GLR November-December 2024

The Fall of the House of Wilde

T HE CHALLENGE of writing historical fiction—creating an in teresting story with lifelike char acters within the constraints of historical facticity—becomes even more difficult when the historical figures and events are widely known or readily googled for a quick refresher. The more famous the people and events depicted, the higher the

Oscar explains to Constance and Lady Wilde that Bosie is there to work on his translation of Wilde’s Salome (published in 1893). But Constance senses that translat ing is the least of Bosie’s reasons for being there. Slipping into Oscar’s bedroom late one night and finding the bed empty, she sits and waits for her husband to return. In the sparkling yet cryptic dialogue that en

H ANK T ROUT

THEWILDES A Novel in Five Acts by Louis Bayard Algonquin Books. 304 pages, $29.

sues, Constance makes it clear that she is aware that Oscar and Bosie are sneaking into the attic late at night for carnal enjoy ment. “And you!” she rages. “And your tales of old whores and old syphilis, and we could no longer lie together and be hus band and wife, but you ... make someone else your wife, and your own son slumbering two stories below and me alongside and your mother two rooms over, and you dared !” The next morning, Constance, Cyril, and Lady Wilde depart for London, leaving Oscar and Bosie on their own. The “entr’acte”—this is “a novel in five acts”—includes transcripts of Wilde’s two 1895 trials, the first as plaintiff against the Marquess of Queensberry for his slanderous accu sation that Wilde was a “posing somdomite [ sic ],” the second as defendant in a criminal trial for “gross indecency.” It also in cludes a letter from Wilde to Lord Alfred from Reading Gaol, in which Wilde laments Bosie’s vanity and his profligacy with Wilde’s money: “I had no idea that the first would bring me to prison and the second to bankruptcy,” he writes. The narrative picks up in “Act Two” in 1897, at a villa in Bogliasco, Italy, where Constance has exiled herself and her boys. She has fled England for its barbarous treatment of her husband and family, having dropped the name “Wilde” in favor of “Holland.” Constance has never discussed with the boys the reasons for Wilde’s imprisonment and the family’s exile, but Cyril learns the truth by reading some Irish newspapers. He is angered by the ignominious stain on the family name. In a let ter to Vyvyan in 1914, he writes: “All these years my great in centive has been to wipe that stain away; to retrieve, if may be, by some action of mine, a name no longer honored in the land. ... This has been my purpose for sixteen years. It is so still.” To Cyril, retrieving that good name means that “I must be a man .” We find him next in the trenches in France in 1915, a sniper in the British Infantry in the mire of World War I. He en dures shelling, horrid weather, and the incompetence of his fel low soldiers. When one is injured, Cyril tries to comfort him by telling him about “a very selfish giant,” the story his father had told him and Vyvyan when they were much younger. When the soldier dies, Cyril is called upon to inform the man’s family, de ciding after some soul-searching to lie about how their cow ardly son died. Act Four, set in London in 1925, features a long dialogue between Vyvyan and Lord Alfred, who has tracked Vyvyan down and taken him to an underground bar that he later dis covers is a gay bar. The dialogue provides insight into Lord Al fred’s self-aggrandizing take on the affair. He laments that

expectation of accuracy, or at least verisimilitude, with respect to the characters’ actions, manners of speech and dress, modes of transportation and communication, and so on. Louis Bayard has proven himself equal to this challenge in such novels as The Pale Blue Eye (a retired New York police man’s investigation of a murder at West Point in the 1830s), Courting Mr. Lincoln (Mary Todd’s pursuit of Abe), and Jackie &Me (Ms. Bouvier before JFK). His latest novel, The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts , focuses on Oscar Wilde’s long-suffering wife Constance and their two young boys, Cyril and Vyvyan, as they cope with Oscar’s philandering and the aftermath of his trials and exile. The novel opens in 1892 at a country house in the Norfolk region that the Wildes have rented ostensibly so that Oscar can complete a play (probably A Woman of No Importance , first per formed in 1893). Oscar works diligently on the play while his wife and his mother, the imperious Lady Wilde, enjoy the idyl lic setting. But when Lord Alfred Douglas—“Bosie,” the son of the Marquess of Queensbury—arrives, tensions start to rise.

Constance Wilde with son Cyril, 1889.

Hank Trout, a frequent contributor to these pages, is the former editor of A&U: America’s AIDS Magazine. 34

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