi Sophie. Hi, Hi Sophie.
You gave me the you gave me your phone voice.
Hi Sophie. Hi Sophie.
Hardly nailing this.
And I guess our producer or whatever or audio engineer is Daniel Danel. High Danel. You have to say hih Daniel too. We can't move forward to Dane Yeah, okay cool. Our theme musical is written forced by a woman, and this is part two and a two parter. So the second half about Oscar fucking Wild, who probably wouldn't have hated having fucking although I guess he had enough middle names he probably didn't need anymore.
Remind us, wait, remind us of the whole name again.
Oh but it's all the way back up at the top of my script, nor I don't do it. Several of them start with f Yeah, it's like three, there's like finnial clarity, larity. Well, then fuck works Wills. I think Willis or Wills is one of them. Yeah, all right, Yeah, I totally know this man inside and out. I wouldn't hate to. So we are talking about Oscar Wild, and when we've last left off, he has reached the pinnacle
of his well. He's just about to put out like his most important works and he is just like fucking killing it. And he loves his kids, he loves his life. And then it's the early eighteen nineties. Oscar Wild is at the peak of his fame, in his power. He's writing plays and essays that will outlive us all. And then he falls for a guy and has a train wreck of a relationship and it just fucks everything up.
Who among us you know?
In eighteen ninety one, he meets the man whose father is going to ruin his life. He meets Lord Alfred Douglas. His friends all call him Bozie, which seems to be a childhood nickname from his mother called him. It relates to the word boy. Somehow, I don't understand how English people work. Bozie was a younger man, he was twenty one or something. Oscar's in his mid thirties at this point. They hit it off and they have a love affair
full of dramatic breakups and wild goings ons. Alfred demands Oscar spend basically all of his money on him, and Oscar does just whatever fucking Bozy wants Bozy gets, and they just wrecking ball each other's lives, just fuck each other up. It's really bad.
Do you think that this is a fuck each other up because they are actually really passionately in love or is it hard to say? So?
You know those like relationships where you kind of just fight all the time but the sex is fucking wild, and then whenever you're away, you're like, oh, actually that person wasn't so bad after all, And if he calls your like come running back.
Yeah, I know that yeahact situation. Okay, all right, it's one of those, got it. The two of them have a particular habit. One of their favorite ways to spend the time is that they go to a very fancy hotel they hire sex workers together and then tip the sex workers lavishly, like they'll send them home with silver cigarette cases and shit like.
Oh okay, I know, like yeah, I like that.
Yeah.
And then they get into big blow up fights and then they get back together, and it is really fucking bad for Oscar. It's probably bad for Bosie too, but he's later going to become a massive anti semi although anti Nazi. Okay, Well, Lord Alfred is the man who coined the phrase the Love that dare not speak its name, and he's kind of a want to be intellectual, but he's fucking twenty one. Oscar Wilde was a want to
be intellectual when he was twenty one. I was a want to be well, I don't know what I was when I was twenty one.
I was definitely I want to be intellectual when I was twenty one, so.
I know I was, like I think when I was seventeen, I wasn't want to be intellectual, and when I was like twenty one. I was like, I'm going to die in the revolution. Before I turned twenty four.
I wasn't want to be anarchist by then too.
Yeah, yeah, and Oscar Wilde is like hiring him to do stuff he sucks at, like translate his plays and things like that, and then like Oscar will do just like go back in and like clean up all the translations and shit.
Like.
At some point, I think what happened is Oscar wild like writes a play in French and then like the translation. I think it's the one that Alfred does, and so they date and they're wildly in love and fucking each other up and then having amazing, beautiful decad at times. Also, and Alfred's dad is the Marquess of Queensbury. I refuse to learn what a marquess is. Fucking royalty. I don't even know some royalty shit something embarrassing. Yeah, you ever
heard of the Queensbury rules of boxing? No, it is the rules that modern boxing is like developed from. Okay because of the Marquess of Queensbury. This particular man, all right, he did not write them down, but he popularized them and he was he was big into boxing and he sets about trying to ruin Oscar Wilde's life because he
sees Oscar wild as the corruptor. This groomer was ruined his son because, as we talked about last time, homosexuality and heterosexuality were brand fucking new terms at this time. I really loved it. Actually was like a really mind blowing moment when I realized that heaterosexuality is about one hundred and twenty years old.
Mm hmm.
You know.
Uh, But that doesn't mean that before that everyone was like, do whatever you want, it's all groovy, you know.
No, I just meant that there wasn't an identity category. There were like actions that you took, so you like, did gay stuff you weren't necessarily gay stuff.
Yourself, yeah, And if you were, it was like words like pervert and things like that.
Yes, yeah. Yeah.
And as best as I can tell the way that Oscar wild in this particular moral panic about homosexuality, gay men are seen as like vampires. They are corruptors that go around and ruin the young and turn them into corruptors themselves, pretty much exactly what people say about like trans women. Now. Yeah, so, mister Queensbury, I refuse to call him marquess every single time, and I think he would be annoyed if I called him mister, and I don't like him, so I'm gonna call him mister. Stick
it to him. Yeah, take that man who's been dead since before my great grandfather was born, before my grandfather was born. So he sets about to ruin Oscar Wilde's reputation in life to save his son from becoming a vampire or whatever. But the first couple times they meet, like they'll be like, like Bozi and Oscar will be at a restaurant together, and like Dad will just happen to be there because like all the rich people hang out to rich people shit, you know, and he'll like
come over. And Oscar Wilde is so fucking charming that he successfully charms his twenty one year old boyfriend's dad multiple times. And so it's like Dad will like storm over and like sit down, and Oscar I'll be like, man, I love fishing. I hear you like fishing. Let's talk about fishing.
Oh man, this is what I aspire to be for. When I meet my partners, like homophobic family members, it's like I will do it. I will charm you into this and do excitting this.
Oh yeah, and it's like every single time, and then he like leaves it in my head. He's like, oh wait, I'm supposed to be mad.
That vampire.
Yeah, she was this charming, smile, handsome abs. So finally mister boxing Man shows up at Oscar's house and is like, next time I see you and my son together, i'ma fuck you up. I think he says, I will thrash you, which is nice eighteen nineties for ima fuck you up, to which Oscar replies because he is fucking witty and quotable. I don't know what the Queensbury rules are, but the Oscar Wild rule is to shoot on site.
Oh wow.
So he's like, hey, you want to come at me, I'll fucking kill you.
Yeah.
And I think Bosey Lord Alfred is egging Wild on because Lord Alfred hates his fucking dad. And then one day, Lord Alfred he shows up at the rich people London club that Wild hangs out at. It was like referred to as like showed up at his club and I was like, dear Google, did Oscar Wild own a club? And then it's like no, it's just like a weird rich British people thing where you have like your gentleman's club.
Actually this particular one accepted men and women, but it's like your weird rich people club.
And for a second, I was thinking of Oscar Wild, like Lindsay lohand in that one video when she owned that club in Mikono's doing that really.
Really funny.
It's pretty good, thank you.
So I would I would love to go to Oscar Wild's club or probably this club that I don't know anything about.
Lindsay Lohan's club and Mikinos became abandoned because she only lost interest or something, and I always just dreamed of going to that.
Hell the TV show on her club in Mikinos not MTV, and there was a phase where it was the best worst show on television. Yeah, it don't songs for like six weeks because that's when she lost interest.
But she had a fantastic fake accent.
Oh yeah, Well, I know a lot more about pop stars in eighteen nineties London, and.
I do, so why we're bringing it in, We're making it modern. I know.
I appreciate that. Sometimes I like become conscious of the fact that I like know more about like even like political shit, of the nineteen tens in Ireland than I do about. Like now, that teens to me directly.
Yeah, I do understand that.
Yeah, so Oscar wild as a club, but not as cool as Oscar well owning a club, which I would absolutely have gone to. And I think if he had lasted, none of this had gone down. I could see this man owning a club.
Yeah.
And he leaves a calling card, which is another rich people thing, and it says for Oscar Wilde posing somdamite because among his many boxing talents does not include a talent for spelling or comprehensible handwriting. Okay, is spell it's sodomite spelled wrong. And Oscar Wilde is like, I'm gonna sue this man for libel wow. And his friends are like, but you're a sodomite. You're like, and he will go to jail unless he can prove you are a sodomite, which he can do because you're a sodomite.
Yeah.
And his other friends are like, hey, Paris is lovely. Would you like to go to Paris.
Let's just go to Paris and have a nice time.
Yeah, And he's like nope, because if I let this stand it will ruin my reputation. I am suing this man for libel. My favorite history arguing about I'm less interested in like did he fuck so? And so that's fine? Why the fuck did he do? This? Is my favorite history arguing about of this whole thing. Yeah, so Queensberry now has to proven court that Oscar Wild is a sodomite and it's a criminal triald, criminal liable. Queensberry is arrested,
but the trial never becomes about Queensberry. I think Oscar wild sees it like, oh, I'm going to have the power. I'm going to be the prosecutor. I'm going to stand up, I'm going to fight. You know, it is a trial about Oscar wild Several times Oscar wild has to be like, hey, I'm the I'm the prosecutor, not the defend Yeah wow, and people are like fuck you you homo. Yeah you know.
Like soon enough, Queensburg is found not guilty and Oscar Wilde gets put on trial instead for gross indecency aka touch and pens.
So he's the after the trial because of this publicity, he gets charged with a separate crime.
Because of all the evidence that came out in the course of the trial.
Oh gosh, Oscar, you didn't have to do that.
No, he did not have to do it. These three trials is three trials of fucking Oscar Wild. They are a big fucking deal. Yeah that It is a big deal in history because Oscar Wild was not the first nor the last celebrity to go on trial for gay sex. But it is coming at a time of public moral panic around, you know, the sodomites in our mist mist or whatever, and Oscar Wild is like one of them most famous people around. It also comes at a time when there's two other big scary things going on in England,
Irish nationalists and anarchists. And your boy is a gay Irish anarchist.
Yeah, okay, And what year are we in?
This is eighteen ninety five, he goes on twenty five.
Okay, great.
Yeah, I'm going to take a detour really quick to talk about Irish independence and British anarchists because as an angle I haven't seen too many people cover and it's about the trial, and I think it's really interesting. During the eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties, British anarchists were primarily focused on anti colonialism. In particular, they were focused on
freeing the colony next door Ireland. Anarchists across the world were starting to turn their attention to anti colonialism everywhere, but it's particularly the case in Britain, which makes some sense.
Yeah.
They also weren't trying to tell the Irish rebels what to do. They weren't like, hey, you all got to be anarchists and do whoever anarchy. Instead, they actually looked to the Irish rebels for inspiration and remained in dialogue with movements around the world. It's actually they actually did better at this than I expected them to to be.
Frick.
They're kind of supporting whatever the Irish nationalists needed versus.
Right, right, And I don't know whether they were like sending arms or not sure, right, but I do know that they were some of the only people in England publishing things that were like we support the following like Irish nationalists crime that had nothing to do with anarchism as a cause. It was just anti colonial.
Yeah, and ideological support yeah okay, yeah, and like literally even just being able to get news about it that they were like constantly getting repressed for.
This is not a big free speech time, you know, right, And in Britain anarchists were also like, hey, fellow Brits, you know that whatever repressive shit they do to the Irish, they'll eventually do here, right, and considering the the English later invent rubber bullets to use on the Irish, like, oh shit, that's like eighty years later. But yeah, but this is exactly what happens. The repressive apparatus that was used against the Irish was then used domestically, and specifically,
the spying apparatus was used domestically. Okay, and so we're gonna talk about the Phoenix part killings as a sort of cool people detour just to talk. No one's been stabbed so far as this episode. You know, yeah, some people are going to get stabbed and shot now, and some of them will deserve it. Irish Rebellion was about Irish independence, but it was specifically against landlordism as well.
There have been a potato genocide in the eighteen forties where England had starved Ireland during period of potato blight, but shit had not gotten better by the eighteen eighties and so like economically, and so you have this next generation who are like, hey, how come we're all tenant farmers instead of owning our land, and we're one bad harvest away from death. And also we keep getting evicted, so we're actually not even one bad harvest away from death. Were just dead.
Yeah.
This leads to the Land War of eighteen seventy nine to eighteen eighty two, which is a whole fucking war against landlords, and I just want to sit on that pleasant thought for a moment. Although in this particular war against the landlords, the landlords did come out on top. Britain by eighteen eighty one was like, all right, fuck y'all, Irish motherfuckers, no more trial by jury and Ireland we
are fucking in charge, not you fuck off. They arrested nine hundred anti landlord activists and then the Irish were like, you know, there's like a couple of guys responsible for that. There's like, well, to quote the great folk singer Utah Phillips, the earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses. The Irish were like, well, it's I can point to those people.
That's the guy. One group that came out of this land War was called the Irish National Invincibles or just the Invincibles, which is a fucking cool name. Yeah, And they are a splinter from the Irish Republican Brotherhood and they were like, what if we just stab the aforementioned responsible men to death in a public park. Surely that's a thing within our power. And they try a couple of times, but they keep failing. But like the little engine that could, they just kept right at it until
one day they succeeded. Or to quote the later IRA talking about how they the later IRA kept trying to blow up Margaret Thatcher and they said, you have to get lucky every time. We only have to get lucky once. Wow. Wow. Yeah, And I think it was I think they're specifically mad that Margaret Thatcher was giving Margaret's a bad name.
Yeah, yeah, primary problem, her greatest sin.
Yeah.
So one day in Phoenix Park, seven of these Invincibles surround the Permanent Undersecretary Thomas Henry Burke and the new Chief Secretary, Lord Frederick Cavendish, the latter of whom had literally just arrived in Dublin to be in charge of repressing the colony. They actually didn't even recognize him. I think they just were killing the permanent under Secretary and then like you know, found this other guy that needed to get stab into and they killed them in Phoenix Park.
And unlike the park name, those two did not rise from the ashes. Ah, thank you, thank you. The weapons have been delivered by a seven month pregnant Irish nationalist named Mary Anne Byrne, who ran weapons for the Resistance under her skirts, and the getaway driver. The getaway driver was named and I am not making this up Skin the Goat.
Wow.
Wow, all one word hyphenated.
I'd go to a party at their house. I don't think they are a couple, but I'm pretending male.
Yeah, totally, there's Mary and skin the Goat. He earned that name because one time he killed and skinned a goat and then wore the goat skin on his lap while driving a cab.
Well, there you go. Yeah, very literal nicknames back then.
Yeah, yeah, totally. So anyway, so the Invincibles killed some men responsible for the subjugation of Ireland. One of the assassins was this guy named James Carey, probably no relation to the actor of the same name, and he got caught and he turned snitch, and his snitching saw five of his associates hanged and This led to a whole chain of events. The Crown was like, all right, Jim Carrey, you got to eventually make the mask, so we got to get you away from here under a fake name.
Get you to South Africa. You'll be safe there. But there's other people on the boat, and one of the other people on the boat is just he's not there to do anything. I mean, was there to go to South Africa. But he is a forty eight year old Irish bricklayer named Patrick O'Donnell. And Patrick O'Donnell had been hanging out in cold mining, Pennsylvania with his Molly McGuire cousins. See are two parter on the Molly McGuire's the people
who like to kill landlords the middle the night. They believed in very direct solutions to certain types of problems. So Patrick discovered James's true identity while they're on the ship together. Three bullets later, James Carey is dead. Patrick O'Donnell's stands trial. He is sentenced to death. The judge refused to let him speak after the sentencing, so instead he shouted, He shouted three cheers for Old Ireland, Goodbye United States, to hell with the British and the British Crown. Nice.
Yeah, at least he got one in there.
Yeah, I know, I know. He was executed and was and is considered a martyr to Irish freedom. You know, a man who made a decision while he was on a boat.
Yeah, bricklayer.
Job.
Yeah yeah. What's this got to do with Oscar Wilde. It has two things to do with Oscar Wilde. When Oscar was on his tour of the US, he spoke unabashedly about how those killings, the Phoenix Park killings were quote the fruit of seven centuries of injustice, and his irishness is often erased, but he was his mother's son. He also specifically talked about how the colonization of Ireland
was cutting into the Irish ability to be artists. The other connection is that the English anarchist press was supporting the Invincibles and Irish nationalism generally, and soon enough, you know, a decade or so later, they're supporting Oscar wild Because not a lot of people supported Oscar wild while he
was on trial, but the anarchist press did. And as another weird side note about the anarchist press in England at the time, there's this paper called The Torch, and it was run by two teenaged anarchist sisters named Helen and Olivia Rosetti. They started it when they were thirteen and sixteen. And it's like one of the papers of like wide circulation that's like covering shit from all over the world. It's like they're not writing all the pieces.
They're like getting all of these people who write all these pieces and stuff.
You know, Wow, that's so cool.
And then here's where I guess it's really annoying. Another example of the things that Margaret doesn't like to talk about but has to all the time. Later, these two girls become fascists because one of the things I hate talking about is that the fascist movement came out of the revolutionary politics of the left combined with the conservatism and authoritarianism of the right. It was leftist methodology applied
to right wing values. Yeah, there are leftist roots to a lot of fascism, and a lot of leftists became early fascists.
Not now to talk about it, though, Yeah you got to talk about it.
Yeah important. It's not fun too, and oh.
It's not, but you gotta you know, it's you have to so you don't repeat the past.
Yeah, totally, totally, And it's just like annoying because then people will be like, oh, national socialism, that means it's leftist, and you're like, no, it's a right wing movement, and you're like but also.
You know, yeah, I do know.
So for now, they are running an anarchist press, and they and other anarchist presses are supporting Irish independence, and a bunch of their writers are supporting Oscar Wilde. Let's go back to the trial. Well, actually, before we talk about the trial, have you ever considered that there's a gaping hole in your life, a hole that you feel like could be filled but not in a quote Greek way, but through a consumer way. Do you ever think about that? I know I do, so it keeps me up at night.
Here's these ads that will fill you're whole. Nope, I don't like. Go Okay, here they go and we're back. So, like I was saying, the trial is three trials. First there is Wild trying to prosecute boxing rules man, and then the Crown trying to prosecute Wild. And that first attempt to prosecute Wild doesn't work. There's a hung Jurney and so the crown is like, well, while we got you here, why don't we just put you on trial for the same thing again? And he was like, I mean,
I'd probably rather you didn't. And they're like, well, are you gonna run in France? And he's like no, and they're like why not and he's like, I don't know. And historians are going to argue about it later. It's eighteen ninety five. Private investigators during the very first trial, they dig up a fuck ton of the sex workers that he had slept with, and then the crown blackmails them into testifying against Oscar Wild. I think pretty much
they're like, hey, we're going to prosecute you unless you test. Yeah, there's also some implication that they might have been tortured, and a bunch of them testify, and I think, like, I think Oscar World's like a little bit surprised Pikachu face about this. Yeah, Like, I think he just thinks he's going to get away with it. You know, his own books and plays are used as evidence against him
in these trials. Everyone is trying to tease out every gay line from every one of his plays, and Wild's defense it changes tone here and there by and large he's not like being gay's fine, fuck you. By and large, he's like, I didn't do it. Can't say I did it because I didn't do it, which is I don't blame whatever. I'm a big tell the truth person. When someone's not threatening to lock you into a cage, you know.
Yeah, you don't need to tell the truth to the courts, yea necessarily like show honor.
Yeah, don't lie to someone that you wouldn't punch. That's the it's my general go to.
It's good rule with them.
Yeah. So, and partially he gets caught up in a lot of his own lying about this because he can't help being super witty. They're like, hey, did you kiss this guy? And Oscar Wild's like, well I would, but he's ugly, like I would never kiss a man like that, and they're like, so you'd kiss a man He's like, ah shit, got me again, man. And the whole time between each of the trials, before the first one, before the second one, and before the third one, his friends
are like, go the fuck to France. Why the fuck aren't you in France. In fact, we all left for France because we're all gay. And there's now this moral panic around you, and we don't want to testify you against you, and we don't want to go to prison, So come the fuck to France. Yeah, his mother is like stay and fight.
Wow.
And I don't know whether it's a mama's boy thing. I don't know what it is, but you know, there's all so like I get the feeling that he he kind of just felt like his whole life was falling apart. Like I feel like it was like almost kind of a nihilistic move and he'd just been in this like long shitty relationship and his life was kind of losing the plot and he was kind of in spiraling out of control.
Do we know if his mom was accepting of him being gay.
I don't know.
His mom seems so, I guess, unless she was saying, like, defend yourself against these accusations, because there's like.
Two different things that could be I know, Yeah, I don't know. My guess is supporting mom based on everything I read about the relationship, but I don't know.
And her politics too.
Yeah, but there's a lot of you know, it's like one of these things where it's like, well we'll talk about it. Sure. So he defends himself, and he actually ends up defending obliquely homosexuality and specifically generation gap relationships that are homosexual. They ask him what the love that dare not speak its name is, and he basically is like, hey, all throughout history, older men have loved younger men. It's
a Greek tradition, and everything's fine. But it's like the way he phrases it, you could kind of talk about
same sexual relationships if you didn't talk about fucking. For a lot of the Victorian era and a lot of the historically close friends were literally just historically close friends, and like you could have men could talk about loving each other because since you hadn't created homosexuality as a vice and a you know whatever, like there wasn't like a fear of like you know, you look at all the old photos and like men are like hugging and like.
Holding hands and like each other's laps and stuff.
Yeah, and you're like, oh, it means they were all gay, and that's like sometimes true, but it's also just like they weren't afraid of being called gay all the time, so they just exactly enjoyed affection with each other because that's normal and human. Yeah, And so it's possible that when he was defending the Love that not dare not speak its name, he was like still not being like, you know, and I touched his buttole my finger or whatever. The first trial ended with the hung jury and he
was retried. An Anglican priest who was a Christian socialist put up a fuck ton of money to get wild out on bail between the trials, and he still wouldn't flee. And it's possible this time he just didn't want to fuck over that priest.
Yeah.
Yeah, he went back to court. The judge fucking hated him, said it was quote the worst case he'd ever tried, because he like, was you know, seducing and ruining these like young men or whatever, you know. Yeah, yeah, and he was convicted of gross indecency. He was sentenced to two years of hard labor. At the end, Oscar Wilde said simply, and I may I say nothing, my lord, and the judge didn't let him speak, and the crowd jeered him.
Yes.
I've read a couple academics discussing the trial wasn't it was about homosexuality, but it was also about the whole gay Irish radical thing, right, because a lot of the press treated it that way. At this time, papers were excited to see someone attacked for attacking conventional morality. And even this esthetic movement idea of art for art's sake is attacking conventional morarality by refusing to make art that specifically upholds traditional morality.
Yeah.
Yeah.
A modern Irish author, Diglon o'donhall wrote, quote, Unlike anarchist assassins and bombers, who would always be outsiders, Wild was embedded within the artistic and social elite. His position as a revolutionary who enjoyed popular celebrity meant that he posed a greater threat to the establishment by criticizing it from within, and his enemies in the mainstream press were patiently waiting for an opportunity to punish him for his public success.
Yeah that makes sense.
Yeah, And another piece around this, there's this Irish cop in London who's anti Irish or anti Irish independence. His name is Chief Inspector John Sweeney. He was an Irish anti Fenian who spent a long ass time spying on the Fenians in London, the Irish revolutionaries, and then he moved over to spying on the anarchists and so the whole, like the police state, will come to affect us too.
Write.
You know, in the eighteen nineties, British anarchists were largely writing, not blowing things up. A lot of the continental anarchists are in a like King killing stage, but not the British anarchists so much so. His primary concern was how to censor anarchists speech and how to shut down newspapers
and stop ideas from circulating. This does not feel coincidental. No, as soon as Oscar Wilde is on trial, before he's convicted, his name is stripped off the marquees at the theaters running his plays, and soon enough the plays themselves are stopped. The public like turns on him on a dot. The press calls him the a laureate of corruption. Wow, everyone gets on name. I know, I know, I've all right with that. Like, yeah, never.
Really was too. If he weren't, if he wasn't like stuck in jail, he might enjoyed it. Yeah.
He has this quote when he's a younger that I don't have in Frontman and put in the script where he's like, I'm going to be famous or you know, notorious. Whatever the man accomplished both, he did it, and yeah, everyone's on board with stopping this vamporism from corrupting the world. I'm the one making the specific vamporism comparison, but that is the corruptor of youth, the groomer, the you know.
Yeah, the like hypnotizing force.
Yeah, spoiler alert. If gay sex tikes you gay, it's because you like it.
Anita Bryant did the vampire metaphor for gay men in the seventies.
Oh shit, yeah, should look at that up.
She said that because gay men and eat sperm, they're eating life itself or something like that, and so their vampires.
Oh this is someone who meant it negatively.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I once. Yeah, she was like the Orange Juice spokeswoman who kind of single handedly started the anti gay movement in the seventies.
So yeah, I'm pretty like into gayness's monstrosity. Like yeah, sure, So I'm like I have a vampire or whatever. You know.
Yeah, lots of gays, if not most enjoy a good horror movie.
So I am. And so he's on trial. Most people are turning their backs on him. He had spoken up for the anarchists eight years prior, and the anarchists spoke up for him. The broader socialist movement hadn't really grappled with how they felt about homosexuality at this point, including the anarchist movement. They hadn't like just sat down and been like, what do we think about this? What's the party line? You know, at least not that I've ever
been able to find. I've I've read a lot about their like grappling with like the woman issue and colonialism and things like that, right, but they hadn't like sat there and thought about homosexuality as a movement. And Oscar Wilde's trial brought pro homosexuality to the forefront of anarchist politics, and from there, as best as I can conjecture, it filtered out to the broader socialist left. At the time,
the broader socialist left despised Oscar wild in this homosexuality. Also, they kept being mad at him for not being their style of socialist. You know, it's possible that if he had been a you know, Marxist, they the Marxist would have been like, we're suddenly fine with gays, you know.
Yeah, no, that makes sense. Yeah.
It was the anarchist press that kept his essays and plays in print after his fall from grace. I want to say among because I actually don't specifically know that no one else did, but I know a lot of specific examples when the anarchist press did when no one else would in various situations. It was one of the only places you could go to read about the trial and find things like people saying, hey, what if too consenting adults can do whatever the fuck they want? What
the fuck is wrong with you? Even the homophobic anarchists writing were like, hey, did you know you can read portrait of Dorian Gray without like going out and touching panes with some guy, like just stop censoring shit, what the fuck is wrong with you?
Yeah?
And I like, I kind of love it when people who are like a little bit homophobic are like, well, my values are more important to me than how I have my own weird biases.
Yeah, yeah, totally.
But it did not save him, right, There was certainly not a ton of public outcry to defend him, and he went off to prison. Two years of hard labor is very different than going to prison regular. It's actually almostly a little bit like going to prison regular in the United States now, yeah, right, But like at the time. It was really really bad. It kills a lot of people, and it functionally kills him. They functionally gave him a
death sentence. And what won't kill you or give you a death sentence unless you get the ad for becoming a jail or, which is a don't. When I say that we're sponsored by all ads, I mean except the one that says scope be it whatever. Here's ads. Everything's horrible and we're back. And if you're listening to this in prison while walking on a treadmill endlessly to grind wheat into flour, then you might be Oscar wild, because is that what it was? That's one of the things
he had to do. Now, he had to walk on a treadmill to grind flower. It took me. Most of the sources I found just said like, walked on a treadmill, and I'm like, the fuck for why? Yeah? Yeah, but it really is still kind of just for work. Like he also had to scar his hands permanently to separate old naval ropes I think soaked in tar pitch or whatever into their individual threads. Oh my gosh.
Wow.
In the beginning of his time in prison, he was only allowed to read the Bible and some old Christian book called The Pilgrim's Progress. Eventually, a new warden arrived and he was offered more books, and he read all kinds of shit and all kinds of languages, especially read a lot of Dante, and he read a lot of theological texts, including this Catholic convert from Anglicanism named John Henry Newman, who wrote a bunch about how every religion,
including like Heathen religions, contain truth. They contained revelation.
That's cool.
So he's reading like woke Catholic shit.
Kind of like mysticism or something like that, Nalism.
Yeah, and he's not allowed to write while he's in jail, except letters, So he writes a fifty five thousand word letter. It's de bosy, but it's to everyone. It's a short novel. Basically, he had to write it one page at a time because as he finished each page, they'd take it away from him. Sometimes I think people guess, like analysts guess that he probably had about three pages at a time.
Sometimes because of the way this sentences and are structured in it, it's a bit of a rambling autobiography as well as a spiritual Triestas, and later when it's out, a copy goes to Lord Alfred de Bosi, and a copy gets published as De Profundus, which is after five years after Oscar's death, and Deperfundus is a biblical reference, and it means from the depths, comes from Psalm one point thirty, from the depths, I have cried to you,
oh Lord. So it's basically it's like, hey, I'm in prison, yeah, what it means, and it's a religious text in a way, he realizes. He talks about how he's realized that suffering is as important to his soul as the hedonism he'd appreciated. He wrote, quote, I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world, and so indeed I went out, and so I lived.
My only mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me to be the sunlit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom. He also wrote, there is not a single wretched man in this wretched place along with me who does not stand in symbolic relation to the very secret of life. For the secret of life is suffering. It is what is hidden behind
everything when we begin to live. What is sweet is so sweet to us, and what is bitter so bitter that we inevitably direct all our desires towards pleasures, and seek not merely for a month or twain to feed on honeycomb, but for all our years to taste no other food, ignorant all the while that we may really be starving the soul.
Oh gosh, he was a good writer. I know, he was a tremendously good writer.
No Ah. And so he's not saying I shouldn't have done the joy sex stuff. He's saying everything has this value, you know.
Yeah. Wow. Do you think then that he like did feel the criticisms that were leveled against him for being kind of like a frivolous person, or do you think that like he I'm just interested because that quote is just like what do you think that he meant exactly when he was saying that? Like, do you think it was reflective of his life?
So I haven't read every I haven't read all the profundus. I actually read his very long poem immediately after that is the main thing I read about it. But I get the impression that he does regret like some of the ways in which he was frivolous, right, but he doesn't regret the like core of it. He stays Antinomian. He stays believing that, you know, you don't have to ascribe to a specific moral path in order to reach heaven.
Yeah whatever, right. Yeah. So it's like it's it's hard because it's like there is regret, but then it's like like a spoiler, he's going to convert to Catholicism on his deathbed, and so there's like Catholic articles that are like and then he's sorry about being gay, and I'm like, yeah, I'm not a no, it just meant something very different at that time, you know.
And Catholicism just fits so well with his sort of decadence as well, like image like images, and yeah, it's just it's it's bloody, it's golden, it's you know, things he likes velvety.
Yeah, there's a quote I Am about Catholicism from way Younger that's at the end of this script.
Yeah.
Yeah, so that's I think he's like he's like sorry, he's not sorry, you know. Yeah. Yeah, and prison fucks him up. Physically. The food is terrible. Everyone is constantly sick, like everyone's dye area constantly. He collapsed from exhaustion one day and he ruptured his ear drum and this later kills him. He's transferred to another prison, which is reading jail, which should be pronounced reading gayel because I'm an American and I will never get over how the British spell the word jail?
Is it with a G?
Yeah? Gaol laird?
Yeah, okay, all right, yeah?
How did they conquer the world? I don't even notice? Right in English? And while he's not impressed, And at one point while he's being transferred, he's underguard on the train platform and a crowd forms around him and like spits on him and jeers him, and this is like presented as the worst, the lowest time of his prison, even though obviously the like time and you know whatever, it sucks, it's bad.
Yeah.
In Reading, he no longer like they don't call him by his name anymore. He is only C three three. He is on the third floor of the third cell of the Sea Ward and his mother dies while he's in prison. She appeals to be able to see her son one last time, and this is denied. His wife changes her last name and moves to Switzerland and takes their kids with her. He never sees his children again.
He's forced to declare bankruptcy while he's in prison, and I believe that they're confiscating his copyrights as well as his belongings. In eighteen ninety seven, he's released penniless and he gets the fuck out of England and he does what he should have done ten fucking years earlier, and he goes to France. He never goes back to England.
He spends the last three years of his life in Paris, living under a pseudonym, Sebastian Melmouth, which is a combination of Saint Sebastian, the one who likes getting stabbed and stuff. The mask is Saint and then Melmoth, the Wanderer from his uncle's book.
It's pretty cool.
Yeah, I know it's a good name. Yeah, it's a pretty transmasque name. But if anyone's looking for a new trans mask name.
Yeah, there you go.
It's a fast and Melmouth it's right there for you. Although I'll do my follow up Oscar Wild as an egg trans woman episode one day, but yeah, yeah, that's pure conjecture and or you know. So at this point he's out of prison. His primary contributions to society are to write long letters about the need for penal reform and to write a poem. One of his most famous called the Ballad of Reading Jail, or as I like to say, the Ballad of Reading Gail. It's really good,
it's very long, it's worth reading. It's very like rimy, right.
I think you only ever really wrote poems in rhyme.
Yeah, just style at the time.
Yeah, yeah, there wasn't a lot of like lyricism.
Yet I was born in the twentieth century. All poetry, it should be free for him. I don't understand all of the writing, but I know it's really good and it's really interesting. He can't get it published under his name, right because no one will touch it. But he's really good, So it gets published under the name C. Three three,
his jail name. Wow, no one in America will touch it at all until the anarchist press is like, all right, well we'll publish it, which worked really well for the anarchist press, and I think they actually were like I think they put his name on it. By the seventh printing in because it keeps selling out and they keep printing more. It does really well. And it's a moral panic too, which is funny because it is the most like Christian socialist thing you'll read. It is a it
makes you sympathize with a criminal. It is about watching a man get hanged who killed his wife. It is about a man who is not a good man being killed, and it makes you hate the prison system. Yeah, this just really I don't know, I found it very moving. Yeah, and people are like, ah, it's terrible, it's immoral. It
makes you sympathize with the criminal. And then like some people were like even like as they were to cry and it, they were like, it's forcing you to have really high Christian ethics and like it just broke every Yeah, it just broke everyone's brains. Yeah. His wife was said in about like I think five pounds a week, which does not translate to a lot in modern money, and that says like allowance basically, and that's what he's living off of. And then he gets the royalties from that poem.
And he missed his children every day he talked about and Robert Ross, Robbie Ross, his lifelong friend, joined him in Paris, or I think was maybe already in Paris honestly, but moves in with him, and after a few years, Oscar's health declines. His ruptured ear drum gets infected, which leads to meningitis, which is going to kill him. He died in Paris on November thirtieth, nineteen hundred, at forty
six years old. On his deathbed in a rundown hotel, he converted to Catholicism, and his quote that he had once said a long time because he tried to convert Cathosism a long time ago, and his dad was like, fuck you. You know he had once said, the Catholic Church is for saints and sinners alone, for respectable people. The Anglican Church will do. This is not extra enough, like what you're saying, like like you know, the Catholic Church.
He gets a drink blood and like be amenable, like cooler, like carry around skulls.
Who was with him, was like did he have a priest there with him or something? Or how do we know?
He? Yeah, so Robbie Ross went and got a priest who came over and he's like in and out of consciousness, but he's able to indicate the priest is like, all right, you're doing this, and he like kind of raises his hand feebly. Sure, there doesn't seem to be contention around this.
Okay, because it makes me almost think and this is like such a weird example, but like Ted Bundy converting to Christianity at the end and then blaming everything on pornography, and that was like a manipulating thing, yeah, to like, you know, support a right wing agenda. So I was just curious if there was any possibility right that like this priest had an agenda or something. But sounds like it's not, like you said, it's not argued about too much.
That's the best guess I have. There are a lot of people who are like and he was sorry for being gay, and I'm like, I'm not finding a lot of evidence I'm sorry for being gay. But it is possible. It is possible that this is like I might be reading it the way that I want to, because he talks about being Antonomian. He you know, to the end of his days he talks about like I feel like I get a sense of like, oh, yeah, of course
he ended up Catholic. This is the shitt he's writing rather than like he fits neatly into the tradcaf assumption of now you know.
And going to prison too famously makes folks more religious because you have to have hope in something, and so it makes sense that maybe he found and he was also being given almost only religious or theological.
Text that was actually what he was asking for. The at first, he's stuck with the Bible and the progress. Although I don't know if they would have brought him like actually know, because they also did bring him William Peter Books. Yeah, no, I don't know they would have given him porn. Yeah, well there's some porn in the Bible, but.
Yeah, I mean that's true, there is, yeah.
Yeah, no, yeah. It's it's interesting to be because it's like every read of Oscar Wilde like picks one thing and it's like Oscar Wilde, the Catholic, Oscar wild the irishman, Oscar wild the anarchist, Oscar wild the meaningless, witty guy, you know, yeah, and you're like, he can just be all those things, and they're things that people want to claim are paradoxical and often can be and are presented
as paradoxical. But for me, it just seems like he threaded that needle, you know well, and like, who who.
Is not paradoxical? It's so weird to think that, No, like you can't be a paradoxical person.
Yeah, I totally feel like I am. I don't know.
Yeah.
And his last witticism that apparently he used on like everyone who came to visit him on his deathbed was this wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do. It is such a template for this sassk man. It's just incredible. And Robbie Ross was with him as he died, as was the priest Emma Goldman, I promise you. And Emma Goldman quote about him, who herself is quite quotable. She said about him, while society forgives the criminal, it never forgives the dreamer.
Wow. Yeah.
And one of his sons, Cyril, is killed by a German sniper in nineteen fifteen in World War One. His daughter Dorothy took after him most directly. She became a witty conversationalist and was an out lesbian.
I didn't know that.
That's so nice.
It feels like he gets to live on in some way in a different time.
Yeah, totally. And that's one of the stories about Oscar Wild. There's a thousand stories that can be told. I want to shout out that. If you want to learn more specifically about how he related to homosexuality, there's a two parter from a few years ago by the podcast Queer's Fact that Cool is Real worth listening to. Yeah, that's wow. Oscar Wild the very different than I thought he would be when I started off reading.
No, I had no idea about probably eighty percent of what you've still be here today. I just never thought of Oscar Wild as a political person really in any way,
almost anti political right. So that's and do you think that there's any like reason that he's been painted that way and been like almost like it just feels like the revolutionary side of him has been like cleaned away and almost like him because in my mind he was like a decadent, kind of almost out of touch, yeah, rich person who happened to be a beautiful writer and have like, you know, a huge skill with language. But I never thought of him as a radical, yeah, really in any way.
Well, at one point I forgot to ended up in a script at one point eighteen ninety two, this like this anarchist poet is having a mental breakdown, I think, and takes like potshots at the House of Commons, just like shoots at the wall or whatever. Oscar Wild pays his bail and writes a letter to him and is like, of course I support you, like everything is like everything but saying comrade doesn't say comrade, but it's like, h of course I support you. Like us dreamers have to
stick together, you know. I have found that there's certain things that people like not talking about in historical figures, and one of them is gayness. And you can't do it to Oscar Wild, who people actually try by specifically trying to pain him as a pedophile instead of.
A gaming Oh yeah, okay.
And one of the other things that people try to write out of history is political positions, especially anarchism, because anarchism is like it's a harder sell to more people, and there are more political positions that specifically. This is most conspiracytorial i'll probably ever be, but stay communists and capitalists both have a vested interest in having people not
know about anarchist history. I find that, like it's funny because like social democrats don't have as much of that and you'll like see more earnest actually talking about anarchism within like social democrat circles. This is my experience of this. So I think that it's a combination. It's also that people don't want to talk about. They want asceticism to be completely vapid and frivolous and don't want to address.
And I even thought that I went to art school for two years and I hated it and I hated people walk around me like our for art sake, and I'm like fuck that, Like yeah, you know, but then once you understand it as like, well, shouldn't we live beautiful lives? Yeah, shouldn't we seek to make the spaces that we are in esthetically pleasing? You know, It's like saying interior design matters, and not that interior design needs
to be covered in political posters. But then instead interior design like helps us live beautiful lives and be our best selves. And so I think that it's just that people don't want meaning out of him, you know, they want well.
And I guess there's like a big difference between like the aesthetics of like decadence, meaning like that comes out of richness versus like you said, I think we said in part one about like planting wildflowers outside. That's still like they're they're in service of the same like internal transformation that happens when you witness beauty, because that it's a it's a transformational act that I think teaches empathy.
Like experiencing beauty is something that encourages empathy. And it doesn't have to have anything to do with material things. It just has to do with like, I mean, it does have to do with material things, but you know what I mean, it doesn't there's no caliber of material thing that is beautiful by virtue of it being that way, right, It's like you can have, you know, you can have a mansion that's ugly as fuck, you know, like, and you can have like a space that you've made beautiful
without any real wealth, you know. So yeah, I think that it's easy to think that beauty is some sort of an elite concept, but it really isn't.
Yeah, And it's funny because because one of the things he talks about sometimes is he talks about how one of the reasons that we have to end poverty is so that people can create and so that they don't have to spend all of their hours working, you know, so that they can create. Like he was very he was also he was also I didn't even put in he's totally fully luxuriated, fully automated, luxury space communism. He is like, we'll get the machines to do the work
so that we can make the art. And of course now we live in a horrible nightmare in version of that where the machines are coming for the art and not the right word, right. But yeah, no, I just like I like him so much more than I I was like always cool, you know, Like, but I'm like, no, yeah, like socialism for art's sake, not art for socialism's sake. I'm like, I'm on board.
I get it. I like it. Yeah, I love it.
Well, that's that's fantastic.
Thank you so much for telling me all of this. I really like, I feel, I don't know, it's really it's making me rethink so much about my life because I've just I've loved Oscar Wilde and in such a you know, it's just such a specific way, and you know, it really does Like I think of his grave, you know, which is such a such a beautiful image for anyone who doesn't know, you know, like he had I believe like a marble tombstone would do you remember what it says.
Oh, it's a quote from Deperfundus, but I don't remember what it is, right, or maybe it's a quote from the Ballad of Reading Jail.
Yeah, it's something. But people for years and years and years would like put on lipstick and leave lipstick kisses on the grave and it was just really lovely. And I think a few years ago they finally like put a horrible plastic barrier all around it.
Yeah, which I think people still kiss.
Yeah, you got to, yeah, because he would just love that. They'll kiss Oscar Wilde's grave if you can jump the barrier.
Yeah.
No. Oh.
And then the person Robbie was the person who got the funeral arrangements and stuff in order, and I think was behind the At first, I think he was. It was a very poor grave, and then eventually enough money and enough people came together for it, like eventually people stop being so mad at him or whatever, you know. But he had it a little like there's like a slot in it for his own ashes, and so he had his ashes put in Oscar wild scra So.
It was Oscar, Robbie and Bosie.
Yeah, so Bosie. They actually did reconnect after they reconnected. Really, everyone's like, please, don't fucking meet up with Bosie, and they like meet up.
We know that friend of ours. We're like, don't go yeah and see them.
Yeah, they actually did meet up again a little bit, but they they went their separate ways.
Like, rob are they not get buried by each other?
Oh? Is he buried by them?
No?
I thought you who who was buried next to?
So Robbie Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, Robbie has got the cremation there. Yeah no, I think I did say buried next to earlier and that's not technically that's still very sweet, yeah no, And I love it too because it's like, well, these are the people that we come from, Like Dandy's are stronger than we like like thinking about like I mean like queen culture, right is like people who have
hard life. I love the idea that someone sees like I'm making air quotes here an audience can't see, but like a man walking down the street dressed like a woman and thinks there's someone who's afraid, you know, yeah, like seriously, we come from stern stuff. Yeah, yeah, and that doesn't mean we still can't be beautiful and soft and plant flowers everywhere and be limp wristed and lounge
around on Shay's lounges. It's just sometimes you have to beat up four men at once and then rob them for their liquor.
And slap the shit out of the school bully, you know.
Yeah, all right, well, thank you so much for being the guest. If people want to hear more of what you have to say, where can they do that?
Uh?
Yeah, you can find my podcast, American Hysteria pretty much anywhere that you listen to podcasts, and you can find me on social media at American Hysteria podcast too.
Hell yeah, yeah, I'll plug. It's been a while at this point, but I finally finished Raw Dog by Jamie Loftus and it's real good. I listened to the audio. Looks great and good, and I love having conversations where speaking of something that gets presented as surface. You know, it's a book about the history of hot dogs and
which hot dogs are best in America. It is also a incredibly radical book and has all kinds of value besides it, So I will shout out that you should go listen to raw Dog by Jamie Loftis or I guess read We'll.
Say too that. If you want more Jamie Loftus hot dog content, I told Jamie a bunch of hot dog related urban legends on American Hysterio ones and that was a lot of fun.
Oh shit, I'm going to listen to that, Sophie. You guys think the plug.
Listen to all the podcasts I've made with Jamie loft Disk.
I guess we're just doing a Jamie plug.
Yeah me, the new Oscar Wild Oh oh, if anyone I can think of them immediately anyway, Yeah.
Yeah, little bit, that's the podcast.
See everyone next week.
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