One of the saddest events, a literary and personal tragedy of immeasurable proportion, began on the 3rd April 1895. It happened to Oscar Wilde.
Exactly 7 weeks prior to this date, on Valentines Day, 14th February 1895, the play The Importance of Being Ernest opened at the St. James’s Theatre in London. It was an enormous success. The actor Allan Aynesworth (who played Algy) recalled to Hesketh Pearson, "In my fifty-three years of acting, I never remember a greater triumph than [that] first night."
At the same time, Wilde, involved in what was a ridiculous situation, was prompted and advised to bring an action for criminal libel against the Marquess of Queensbury. The trial opened on the 3rd April 1895 amongst scenes of near hysteria both in the press and the public galleries. The extent of the evidence massed against Wilde forced him to declare meekly, "I am the prosecutor in this case".
The ensuing disaster, to quote Lady Bracknell “… seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution. And I presume you know what that unfortunate movement led to?”
Wilde later wrote a letter, titled De Profundis, whilst in prison at Reading. In it, he makes the following remarks:
Everything about my tragedy has been hideous, mean, repellent, lacking in style; our very dress makes us grotesque. We are the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns whose hearts are broken. We are specially designed to appeal to the sense of humour.
On November 13th, 1895, I was brought down here from London. From two o’clock till half-past two on that day I had to stand on the centre platform of Clapham Junction in convict dress, and handcuffed, for the world to look at. I had been taken out of the hospital ward without a moment’s notice being given to me. Of all possible objects I was the most grotesque. When people saw me they laughed. Each train as it came up swelled the audience. Nothing could exceed their amusement. That was, of course, before they knew who I was. As soon as they had been informed they laughed still more. For half an hour I stood there in the grey November rain surrounded by a jeering mob.
For a year after that was done to me I wept every day at the same hour and for the same space of time. That is not such a tragic thing as possibly it sounds to you. To those who are in prison tears are a part of every day’s experience. A day in prison on which one does not weep is a day on which one’s heart is hard, not a day on which one’s heart is happy.
It is almost impossible to imagine what that half hour in the rain was like. In the same letter he comments:
To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.
Only 60 years later, on the 3rd April 1955 The American Civil Liberties Union announced it would defend Allen Ginsberg’s book Howl against obscenity charges. Some people would have been witnesses to both these events.
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