This novel by Louis Bayard focuses on some aspects of the life of Oscar Wilde, the playwright and novelist who spent two years in prison for sodomy and gross indecency. His libel suit against the father of one of the objects of his affection resulted in his criminal conviction, as the accusation made by the Marquess of Queensberry was factual.
This book focuses on his family members, chiefly his wife Constance, and begins in the first “act” describing their sojourn in Norfolk with one of their sons and Oscar’s mother. Oscar and Constance had been happily married for eight years at that point and Oscar was a fun and loving father. Then Lord Alfred Douglas came to visit and Oscar became infatuated with the spoiled Bosie. When Constance, who bankrolled the family, realized what Oscar and Bosie were up to in the Priest’s Hole attic bedroom, she left Norfolk with her son Cyril and Oscar’s mother.
We next hear about Constance’s life after the trial and his imprisonment; she has had to cope with the notoriety and had changed their names and had moved to the Continent to protect her sons. Her health was terribly impaired and she was comtemplating surgery in the vain hope it would help her. She has a visit from an old friend who had been with them in Norfolk. Oscar did not return to his family after imprisonment, but lived for a time with Lord Alfred.
The third act shows us Cyril much later, as a soldier during the First World War. He had been determined to be a tough guy lest there be any accusations that he might have inclinations like Oscar. The fourth act has Vyvyan tracked down by Bosie one evening when he saw him at the opera. The next day he shows up at the door of one of a friend of both his parents, trying to make sense of the strangeness of his life. These four acts show us the lives of these historical figures while the last act is quite different.
In this act, Constance takes a different approach rather than leaving Oscar. She makes a proposal to Oscar and Lord Alfred that they all live in a different way. Her goals are to keep Oscar connected to the children and maintain their marriage (except for “that,” meaning conjugal relations), and he would live in an apartment that he would share with Bosie, as his translator. This would give him the ability to be with Bosie, while remaining respectable in the public eye. Nice try, Constance, but the historical Bosie figure was not interested in a domestic arrangement. The historical figure Oscar himself, though flamboyant was not reckless in public. Bosie did interest Oscar in the world of young male prostitutes. His relations with Lord Alfred and others were consensual, but his actions with those young boys would subject him to criminal charges today. The “love that dare not speak its name,” according to Wilde, is the love of an elder for a younger man.
Louis Bayard, The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2024, 296 pages (I listened to the audiobook). Available in the public library.