GLR May-June 2023

‘Airbrushed from History’

A UTHOR Laura Lee’s new book, which can be read as a se quel to her Oscar’s Ghost: The Battle Over Oscar Wilde’s Legacy (2017), is subtitled The Story of Maurice Schwabe and sub-subtitled “The Man Behind Oscar Wilde’s Downfall, who with a Band of False Aristocrats Swindled the World.” It tells the story of Maurice

Mitchell Library in Sydney and offered it some letters, signed only “Bosie,” which he had acquired during his investigation of Schwabe’s suspected (though never proved) role in a fraud scheme. Rochaix thought the letters might be of historical significance since they revealed what he termed “Wilde Douglas [i.e., homosexual] relations” be tween Lord Alfred Douglas and Schwabe.

N ILS C LAUSSON

WILDE NIGHTS & ROBBER BARONS The Story of Maurice Schwabe by Laura Lee Elsewhere Press. 408 pages, $16.99

The first letter, signed “Bosie,” calls Schwabe “his darling pretty boy” and proclaims: “I do love you so much & miss you every minute. ... I really love you far more than any other boy in the world, and shall always be your loving boy-wife, or your ‘little bitch’ if you prefer it.” In a second letter he pined: “I al ways think of you every night when I go to bed, please do the same for me. That is if you still love me any more, as I do you.” He ends the letter with “heaps of love & kisses. Ever your most loving boy-wife.” (You can read the letters on the website of the National Library of New South Wales.) Maurice was most likely not traveling to Australia voluntar ily, but had been sent there by his family, though for what reason remains uncertain. The most likely one is that his sexual inclina

Schwabe (pronounced Morris Schwa-buh), with whom Lord Alfred Douglas fell in love and who, in concert with Wilde’s co-defendant, Alfred Taylor, probably introduced Wilde and Douglas to the working-class rent boys whose testimony helped to secure Taylor and Wilde’s conviction for gross indecency. Although most of Schwabe’s fascinating story as a member of a criminal gang of card cheats, swindlers, and blackmailers be gins after his return to England in 1896, the most interesting part of his life for our purposes is Schwabe’s role in the events leading up to Wilde’s trials and conviction. Despite Lee’s diligent detective work, there is still much that we don’t know about Schwabe’s connections to Wilde. The first time that Wilde was observed with Schwabe was at the opening

tions, perhaps through his affair with Dou glas, had become known to his family. A letter from his mother dated October 25, 1894, complains: “I fear much that you have fallen in again with bad companions in Syd ney—if so I implore you to have strength of mind to break away from them & try to get the necessary strength from the teaching of your religion.” Since Schwabe’s known criminal activity did not flourish until he re turned to England, the “bad companions” would appear to be men like Lord Alfred Douglas and his ilk. Uncovering the precise nature of Schwabe’s role in Wilde’s downfall is com plicated by the fact that when Wilde was ar rested and put on trial, Schwabe had been out of the country for well over a year and

of Lady Windermere’s Fan on February 20, 1892. It was not until the early fall of that year that Schwabe introduced Wilde to Al fred Taylor. Both Taylor and Schwabe ap pear to have procured young men for Wilde, notably Fred Atkins, who first met Wilde (according to his own court testi mony) at an unnamed friend’s (i.e., Schwabe’s) flat, and who was taken by Wilde to Paris in November 1892. We don’t hear of Schwabe again until October of 1893, when (as we learn from Bosie’s love letters to him) he’s on his way to Australia via New Zealand. In the intervening year, Bosie and Maurice had become lovers. Although Schwabe’s name occasionally cropped up in connection with Wilde—he was listed in the Marquess of Queensbury’s

Maurice Schwabe.

did not return until well after Wilde was in jail. True, Schwabe did introduce Wilde to working-class youths, but there is little to link him directly to Wilde’s downfall. Moreover, it is likely that every effort was made to keep Schwabe’s name concealed, since he was related through his aunt (his mother’s sister) to Sir Frank Lockwood, the Solicitor-General and lead counsel for the prose cution of Wilde. Also, Maurice’s father, George Schwabe, had been a Member of Parliament. Revealing these family connec tions to the public during and after the trials would have proved extremely embarrassing. In the first trial (Wilde’s libel suit), Schwabe’s name was not spoken in court, but rather written on a piece of paper and handed to the judge. Most of Lee’s thoroughly researched book (there are 400 endnotes) is devoted to Schwabe’s life after Wilde’s conviction.

Plea of Justification as one of the men that Wilde had solicited to commit gross indecency—very little information about him and his connections to Douglas and Wilde was known, partly because he left England in March 1893, nearly two years before the scan dal broke. Then, in March 2011, two letters from Douglas to Schwabe, written in March 1893 while Schwabe was on his way to Australia, were discovered in the National Library of New South Wales. The press release announcing the discovery re marked that Schwabe had been “airbrushed from history.” Until these letters surfaced, it was not even known that Schwabe was ever in Australia. A century earlier, in 1919, Jules Rochaix, who had been Sydney’s first undercover detective, contacted the Nils Clausson is emeritus prof. of English at the Univ. of Regina (Canada). 36

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