If only Wilde had been religious!

As the movie and Frank Harris's book both make very clear, Oscar Wilde was told emphatically by friends that he would certainly lose in court if he sued Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie)'s father, the Marquis of Queensberry (1844-1900), for libel over Queensberry's publicly calling Wilde a sodomite. Harris seemed to have been among the most vocal in warning Oscar. At any rate, he describes several emotional conversations with Wilde, from which it is clear that Wilde, influenced by Bosie, who vehemently disliked his father, fully intended to proceed in court. Finally, when Wilde asked Harris, "But what can I do, Frank?," Harris replied in exasperation, "Don't ask for advice you won't take."

But Oscar would have had to take a resolution and act in order to stop, and he was incapable of such energy....
    "I am bringing an action against Queensberry, Frank," [Oscar] began gravely, "for criminal libel. He is a mere wild beast. My solicitors tell me that I am certain to win...."
    [Oscar asks Harris if he would give evidence for him, and Harris says he would be perfectly willing.]..."but I want you to consider the matter carefully...."
    ..."Don't forget," I persisted, "all British prejudices will be against you. Here is a father, the fools will say, trying to protect his young son [!]. If he has made a mistake, it is only through excess of laudable zeal...."[pp. 112-114, Chapter 12 of Oscar Wilde]

And here Harris told Wilde something rather extraordinary:

"...You would have to prove yourself a religious maniac in order to have any chance against him in England."

    I suppose it's possible that Harris was suggesting that Wilde, if perceived to be a "religious maniac," might have been able to get off "by reason of insanity," but I take it that he was rather making a point that Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins all condemned in their recent books on religion: if a person's motives are "religious," he is above criticism and all is forgiven.
    Of course, there was no question of Wilde's having religious motives, and Harris doesn't mention religion again [to the point I've read so far, at any rate.]

Wilde the movie

Last evening I watched again the 1997 film, "Wilde," directed by Brian Gilbert and starring Stephen Fry as Oscar, Jude Law as Lord Alfred Douglas ("Bosie") (1870-1945), and Tom Wilkinson as the latter's father, the Marquis of Queensberry. I found it even harder to watch or enjoy than the first time, likely because I know more now about Wilde's submissive participation with Bosie in his own undoing—and also, perhaps, because there were more scenes of homosexual sodomy than I recalled the film's having. Bosie was no more forgivable for being portrayed prettily by Law, although Wilde may have been even more pitiful for Fry's pathetic portrayal.
    Most interesting, actually, was this time recognizing the Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd, whose portrayal of William Wilberforce (1759-1833) in the 2006 film, "Amazing Grace," I'd watched the night before (and whose portrayal of Horatio Hornblower we enjoyed months ago in the TV series). In "Wilde," he plays John Gray, whom Frank Harris described as having "not only great personal distinction, but charming manners and a marked poetic gift, a much greater gift than Oscar possessed." Harris identified Gray as the likely source for the last name of the title character in Wilde's novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Remember, Harris knew the people involved; he was Wilde's junior by only sixteen months.
    From the blurb at the bottom of the front cover of Frank Harris's life of Wilde ("Now a major motion picture starring Stephen Fry"—see the cover photo on Thursday's post), I was expecting to see that the film was based on the book. Not so, alas; it was said to be based on Richard Ellmann's biography (which I've had for years but not read yet).
    Ellmann (1918-1987) is said in the introduction to Harris's book (by Wilde's grandson, Merlin Holland, copyright 1997) to have distanced himself from Harris's account:

Such, though, is Harris's reputation that even modern biographers are often reluctant to quote him. Harris in Chapter 4 tells the story of the famous Wilde/Whistler exchange culminating in Whistler's "You will, Oscar, you will." Hesketh Pearson's 1946 biography repeats the incident word for word and Richard Ellmann quotes it in his 1987 biography of Wilde, but gives Pearson as the source rather than the generally discredited Harris....[p. ix, Oscar Wilde]

I note, however, that Ellmann gave Harris almost half a column in his index, with over thirty references.

Oscar's brilliant talk

Continuing to read Frank Harris's life of Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) (before we encounter Wilde's disastrous relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas):

No season, it is said, is so beautiful as the brief northern summer. Three-fourths of the year is cold and dark, and the ice-bound landscape is swept by snowstorm and blizzard. Summer comes like a goddess; in a twinkling the snow vanishes and Nature puts on her robes of tenderest green; the birds arrive in flocks; flowers spring to life on all sides, and the sun shines by night as by day. Such a summertide, so beautiful and so brief, was accorded to Oscar Wilde before the final desolation.