Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, which
Speaker 2: is a podcast that comes out twice a week where
Speaker 2: I talk about people that I think are cool who
Speaker 2: did cool stuff? And this week is an archetypical episode
Speaker 2: where I really like the person I'm talking about and
Speaker 2: the person I'm talking to, who is Chelsea Weber Smith,
Speaker 2: host of American Hysteria, which is another podcast.
Speaker 3: Hey, so happy to be back. I am loving this
Speaker 3: series so far. It is right up, my allie, So
Speaker 3: thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, happy to have you. That sounded fake. That's
Speaker 2: not true, It's not fake. Yeah. I hate my job. No,
Speaker 2: I love my job, Tim Hard I know, I know,
Speaker 2: I'm really bad at So Sophie Hi is the producer.
Speaker 2: Hi Sophie. Hi, Hi Sophie.
Speaker 3: You gave me the you gave me your phone voice.
Speaker 2: Hi Sophie. Hi Sophie.
Speaker 3: Hardly nailing this.
Speaker 2: And I guess our producer or whatever or audio engineer
Speaker 2: is Daniel Danel. High Danel. You have to say hih
Speaker 2: Daniel too. We can't move forward to Dane Yeah, okay cool.
Speaker 2: Our theme musical is written forced by a woman, and
Speaker 2: this is part two and a two parter. So the
Speaker 2: second half about Oscar fucking Wild, who probably wouldn't have
Speaker 2: hated having fucking although I guess he had enough middle
Speaker 2: names he probably didn't need anymore.
Speaker 3: Remind us, wait, remind us of the whole name again.
Speaker 2: Oh but it's all the way back up at the
Speaker 2: top of my script, nor I don't do it. Several
Speaker 2: of them start with f Yeah, it's like three, there's
Speaker 2: like finnial clarity, larity. Well, then fuck works Wills. I
Speaker 2: think Willis or Wills is one of them. Yeah, all right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I totally know this man inside and out. I wouldn't
Speaker 2: hate to. So we are talking about Oscar Wild, and
Speaker 2: when we've last left off, he has reached the pinnacle
Speaker 2: of his well. He's just about to put out like
Speaker 2: his most important works and he is just like fucking
Speaker 2: killing it. And he loves his kids, he loves his life.
Speaker 2: And then it's the early eighteen nineties. Oscar Wild is
Speaker 2: at the peak of his fame, in his power. He's
Speaker 2: writing plays and essays that will outlive us all. And
Speaker 2: then he falls for a guy and has a train
Speaker 2: wreck of a relationship and it just fucks everything up.
Speaker 3: Who among us you know?
Speaker 2: In eighteen ninety one, he meets the man whose father
Speaker 2: is going to ruin his life. He meets Lord Alfred Douglas.
Speaker 2: His friends all call him Bozie, which seems to be
Speaker 2: a childhood nickname from his mother called him. It relates
Speaker 2: to the word boy. Somehow, I don't understand how English
Speaker 2: people work. Bozie was a younger man, he was twenty
Speaker 2: one or something. Oscar's in his mid thirties at this point.
Speaker 2: They hit it off and they have a love affair
Speaker 2: full of dramatic breakups and wild goings ons. Alfred demands
Speaker 2: Oscar spend basically all of his money on him, and
Speaker 2: Oscar does just whatever fucking Bozy wants Bozy gets, and
Speaker 2: they just wrecking ball each other's lives, just fuck each
Speaker 2: other up. It's really bad.
Speaker 3: Do you think that this is a fuck each other
Speaker 3: up because they are actually really passionately in love or
Speaker 3: is it hard to say? So?
Speaker 2: You know those like relationships where you kind of just
Speaker 2: fight all the time but the sex is fucking wild,
Speaker 2: and then whenever you're away, you're like, oh, actually that
Speaker 2: person wasn't so bad after all, And if he calls
Speaker 2: your like come running back.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know that yeahact situation. Okay, all right, it's
Speaker 4: one of those, got it. The two of them have
Speaker 4: a particular habit. One of their favorite ways to spend
Speaker 4: the time is that they go to a very fancy
Speaker 4: hotel they hire sex workers together and then tip the
Speaker 4: sex workers lavishly, like they'll send them home with silver
Speaker 4: cigarette cases and shit like.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, I know, like yeah, I like that.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then they get into big blow up fights and
Speaker 2: then they get back together, and it is really fucking
Speaker 2: bad for Oscar. It's probably bad for Bosie too, but
Speaker 2: he's later going to become a massive anti semi although
Speaker 2: anti Nazi. Okay, Well, Lord Alfred is the man who
Speaker 2: coined the phrase the Love that dare not speak its name,
Speaker 2: and he's kind of a want to be intellectual, but
Speaker 2: he's fucking twenty one. Oscar Wilde was a want to
Speaker 2: be intellectual when he was twenty one. I was a
Speaker 2: want to be well, I don't know what I was
Speaker 2: when I was twenty one.
Speaker 3: I was definitely I want to be intellectual when I
Speaker 3: was twenty one, so.
Speaker 2: I know I was, like I think when I was seventeen,
Speaker 2: I wasn't want to be intellectual, and when I was
Speaker 2: like twenty one. I was like, I'm going to die
Speaker 2: in the revolution. Before I turned twenty four.
Speaker 3: I wasn't want to be anarchist by then too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and Oscar Wilde is like hiring him to
Speaker 2: do stuff he sucks at, like translate his plays and
Speaker 2: things like that, and then like Oscar will do just
Speaker 2: like go back in and like clean up all the
Speaker 2: translations and shit.
Speaker 5: Like.
Speaker 2: At some point, I think what happened is Oscar wild
Speaker 2: like writes a play in French and then like the translation.
Speaker 2: I think it's the one that Alfred does, and so
Speaker 2: they date and they're wildly in love and fucking each
Speaker 2: other up and then having amazing, beautiful decad at times. Also,
Speaker 2: and Alfred's dad is the Marquess of Queensbury. I refuse
Speaker 2: to learn what a marquess is. Fucking royalty. I don't
Speaker 2: even know some royalty shit something embarrassing. Yeah, you ever
Speaker 2: heard of the Queensbury rules of boxing? No, it is
Speaker 2: the rules that modern boxing is like developed from. Okay
Speaker 2: because of the Marquess of Queensbury. This particular man, all right,
Speaker 2: he did not write them down, but he popularized them
Speaker 2: and he was he was big into boxing and he
Speaker 2: sets about trying to ruin Oscar Wilde's life because he
Speaker 2: sees Oscar wild as the corruptor. This groomer was ruined
Speaker 2: his son because, as we talked about last time, homosexuality
Speaker 2: and heterosexuality were brand fucking new terms at this time.
Speaker 2: I really loved it. Actually was like a really mind
Speaker 2: blowing moment when I realized that heaterosexuality is about one
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty years old.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: Uh, But that doesn't mean that before that everyone was like,
Speaker 2: do whatever you want, it's all groovy, you know.
Speaker 3: No, I just meant that there wasn't an identity category.
Speaker 3: There were like actions that you took, so you like,
Speaker 3: did gay stuff you weren't necessarily gay stuff.
Speaker 2: Yourself, yeah, And if you were, it was like words
Speaker 2: like pervert and things like that.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And as best as I can tell the way that
Speaker 2: Oscar wild in this particular moral panic about homosexuality, gay
Speaker 2: men are seen as like vampires. They are corruptors that
Speaker 2: go around and ruin the young and turn them into
Speaker 2: corruptors themselves, pretty much exactly what people say about like
Speaker 2: trans women. Now. Yeah, so, mister Queensbury, I refuse to
Speaker 2: call him marquess every single time, and I think he
Speaker 2: would be annoyed if I called him mister, and I
Speaker 2: don't like him, so I'm gonna call him mister. Stick
Speaker 2: it to him. Yeah, take that man who's been dead
Speaker 2: since before my great grandfather was born, before my grandfather
Speaker 2: was born. So he sets about to ruin Oscar Wilde's
Speaker 2: reputation in life to save his son from becoming a
Speaker 2: vampire or whatever. But the first couple times they meet,
Speaker 2: like they'll be like, like Bozi and Oscar will be
Speaker 2: at a restaurant together, and like Dad will just happen
Speaker 2: to be there because like all the rich people hang
Speaker 2: out to rich people shit, you know, and he'll like
Speaker 2: come over. And Oscar Wilde is so fucking charming that
Speaker 2: he successfully charms his twenty one year old boyfriend's dad
Speaker 2: multiple times. And so it's like Dad will like storm
Speaker 2: over and like sit down, and Oscar I'll be like, man,
Speaker 2: I love fishing. I hear you like fishing. Let's talk
Speaker 2: about fishing.
Speaker 3: Oh man, this is what I aspire to be for.
Speaker 3: When I meet my partners, like homophobic family members, it's
Speaker 3: like I will do it. I will charm you into
Speaker 3: this and do excitting this.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and it's like every single time, and then
Speaker 2: he like leaves it in my head. He's like, oh wait,
Speaker 2: I'm supposed to be mad.
Speaker 3: That vampire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was this charming, smile, handsome abs. So finally
Speaker 2: mister boxing Man shows up at Oscar's house and is like,
Speaker 2: next time I see you and my son together, i'ma
Speaker 2: fuck you up. I think he says, I will thrash you,
Speaker 2: which is nice eighteen nineties for ima fuck you up,
Speaker 2: to which Oscar replies because he is fucking witty and quotable.
Speaker 2: I don't know what the Queensbury rules are, but the
Speaker 2: Oscar Wild rule is to shoot on site.
Speaker 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: So he's like, hey, you want to come at me,
Speaker 2: I'll fucking kill you.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I think Bosey Lord Alfred is egging Wild on
Speaker 2: because Lord Alfred hates his fucking dad. And then one day,
Speaker 2: Lord Alfred he shows up at the rich people London
Speaker 2: club that Wild hangs out at. It was like referred
Speaker 2: to as like showed up at his club and I
Speaker 2: was like, dear Google, did Oscar Wild own a club?
Speaker 2: And then it's like no, it's just like a weird
Speaker 2: rich British people thing where you have like your gentleman's club.
Speaker 2: Actually this particular one accepted men and women, but it's
Speaker 2: like your weird rich people club.
Speaker 3: And for a second, I was thinking of Oscar Wild,
Speaker 3: like Lindsay lohand in that one video when she owned
Speaker 3: that club in Mikono's doing that really.
Speaker 5: Really funny.
Speaker 3: It's pretty good, thank you.
Speaker 2: So I would I would love to go to Oscar
Speaker 2: Wild's club or probably this club that I don't know
Speaker 2: anything about.
Speaker 3: Lindsay Lohan's club and Mikinos became abandoned because she only
Speaker 3: lost interest or something, and I always just dreamed of
Speaker 3: going to that.
Speaker 5: Hell the TV show on her club in Mikinos not MTV,
Speaker 5: and there was a phase where it was the best
Speaker 5: worst show on television. Yeah, it don't songs for like
Speaker 5: six weeks because that's when she lost interest.
Speaker 3: But she had a fantastic fake accent.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Well, I know a lot more about pop
Speaker 2: stars in eighteen nineties London, and.
Speaker 3: I do, so why we're bringing it in, We're making
Speaker 3: it modern. I know.
Speaker 2: I appreciate that. Sometimes I like become conscious of the
Speaker 2: fact that I like know more about like even like
Speaker 2: political shit, of the nineteen tens in Ireland than I
Speaker 2: do about. Like now, that teens to me directly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do understand that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Oscar wild as a club, but not as
Speaker 2: cool as Oscar well owning a club, which I would
Speaker 2: absolutely have gone to. And I think if he had lasted,
Speaker 2: none of this had gone down. I could see this
Speaker 2: man owning a club.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And he leaves a calling card, which is another rich
Speaker 2: people thing, and it says for Oscar Wilde posing somdamite
Speaker 2: because among his many boxing talents does not include a
Speaker 2: talent for spelling or comprehensible handwriting. Okay, is spell it's
Speaker 2: sodomite spelled wrong. And Oscar Wilde is like, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: sue this man for libel wow. And his friends are like,
Speaker 2: but you're a sodomite. You're like, and he will go
Speaker 2: to jail unless he can prove you are a sodomite,
Speaker 2: which he can do because you're a sodomite.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And his other friends are like, hey, Paris is lovely.
Speaker 2: Would you like to go to Paris.
Speaker 3: Let's just go to Paris and have a nice time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And he's like nope, because if I let this
Speaker 2: stand it will ruin my reputation. I am suing this
Speaker 2: man for libel. My favorite history arguing about I'm less
Speaker 2: interested in like did he fuck so? And so that's fine?
Speaker 2: Why the fuck did he do? This? Is my favorite
Speaker 2: history arguing about of this whole thing. Yeah, so Queensberry
Speaker 2: now has to proven court that Oscar Wild is a
Speaker 2: sodomite and it's a criminal triald, criminal liable. Queensberry is arrested,
Speaker 2: but the trial never becomes about Queensberry. I think Oscar
Speaker 2: wild sees it like, oh, I'm going to have the power.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be the prosecutor. I'm going to stand up,
Speaker 2: I'm going to fight. You know, it is a trial
Speaker 2: about Oscar wild Several times Oscar wild has to be like, hey,
Speaker 2: I'm the I'm the prosecutor, not the defend Yeah wow,
Speaker 2: and people are like fuck you you homo. Yeah you know.
Speaker 2: Like soon enough, Queensburg is found not guilty and Oscar
Speaker 2: Wilde gets put on trial instead for gross indecency aka
Speaker 2: touch and pens.
Speaker 3: So he's the after the trial because of this publicity,
Speaker 3: he gets charged with a separate crime.
Speaker 2: Because of all the evidence that came out in the
Speaker 2: course of the trial.
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, Oscar, you didn't have to do that.
Speaker 2: No, he did not have to do it. These three
Speaker 2: trials is three trials of fucking Oscar Wild. They are
Speaker 2: a big fucking deal. Yeah that It is a big
Speaker 2: deal in history because Oscar Wild was not the first
Speaker 2: nor the last celebrity to go on trial for gay sex.
Speaker 2: But it is coming at a time of public moral
Speaker 2: panic around, you know, the sodomites in our mist mist
Speaker 2: or whatever, and Oscar Wild is like one of them
Speaker 2: most famous people around. It also comes at a time
Speaker 2: when there's two other big scary things going on in England,
Speaker 2: Irish nationalists and anarchists. And your boy is a gay
Speaker 2: Irish anarchist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, And what year are we in?
Speaker 2: This is eighteen ninety five, he goes on twenty five.
Speaker 3: Okay, great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going to take a detour really quick to
Speaker 2: talk about Irish independence and British anarchists because as an
Speaker 2: angle I haven't seen too many people cover and it's
Speaker 2: about the trial, and I think it's really interesting. During
Speaker 2: the eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties, British anarchists were primarily
Speaker 2: focused on anti colonialism. In particular, they were focused on
Speaker 2: freeing the colony next door Ireland. Anarchists across the world
Speaker 2: were starting to turn their attention to anti colonialism everywhere,
Speaker 2: but it's particularly the case in Britain, which makes some sense.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: They also weren't trying to tell the Irish rebels what
Speaker 2: to do. They weren't like, hey, you all got to
Speaker 2: be anarchists and do whoever anarchy. Instead, they actually looked
Speaker 2: to the Irish rebels for inspiration and remained in dialogue
Speaker 2: with movements around the world. It's actually they actually did
Speaker 2: better at this than I expected them to to be.
Speaker 5: Frick.
Speaker 3: They're kind of supporting whatever the Irish nationalists needed versus.
Speaker 2: Right, right, And I don't know whether they were like
Speaker 2: sending arms or not sure, right, but I do know
Speaker 2: that they were some of the only people in England
Speaker 2: publishing things that were like we support the following like
Speaker 2: Irish nationalists crime that had nothing to do with anarchism
Speaker 2: as a cause. It was just anti colonial.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and ideological support yeah okay, yeah, and like literally
Speaker 4: even just being able to get news about it that
Speaker 4: they were like constantly getting repressed for.
Speaker 2: This is not a big free speech time, you know, right,
Speaker 2: And in Britain anarchists were also like, hey, fellow Brits,
Speaker 2: you know that whatever repressive shit they do to the Irish,
Speaker 2: they'll eventually do here, right, and considering the the English
Speaker 2: later invent rubber bullets to use on the Irish, like,
Speaker 2: oh shit, that's like eighty years later. But yeah, but
Speaker 2: this is exactly what happens. The repressive apparatus that was
Speaker 2: used against the Irish was then used domestically, and specifically,
Speaker 2: the spying apparatus was used domestically. Okay, and so we're
Speaker 2: gonna talk about the Phoenix part killings as a sort
Speaker 2: of cool people detour just to talk. No one's been
Speaker 2: stabbed so far as this episode. You know, yeah, some
Speaker 2: people are going to get stabbed and shot now, and
Speaker 2: some of them will deserve it. Irish Rebellion was about
Speaker 2: Irish independence, but it was specifically against landlordism as well.
Speaker 2: There have been a potato genocide in the eighteen forties
Speaker 2: where England had starved Ireland during period of potato blight,
Speaker 2: but shit had not gotten better by the eighteen eighties
Speaker 2: and so like economically, and so you have this next
Speaker 2: generation who are like, hey, how come we're all tenant
Speaker 2: farmers instead of owning our land, and we're one bad
Speaker 2: harvest away from death. And also we keep getting evicted,
Speaker 2: so we're actually not even one bad harvest away from death.
Speaker 2: Were just dead.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: This leads to the Land War of eighteen seventy nine
Speaker 2: to eighteen eighty two, which is a whole fucking war
Speaker 2: against landlords, and I just want to sit on that
Speaker 2: pleasant thought for a moment. Although in this particular war
Speaker 2: against the landlords, the landlords did come out on top.
Speaker 2: Britain by eighteen eighty one was like, all right, fuck y'all,
Speaker 2: Irish motherfuckers, no more trial by jury and Ireland we
Speaker 2: are fucking in charge, not you fuck off. They arrested
Speaker 2: nine hundred anti landlord activists and then the Irish were like,
Speaker 2: you know, there's like a couple of guys responsible for that.
Speaker 2: There's like, well, to quote the great folk singer Utah Phillips,
Speaker 2: the earth is not dying, it is being killed, and
Speaker 2: those who are killing it have names and addresses. The
Speaker 2: Irish were like, well, it's I can point to those people.
Speaker 2: That's the guy. One group that came out of this
Speaker 2: land War was called the Irish National Invincibles or just
Speaker 2: the Invincibles, which is a fucking cool name. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: they are a splinter from the Irish Republican Brotherhood and
Speaker 2: they were like, what if we just stab the aforementioned
Speaker 2: responsible men to death in a public park. Surely that's
Speaker 2: a thing within our power. And they try a couple
Speaker 2: of times, but they keep failing. But like the little
Speaker 2: engine that could, they just kept right at it until
Speaker 2: one day they succeeded. Or to quote the later IRA
Speaker 2: talking about how they the later IRA kept trying to
Speaker 2: blow up Margaret Thatcher and they said, you have to
Speaker 2: get lucky every time. We only have to get lucky once. Wow. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I think it was I think they're specifically mad
Speaker 2: that Margaret Thatcher was giving Margaret's a bad name.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, primary problem, her greatest sin.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So one day in Phoenix Park, seven of these Invincibles
Speaker 2: surround the Permanent Undersecretary Thomas Henry Burke and the new
Speaker 2: Chief Secretary, Lord Frederick Cavendish, the latter of whom had
Speaker 2: literally just arrived in Dublin to be in charge of
Speaker 2: repressing the colony. They actually didn't even recognize him. I
Speaker 2: think they just were killing the permanent under Secretary and
Speaker 2: then like you know, found this other guy that needed
Speaker 2: to get stab into and they killed them in Phoenix Park.
Speaker 2: And unlike the park name, those two did not rise
Speaker 2: from the ashes. Ah, thank you, thank you. The weapons
Speaker 2: have been delivered by a seven month pregnant Irish nationalist
Speaker 2: named Mary Anne Byrne, who ran weapons for the Resistance
Speaker 2: under her skirts, and the getaway driver. The getaway driver
Speaker 2: was named and I am not making this up Skin
Speaker 2: the Goat.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Wow, all one word hyphenated.
Speaker 3: I'd go to a party at their house. I don't
Speaker 3: think they are a couple, but I'm pretending male.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, there's Mary and skin the Goat. He earned
Speaker 2: that name because one time he killed and skinned a
Speaker 2: goat and then wore the goat skin on his lap
Speaker 2: while driving a cab.
Speaker 3: Well, there you go. Yeah, very literal nicknames back then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, totally. So anyway, so the Invincibles killed some
Speaker 2: men responsible for the subjugation of Ireland. One of the
Speaker 2: assassins was this guy named James Carey, probably no relation
Speaker 2: to the actor of the same name, and he got
Speaker 2: caught and he turned snitch, and his snitching saw five
Speaker 2: of his associates hanged and This led to a whole
Speaker 2: chain of events. The Crown was like, all right, Jim Carrey,
Speaker 2: you got to eventually make the mask, so we got
Speaker 2: to get you away from here under a fake name.
Speaker 2: Get you to South Africa. You'll be safe there. But
Speaker 2: there's other people on the boat, and one of the
Speaker 2: other people on the boat is just he's not there
Speaker 2: to do anything. I mean, was there to go to
Speaker 2: South Africa. But he is a forty eight year old
Speaker 2: Irish bricklayer named Patrick O'Donnell. And Patrick O'Donnell had been
Speaker 2: hanging out in cold mining, Pennsylvania with his Molly McGuire cousins.
Speaker 2: See are two parter on the Molly McGuire's the people
Speaker 2: who like to kill landlords the middle the night. They
Speaker 2: believed in very direct solutions to certain types of problems.
Speaker 2: So Patrick discovered James's true identity while they're on the
Speaker 2: ship together. Three bullets later, James Carey is dead. Patrick
Speaker 2: O'Donnell's stands trial. He is sentenced to death. The judge
Speaker 2: refused to let him speak after the sentencing, so instead
Speaker 2: he shouted, He shouted three cheers for Old Ireland, Goodbye
Speaker 2: United States, to hell with the British and the British Crown. Nice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, at least he got one in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, I know. He was executed and was
Speaker 2: and is considered a martyr to Irish freedom. You know,
Speaker 2: a man who made a decision while he was on
Speaker 2: a boat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, bricklayer.
Speaker 5: Job.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. What's this got to do with Oscar Wilde.
Speaker 2: It has two things to do with Oscar Wilde. When
Speaker 2: Oscar was on his tour of the US, he spoke
Speaker 2: unabashedly about how those killings, the Phoenix Park killings were
Speaker 2: quote the fruit of seven centuries of injustice, and his
Speaker 2: irishness is often erased, but he was his mother's son.
Speaker 2: He also specifically talked about how the colonization of Ireland
Speaker 2: was cutting into the Irish ability to be artists. The
Speaker 2: other connection is that the English anarchist press was supporting
Speaker 2: the Invincibles and Irish nationalism generally, and soon enough, you know,
Speaker 2: a decade or so later, they're supporting Oscar wild Because
Speaker 2: not a lot of people supported Oscar wild while he
Speaker 2: was on trial, but the anarchist press did. And as
Speaker 2: another weird side note about the anarchist press in England
Speaker 2: at the time, there's this paper called The Torch, and
Speaker 2: it was run by two teenaged anarchist sisters named Helen
Speaker 2: and Olivia Rosetti. They started it when they were thirteen
Speaker 2: and sixteen. And it's like one of the papers of
Speaker 2: like wide circulation that's like covering shit from all over
Speaker 2: the world. It's like they're not writing all the pieces.
Speaker 2: They're like getting all of these people who write all
Speaker 2: these pieces and stuff.
Speaker 3: You know, Wow, that's so cool.
Speaker 2: And then here's where I guess it's really annoying. Another
Speaker 2: example of the things that Margaret doesn't like to talk
Speaker 2: about but has to all the time. Later, these two
Speaker 2: girls become fascists because one of the things I hate
Speaker 2: talking about is that the fascist movement came out of
Speaker 2: the revolutionary politics of the left combined with the conservatism
Speaker 2: and authoritarianism of the right. It was leftist methodology applied
Speaker 2: to right wing values. Yeah, there are leftist roots to
Speaker 2: a lot of fascism, and a lot of leftists became
Speaker 2: early fascists.
Speaker 3: Not now to talk about it, though, Yeah you got
Speaker 3: to talk about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah important. It's not fun too, and oh.
Speaker 3: It's not, but you gotta you know, it's you have
Speaker 3: to so you don't repeat the past.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, totally, And it's just like annoying because then
Speaker 2: people will be like, oh, national socialism, that means it's leftist,
Speaker 2: and you're like, no, it's a right wing movement, and
Speaker 2: you're like but also.
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, I do know.
Speaker 2: So for now, they are running an anarchist press, and
Speaker 2: they and other anarchist presses are supporting Irish independence, and
Speaker 2: a bunch of their writers are supporting Oscar Wilde. Let's
Speaker 2: go back to the trial. Well, actually, before we talk
Speaker 2: about the trial, have you ever considered that there's a
Speaker 2: gaping hole in your life, a hole that you feel
Speaker 2: like could be filled but not in a quote Greek way,
Speaker 2: but through a consumer way. Do you ever think about that?
Speaker 2: I know I do, so it keeps me up at night.
Speaker 2: Here's these ads that will fill you're whole. Nope, I
Speaker 2: don't like. Go Okay, here they go and we're back. So,
Speaker 2: like I was saying, the trial is three trials. First
Speaker 2: there is Wild trying to prosecute boxing rules man, and
Speaker 2: then the Crown trying to prosecute Wild. And that first
Speaker 2: attempt to prosecute Wild doesn't work. There's a hung Jurney
Speaker 2: and so the crown is like, well, while we got
Speaker 2: you here, why don't we just put you on trial
Speaker 2: for the same thing again? And he was like, I mean,
Speaker 2: I'd probably rather you didn't. And they're like, well, are
Speaker 2: you gonna run in France? And he's like no, and
Speaker 2: they're like why not and he's like, I don't know.
Speaker 2: And historians are going to argue about it later. It's
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety five. Private investigators during the very first trial,
Speaker 2: they dig up a fuck ton of the sex workers
Speaker 2: that he had slept with, and then the crown blackmails
Speaker 2: them into testifying against Oscar Wild. I think pretty much
Speaker 2: they're like, hey, we're going to prosecute you unless you test. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's also some implication that they might have been tortured,
Speaker 2: and a bunch of them testify, and I think, like,
Speaker 2: I think Oscar World's like a little bit surprised Pikachu
Speaker 2: face about this. Yeah, Like, I think he just thinks
Speaker 2: he's going to get away with it. You know, his
Speaker 2: own books and plays are used as evidence against him
Speaker 2: in these trials. Everyone is trying to tease out every
Speaker 2: gay line from every one of his plays, and Wild's
Speaker 2: defense it changes tone here and there by and large
Speaker 2: he's not like being gay's fine, fuck you. By and large,
Speaker 2: he's like, I didn't do it. Can't say I did
Speaker 2: it because I didn't do it, which is I don't
Speaker 2: blame whatever. I'm a big tell the truth person. When
Speaker 2: someone's not threatening to lock you into a cage, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you don't need to tell the truth to the courts,
Speaker 3: yea necessarily like show honor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, don't lie to someone that you wouldn't punch. That's
Speaker 2: the it's my general go to.
Speaker 3: It's good rule with them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, and partially he gets caught up in a
Speaker 2: lot of his own lying about this because he can't
Speaker 2: help being super witty. They're like, hey, did you kiss
Speaker 2: this guy? And Oscar Wild's like, well I would, but
Speaker 2: he's ugly, like I would never kiss a man like that,
Speaker 2: and they're like, so you'd kiss a man He's like,
Speaker 2: ah shit, got me again, man. And the whole time
Speaker 2: between each of the trials, before the first one, before
Speaker 2: the second one, and before the third one, his friends
Speaker 2: are like, go the fuck to France. Why the fuck
Speaker 2: aren't you in France. In fact, we all left for
Speaker 2: France because we're all gay. And there's now this moral
Speaker 2: panic around you, and we don't want to testify you
Speaker 2: against you, and we don't want to go to prison,
Speaker 2: So come the fuck to France. Yeah, his mother is
Speaker 2: like stay and fight.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: And I don't know whether it's a mama's boy thing.
Speaker 2: I don't know what it is, but you know, there's
Speaker 2: all so like I get the feeling that he he
Speaker 2: kind of just felt like his whole life was falling apart.
Speaker 2: Like I feel like it was like almost kind of
Speaker 2: a nihilistic move and he'd just been in this like
Speaker 2: long shitty relationship and his life was kind of losing
Speaker 2: the plot and he was kind of in spiraling out
Speaker 2: of control.
Speaker 3: Do we know if his mom was accepting of him
Speaker 3: being gay.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: His mom seems so, I guess, unless she was saying, like,
Speaker 3: defend yourself against these accusations, because there's like.
Speaker 2: Two different things that could be I know, Yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know. My guess is supporting mom based on everything
Speaker 2: I read about the relationship, but I don't know.
Speaker 3: And her politics too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but there's a lot of you know, it's like
Speaker 2: one of these things where it's like, well we'll talk
Speaker 2: about it. Sure. So he defends himself, and he actually
Speaker 2: ends up defending obliquely homosexuality and specifically generation gap relationships
Speaker 2: that are homosexual. They ask him what the love that
Speaker 2: dare not speak its name is, and he basically is like, hey,
Speaker 2: all throughout history, older men have loved younger men. It's
Speaker 2: a Greek tradition, and everything's fine. But it's like the
Speaker 2: way he phrases it, you could kind of talk about
Speaker 2: same sexual relationships if you didn't talk about fucking. For
Speaker 2: a lot of the Victorian era and a lot of
Speaker 2: the historically close friends were literally just historically close friends,
Speaker 2: and like you could have men could talk about loving
Speaker 2: each other because since you hadn't created homosexuality as a
Speaker 2: vice and a you know whatever, like there wasn't like
Speaker 2: a fear of like you know, you look at all
Speaker 2: the old photos and like men are like hugging and like.
Speaker 3: Holding hands and like each other's laps and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're like, oh, it means they were all gay,
Speaker 2: and that's like sometimes true, but it's also just like
Speaker 2: they weren't afraid of being called gay all the time,
Speaker 2: so they just exactly enjoyed affection with each other because
Speaker 2: that's normal and human. Yeah, And so it's possible that
Speaker 2: when he was defending the Love that not dare not
Speaker 2: speak its name, he was like still not being like,
Speaker 2: you know, and I touched his buttole my finger or whatever.
Speaker 2: The first trial ended with the hung jury and he
Speaker 2: was retried. An Anglican priest who was a Christian socialist
Speaker 2: put up a fuck ton of money to get wild
Speaker 2: out on bail between the trials, and he still wouldn't flee.
Speaker 2: And it's possible this time he just didn't want to
Speaker 2: fuck over that priest.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he went back to court. The judge fucking hated him,
Speaker 2: said it was quote the worst case he'd ever tried,
Speaker 2: because he like, was you know, seducing and ruining these
Speaker 2: like young men or whatever, you know. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 2: he was convicted of gross indecency. He was sentenced to
Speaker 2: two years of hard labor. At the end, Oscar Wilde
Speaker 2: said simply, and I may I say nothing, my lord,
Speaker 2: and the judge didn't let him speak, and the crowd
Speaker 2: jeered him.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: I've read a couple academics discussing the trial wasn't it
Speaker 2: was about homosexuality, but it was also about the whole
Speaker 2: gay Irish radical thing, right, because a lot of the
Speaker 2: press treated it that way. At this time, papers were
Speaker 2: excited to see someone attacked for attacking conventional morality. And
Speaker 2: even this esthetic movement idea of art for art's sake
Speaker 2: is attacking conventional morarality by refusing to make art that
Speaker 2: specifically upholds traditional morality.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: A modern Irish author, Diglon o'donhall wrote, quote, Unlike anarchist
Speaker 2: assassins and bombers, who would always be outsiders, Wild was
Speaker 2: embedded within the artistic and social elite. His position as
Speaker 2: a revolutionary who enjoyed popular celebrity meant that he posed
Speaker 2: a greater threat to the establishment by criticizing it from within,
Speaker 2: and his enemies in the mainstream press were patiently waiting
Speaker 2: for an opportunity to punish him for his public success.
Speaker 3: Yeah that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And another piece around this, there's this Irish cop
Speaker 2: in London who's anti Irish or anti Irish independence. His
Speaker 2: name is Chief Inspector John Sweeney. He was an Irish
Speaker 2: anti Fenian who spent a long ass time spying on
Speaker 2: the Fenians in London, the Irish revolutionaries, and then he
Speaker 2: moved over to spying on the anarchists and so the whole,
Speaker 2: like the police state, will come to affect us too.
Speaker 5: Write.
Speaker 2: You know, in the eighteen nineties, British anarchists were largely writing,
Speaker 2: not blowing things up. A lot of the continental anarchists
Speaker 2: are in a like King killing stage, but not the
Speaker 2: British anarchists so much so. His primary concern was how
Speaker 2: to censor anarchists speech and how to shut down newspapers
Speaker 2: and stop ideas from circulating. This does not feel coincidental. No,
Speaker 2: as soon as Oscar Wilde is on trial, before he's convicted,
Speaker 2: his name is stripped off the marquees at the theaters
Speaker 2: running his plays, and soon enough the plays themselves are stopped.
Speaker 2: The public like turns on him on a dot. The
Speaker 2: press calls him the a laureate of corruption. Wow, everyone
Speaker 2: gets on name. I know, I know, I've all right
Speaker 2: with that. Like, yeah, never.
Speaker 3: Really was too. If he weren't, if he wasn't like
Speaker 3: stuck in jail, he might enjoyed it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: He has this quote when he's a younger that I
Speaker 2: don't have in Frontman and put in the script where
Speaker 2: he's like, I'm going to be famous or you know, notorious.
Speaker 2: Whatever the man accomplished both, he did it, and yeah,
Speaker 2: everyone's on board with stopping this vamporism from corrupting the world.
Speaker 2: I'm the one making the specific vamporism comparison, but that
Speaker 2: is the corruptor of youth, the groomer, the you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the like hypnotizing force.
Speaker 2: Yeah, spoiler alert. If gay sex tikes you gay, it's
Speaker 2: because you like it.
Speaker 3: Anita Bryant did the vampire metaphor for gay men in
Speaker 3: the seventies.
Speaker 2: Oh shit, yeah, should look at that up.
Speaker 3: She said that because gay men and eat sperm, they're
Speaker 3: eating life itself or something like that, and so their vampires.
Speaker 2: Oh this is someone who meant it negatively.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I once. Yeah, she was like
Speaker 3: the Orange Juice spokeswoman who kind of single handedly started
Speaker 3: the anti gay movement in the seventies.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm pretty like into gayness's monstrosity. Like yeah, sure,
Speaker 2: So I'm like I have a vampire or whatever. You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, lots of gays, if not most enjoy a good
Speaker 3: horror movie.
Speaker 2: So I am. And so he's on trial. Most people
Speaker 2: are turning their backs on him. He had spoken up
Speaker 2: for the anarchists eight years prior, and the anarchists spoke
Speaker 2: up for him. The broader socialist movement hadn't really grappled
Speaker 2: with how they felt about homosexuality at this point, including
Speaker 2: the anarchist movement. They hadn't like just sat down and
Speaker 2: been like, what do we think about this? What's the
Speaker 2: party line? You know, at least not that I've ever
Speaker 2: been able to find. I've I've read a lot about
Speaker 2: their like grappling with like the woman issue and colonialism
Speaker 2: and things like that, right, but they hadn't like sat
Speaker 2: there and thought about homosexuality as a movement. And Oscar
Speaker 2: Wilde's trial brought pro homosexuality to the forefront of anarchist politics,
Speaker 2: and from there, as best as I can conjecture, it
Speaker 2: filtered out to the broader socialist left. At the time,
Speaker 2: the broader socialist left despised Oscar wild in this homosexuality. Also,
Speaker 2: they kept being mad at him for not being their
Speaker 2: style of socialist. You know, it's possible that if he
Speaker 2: had been a you know, Marxist, they the Marxist would
Speaker 2: have been like, we're suddenly fine with gays, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, that makes sense. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It was the anarchist press that kept his essays and
Speaker 2: plays in print after his fall from grace. I want
Speaker 2: to say among because I actually don't specifically know that
Speaker 2: no one else did, but I know a lot of
Speaker 2: specific examples when the anarchist press did when no one
Speaker 2: else would in various situations. It was one of the
Speaker 2: only places you could go to read about the trial
Speaker 2: and find things like people saying, hey, what if too
Speaker 2: consenting adults can do whatever the fuck they want? What
Speaker 2: the fuck is wrong with you? Even the homophobic anarchists
Speaker 2: writing were like, hey, did you know you can read
Speaker 2: portrait of Dorian Gray without like going out and touching
Speaker 2: panes with some guy, like just stop censoring shit, what
Speaker 2: the fuck is wrong with you?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And I like, I kind of love it when people
Speaker 2: who are like a little bit homophobic are like, well,
Speaker 2: my values are more important to me than how I
Speaker 2: have my own weird biases.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: But it did not save him, right, There was certainly
Speaker 2: not a ton of public outcry to defend him, and
Speaker 2: he went off to prison. Two years of hard labor
Speaker 2: is very different than going to prison regular. It's actually
Speaker 2: almostly a little bit like going to prison regular in
Speaker 2: the United States now, yeah, right, But like at the time.
Speaker 2: It was really really bad. It kills a lot of people,
Speaker 2: and it functionally kills him. They functionally gave him a
Speaker 2: death sentence. And what won't kill you or give you
Speaker 2: a death sentence unless you get the ad for becoming
Speaker 2: a jail or, which is a don't. When I say
Speaker 2: that we're sponsored by all ads, I mean except the
Speaker 2: one that says scope be it whatever. Here's ads. Everything's
Speaker 2: horrible and we're back. And if you're listening to this
Speaker 2: in prison while walking on a treadmill endlessly to grind
Speaker 2: wheat into flour, then you might be Oscar wild, because
Speaker 2: is that what it was? That's one of the things
Speaker 2: he had to do. Now, he had to walk on
Speaker 2: a treadmill to grind flower. It took me. Most of
Speaker 2: the sources I found just said like, walked on a treadmill,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, the fuck for why? Yeah? Yeah, but
Speaker 2: it really is still kind of just for work. Like
Speaker 2: he also had to scar his hands permanently to separate
Speaker 2: old naval ropes I think soaked in tar pitch or
Speaker 2: whatever into their individual threads. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 2: In the beginning of his time in prison, he was
Speaker 2: only allowed to read the Bible and some old Christian
Speaker 2: book called The Pilgrim's Progress. Eventually, a new warden arrived
Speaker 2: and he was offered more books, and he read all
Speaker 2: kinds of shit and all kinds of languages, especially read
Speaker 2: a lot of Dante, and he read a lot of
Speaker 2: theological texts, including this Catholic convert from Anglicanism named John
Speaker 2: Henry Newman, who wrote a bunch about how every religion,
Speaker 2: including like Heathen religions, contain truth. They contained revelation.
Speaker 3: That's cool.
Speaker 2: So he's reading like woke Catholic shit.
Speaker 3: Kind of like mysticism or something like that, Nalism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's not allowed to write while he's in jail,
Speaker 2: except letters, So he writes a fifty five thousand word letter.
Speaker 2: It's de bosy, but it's to everyone. It's a short novel. Basically,
Speaker 2: he had to write it one page at a time
Speaker 2: because as he finished each page, they'd take it away
Speaker 2: from him. Sometimes I think people guess, like analysts guess
Speaker 2: that he probably had about three pages at a time.
Speaker 2: Sometimes because of the way this sentences and are structured
Speaker 2: in it, it's a bit of a rambling autobiography as
Speaker 2: well as a spiritual Triestas, and later when it's out,
Speaker 2: a copy goes to Lord Alfred de Bosi, and a
Speaker 2: copy gets published as De Profundus, which is after five
Speaker 2: years after Oscar's death, and Deperfundus is a biblical reference,
Speaker 2: and it means from the depths, comes from Psalm one
Speaker 2: point thirty, from the depths, I have cried to you,
Speaker 2: oh Lord. So it's basically it's like, hey, I'm in prison, yeah,
Speaker 2: what it means, and it's a religious text in a way,
Speaker 2: he realizes. He talks about how he's realized that suffering
Speaker 2: is as important to his soul as the hedonism he'd appreciated.
Speaker 2: He wrote, quote, I wanted to eat of the fruit
Speaker 2: of all the trees in the garden of the world,
Speaker 2: and so indeed I went out, and so I lived.
Speaker 2: My only mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively
Speaker 2: to the trees of what seemed to me to be
Speaker 2: the sunlit side of the garden, and shunned the other
Speaker 2: side for its shadow and its gloom. He also wrote,
Speaker 2: there is not a single wretched man in this wretched
Speaker 2: place along with me who does not stand in symbolic
Speaker 2: relation to the very secret of life. For the secret
Speaker 2: of life is suffering. It is what is hidden behind
Speaker 2: everything when we begin to live. What is sweet is
Speaker 2: so sweet to us, and what is bitter so bitter
Speaker 2: that we inevitably direct all our desires towards pleasures, and
Speaker 2: seek not merely for a month or twain to feed
Speaker 2: on honeycomb, but for all our years to taste no
Speaker 2: other food, ignorant all the while that we may really
Speaker 2: be starving the soul.
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, he was a good writer. I know, he
Speaker 3: was a tremendously good writer.
Speaker 2: No Ah. And so he's not saying I shouldn't have
Speaker 2: done the joy sex stuff. He's saying everything has this value,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Wow. Do you think then that he like did
Speaker 3: feel the criticisms that were leveled against him for being
Speaker 3: kind of like a frivolous person, or do you think
Speaker 3: that like he I'm just interested because that quote is
Speaker 3: just like what do you think that he meant exactly
Speaker 3: when he was saying that? Like, do you think it
Speaker 3: was reflective of his life?
Speaker 2: So I haven't read every I haven't read all the profundus.
Speaker 2: I actually read his very long poem immediately after that
Speaker 2: is the main thing I read about it. But I
Speaker 2: get the impression that he does regret like some of
Speaker 2: the ways in which he was frivolous, right, but he
Speaker 2: doesn't regret the like core of it. He stays Antinomian.
Speaker 2: He stays believing that, you know, you don't have to
Speaker 2: ascribe to a specific moral path in order to reach heaven.
Speaker 2: Yeah whatever, right. Yeah. So it's like it's it's hard
Speaker 2: because it's like there is regret, but then it's like
Speaker 2: like a spoiler, he's going to convert to Catholicism on
Speaker 2: his deathbed, and so there's like Catholic articles that are
Speaker 2: like and then he's sorry about being gay, and I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm not a no, it just meant something very different
Speaker 2: at that time, you know.
Speaker 3: And Catholicism just fits so well with his sort of
Speaker 3: decadence as well, like image like images, and yeah, it's
Speaker 3: just it's it's bloody, it's golden, it's you know, things
Speaker 3: he likes velvety.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a quote I Am about Catholicism from way
Speaker 2: Younger that's at the end of this script.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's I think he's like he's like sorry,
Speaker 2: he's not sorry, you know. Yeah. Yeah, and prison fucks
Speaker 2: him up. Physically. The food is terrible. Everyone is constantly sick,
Speaker 2: like everyone's dye area constantly. He collapsed from exhaustion one
Speaker 2: day and he ruptured his ear drum and this later
Speaker 2: kills him. He's transferred to another prison, which is reading jail,
Speaker 2: which should be pronounced reading gayel because I'm an American
Speaker 2: and I will never get over how the British spell
Speaker 2: the word jail?
Speaker 3: Is it with a G?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Gaol laird?
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, all right, yeah?
Speaker 2: How did they conquer the world? I don't even notice?
Speaker 2: Right in English? And while he's not impressed, And at
Speaker 2: one point while he's being transferred, he's underguard on the
Speaker 2: train platform and a crowd forms around him and like
Speaker 2: spits on him and jeers him, and this is like
Speaker 2: presented as the worst, the lowest time of his prison,
Speaker 2: even though obviously the like time and you know whatever,
Speaker 2: it sucks, it's bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In Reading, he no longer like they don't call him
Speaker 2: by his name anymore. He is only C three three.
Speaker 2: He is on the third floor of the third cell
Speaker 2: of the Sea Ward and his mother dies while he's
Speaker 2: in prison. She appeals to be able to see her
Speaker 2: son one last time, and this is denied. His wife
Speaker 2: changes her last name and moves to Switzerland and takes
Speaker 2: their kids with her. He never sees his children again.
Speaker 2: He's forced to declare bankruptcy while he's in prison, and
Speaker 2: I believe that they're confiscating his copyrights as well as
Speaker 2: his belongings. In eighteen ninety seven, he's released penniless and
Speaker 2: he gets the fuck out of England and he does
Speaker 2: what he should have done ten fucking years earlier, and
Speaker 2: he goes to France. He never goes back to England.
Speaker 2: He spends the last three years of his life in Paris,
Speaker 2: living under a pseudonym, Sebastian Melmouth, which is a combination
Speaker 2: of Saint Sebastian, the one who likes getting stabbed and stuff.
Speaker 2: The mask is Saint and then Melmoth, the Wanderer from
Speaker 2: his uncle's book.
Speaker 3: It's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know it's a good name. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 2: pretty transmasque name. But if anyone's looking for a new
Speaker 2: trans mask name.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2: It's a fast and Melmouth it's right there for you.
Speaker 2: Although I'll do my follow up Oscar Wild as an
Speaker 2: egg trans woman episode one day, but yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 2: pure conjecture and or you know. So at this point
Speaker 2: he's out of prison. His primary contributions to society are
Speaker 2: to write long letters about the need for penal reform
Speaker 2: and to write a poem. One of his most famous
Speaker 2: called the Ballad of Reading Jail, or as I like
Speaker 2: to say, the Ballad of Reading Gail. It's really good,
Speaker 2: it's very long, it's worth reading. It's very like rimy, right.
Speaker 3: I think you only ever really wrote poems in rhyme.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just style at the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, there wasn't a lot of like lyricism.
Speaker 2: Yet I was born in the twentieth century. All poetry,
Speaker 2: it should be free for him. I don't understand all
Speaker 2: of the writing, but I know it's really good and
Speaker 2: it's really interesting. He can't get it published under his name,
Speaker 2: right because no one will touch it. But he's really good,
Speaker 2: So it gets published under the name C. Three three,
Speaker 2: his jail name. Wow, no one in America will touch
Speaker 2: it at all until the anarchist press is like, all right,
Speaker 2: well we'll publish it, which worked really well for the
Speaker 2: anarchist press, and I think they actually were like I
Speaker 2: think they put his name on it. By the seventh
Speaker 2: printing in because it keeps selling out and they keep
Speaker 2: printing more. It does really well. And it's a moral
Speaker 2: panic too, which is funny because it is the most
Speaker 2: like Christian socialist thing you'll read. It is a it
Speaker 2: makes you sympathize with a criminal. It is about watching
Speaker 2: a man get hanged who killed his wife. It is
Speaker 2: about a man who is not a good man being killed,
Speaker 2: and it makes you hate the prison system. Yeah, this
Speaker 2: just really I don't know, I found it very moving. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and people are like, ah, it's terrible, it's immoral. It
Speaker 2: makes you sympathize with the criminal. And then like some
Speaker 2: people were like even like as they were to cry
Speaker 2: and it, they were like, it's forcing you to have
Speaker 2: really high Christian ethics and like it just broke every Yeah,
Speaker 2: it just broke everyone's brains. Yeah. His wife was said
Speaker 2: in about like I think five pounds a week, which
Speaker 2: does not translate to a lot in modern money, and
Speaker 2: that says like allowance basically, and that's what he's living
Speaker 2: off of. And then he gets the royalties from that poem.
Speaker 2: And he missed his children every day he talked about
Speaker 2: and Robert Ross, Robbie Ross, his lifelong friend, joined him
Speaker 2: in Paris, or I think was maybe already in Paris honestly,
Speaker 2: but moves in with him, and after a few years,
Speaker 2: Oscar's health declines. His ruptured ear drum gets infected, which
Speaker 2: leads to meningitis, which is going to kill him. He
Speaker 2: died in Paris on November thirtieth, nineteen hundred, at forty
Speaker 2: six years old. On his deathbed in a rundown hotel,
Speaker 2: he converted to Catholicism, and his quote that he had
Speaker 2: once said a long time because he tried to convert
Speaker 2: Cathosism a long time ago, and his dad was like,
Speaker 2: fuck you. You know he had once said, the Catholic Church
Speaker 2: is for saints and sinners alone, for respectable people. The
Speaker 2: Anglican Church will do. This is not extra enough, like
Speaker 2: what you're saying, like like you know, the Catholic Church.
Speaker 2: He gets a drink blood and like be amenable, like cooler,
Speaker 2: like carry around skulls.
Speaker 3: Who was with him, was like did he have a
Speaker 3: priest there with him or something? Or how do we know?
Speaker 2: He? Yeah, so Robbie Ross went and got a priest
Speaker 2: who came over and he's like in and out of consciousness,
Speaker 2: but he's able to indicate the priest is like, all right,
Speaker 2: you're doing this, and he like kind of raises his
Speaker 2: hand feebly. Sure, there doesn't seem to be contention around this.
Speaker 3: Okay, because it makes me almost think and this is
Speaker 3: like such a weird example, but like Ted Bundy converting
Speaker 3: to Christianity at the end and then blaming everything on pornography,
Speaker 3: and that was like a manipulating thing, yeah, to like,
Speaker 3: you know, support a right wing agenda. So I was
Speaker 3: just curious if there was any possibility right that like
Speaker 3: this priest had an agenda or something. But sounds like
Speaker 3: it's not, like you said, it's not argued about too much.
Speaker 2: That's the best guess I have. There are a lot
Speaker 2: of people who are like and he was sorry for
Speaker 2: being gay, and I'm like, I'm not finding a lot
Speaker 2: of evidence I'm sorry for being gay. But it is possible.
Speaker 2: It is possible that this is like I might be
Speaker 2: reading it the way that I want to, because he
Speaker 2: talks about being Antonomian. He you know, to the end
Speaker 2: of his days he talks about like I feel like
Speaker 2: I get a sense of like, oh, yeah, of course
Speaker 2: he ended up Catholic. This is the shitt he's writing
Speaker 2: rather than like he fits neatly into the tradcaf assumption
Speaker 2: of now you know.
Speaker 3: And going to prison too famously makes folks more religious
Speaker 3: because you have to have hope in something, and so
Speaker 3: it makes sense that maybe he found and he was
Speaker 3: also being given almost only religious or theological.
Speaker 2: Text that was actually what he was asking for. The
Speaker 2: at first, he's stuck with the Bible and the progress.
Speaker 2: Although I don't know if they would have brought him
Speaker 2: like actually know, because they also did bring him William
Speaker 2: Peter Books. Yeah, no, I don't know they would have
Speaker 2: given him porn. Yeah, well there's some porn in the Bible, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's true, there is, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, yeah. It's it's interesting to be because it's
Speaker 2: like every read of Oscar Wilde like picks one thing
Speaker 2: and it's like Oscar Wilde, the Catholic, Oscar wild the irishman,
Speaker 2: Oscar wild the anarchist, Oscar wild the meaningless, witty guy,
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, and you're like, he can just be
Speaker 2: all those things, and they're things that people want to
Speaker 2: claim are paradoxical and often can be and are presented
Speaker 2: as paradoxical. But for me, it just seems like he
Speaker 2: threaded that needle, you know well, and like, who who.
Speaker 3: Is not paradoxical? It's so weird to think that, No,
Speaker 3: like you can't be a paradoxical person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I totally feel like I am. I don't know.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And his last witticism that apparently he used on like
Speaker 2: everyone who came to visit him on his deathbed was
Speaker 2: this wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death.
Speaker 2: Either it goes or I do. It is such a
Speaker 2: template for this sassk man. It's just incredible. And Robbie
Speaker 2: Ross was with him as he died, as was the
Speaker 2: priest Emma Goldman, I promise you. And Emma Goldman quote
Speaker 2: about him, who herself is quite quotable. She said about him,
Speaker 2: while society forgives the criminal, it never forgives the dreamer.
Speaker 3: Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And one of his sons, Cyril, is killed by a
Speaker 2: German sniper in nineteen fifteen in World War One. His
Speaker 2: daughter Dorothy took after him most directly. She became a
Speaker 2: witty conversationalist and was an out lesbian.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: That's so nice.
Speaker 3: It feels like he gets to live on in some
Speaker 3: way in a different time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. And that's one of the stories about Oscar Wild.
Speaker 2: There's a thousand stories that can be told. I want
Speaker 2: to shout out that. If you want to learn more
Speaker 2: specifically about how he related to homosexuality, there's a two
Speaker 2: parter from a few years ago by the podcast Queer's
Speaker 2: Fact that Cool is Real worth listening to. Yeah, that's wow.
Speaker 2: Oscar Wild the very different than I thought he would
Speaker 2: be when I started off reading.
Speaker 3: No, I had no idea about probably eighty percent of
Speaker 3: what you've still be here today. I just never thought
Speaker 3: of Oscar Wild as a political person really in any way,
Speaker 3: almost anti political right. So that's and do you think
Speaker 3: that there's any like reason that he's been painted that
Speaker 3: way and been like almost like it just feels like
Speaker 3: the revolutionary side of him has been like cleaned away
Speaker 3: and almost like him because in my mind he was
Speaker 3: like a decadent, kind of almost out of touch, yeah,
Speaker 3: rich person who happened to be a beautiful writer and
Speaker 3: have like, you know, a huge skill with language. But
Speaker 3: I never thought of him as a radical, yeah, really
Speaker 3: in any way.
Speaker 2: Well, at one point I forgot to ended up in
Speaker 2: a script at one point eighteen ninety two, this like
Speaker 2: this anarchist poet is having a mental breakdown, I think,
Speaker 2: and takes like potshots at the House of Commons, just
Speaker 2: like shoots at the wall or whatever. Oscar Wild pays
Speaker 2: his bail and writes a letter to him and is like,
Speaker 2: of course I support you, like everything is like everything
Speaker 2: but saying comrade doesn't say comrade, but it's like, h
Speaker 2: of course I support you. Like us dreamers have to
Speaker 2: stick together, you know. I have found that there's certain
Speaker 2: things that people like not talking about in historical figures,
Speaker 2: and one of them is gayness. And you can't do
Speaker 2: it to Oscar Wild, who people actually try by specifically
Speaker 2: trying to pain him as a pedophile instead of.
Speaker 3: A gaming Oh yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: And one of the other things that people try to
Speaker 2: write out of history is political positions, especially anarchism, because
Speaker 2: anarchism is like it's a harder sell to more people,
Speaker 2: and there are more political positions that specifically. This is
Speaker 2: most conspiracytorial i'll probably ever be, but stay communists and
Speaker 2: capitalists both have a vested interest in having people not
Speaker 2: know about anarchist history. I find that, like it's funny
Speaker 2: because like social democrats don't have as much of that
Speaker 2: and you'll like see more earnest actually talking about anarchism
Speaker 2: within like social democrat circles. This is my experience of this.
Speaker 2: So I think that it's a combination. It's also that
Speaker 2: people don't want to talk about. They want asceticism to
Speaker 2: be completely vapid and frivolous and don't want to address.
Speaker 2: And I even thought that I went to art school
Speaker 2: for two years and I hated it and I hated
Speaker 2: people walk around me like our for art sake, and
Speaker 2: I'm like fuck that, Like yeah, you know, but then
Speaker 2: once you understand it as like, well, shouldn't we live
Speaker 2: beautiful lives? Yeah, shouldn't we seek to make the spaces
Speaker 2: that we are in esthetically pleasing? You know, It's like
Speaker 2: saying interior design matters, and not that interior design needs
Speaker 2: to be covered in political posters. But then instead interior
Speaker 2: design like helps us live beautiful lives and be our
Speaker 2: best selves. And so I think that it's just that
Speaker 2: people don't want meaning out of him, you know, they
Speaker 2: want well.
Speaker 3: And I guess there's like a big difference between like
Speaker 3: the aesthetics of like decadence, meaning like that comes out
Speaker 3: of richness versus like you said, I think we said
Speaker 3: in part one about like planting wildflowers outside. That's still
Speaker 3: like they're they're in service of the same like internal
Speaker 3: transformation that happens when you witness beauty, because that it's
Speaker 3: a it's a transformational act that I think teaches empathy.
Speaker 3: Like experiencing beauty is something that encourages empathy. And it
Speaker 3: doesn't have to have anything to do with material things.
Speaker 3: It just has to do with like, I mean, it
Speaker 3: does have to do with material things, but you know
Speaker 3: what I mean, it doesn't there's no caliber of material
Speaker 3: thing that is beautiful by virtue of it being that way, right,
Speaker 3: It's like you can have, you know, you can have
Speaker 3: a mansion that's ugly as fuck, you know, like, and
Speaker 3: you can have like a space that you've made beautiful
Speaker 3: without any real wealth, you know. So yeah, I think
Speaker 3: that it's easy to think that beauty is some sort
Speaker 3: of an elite concept, but it really isn't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's funny because because one of the things
Speaker 2: he talks about sometimes is he talks about how one
Speaker 2: of the reasons that we have to end poverty is
Speaker 2: so that people can create and so that they don't
Speaker 2: have to spend all of their hours working, you know,
Speaker 2: so that they can create. Like he was very he
Speaker 2: was also he was also I didn't even put in
Speaker 2: he's totally fully luxuriated, fully automated, luxury space communism. He
Speaker 2: is like, we'll get the machines to do the work
Speaker 2: so that we can make the art. And of course
Speaker 2: now we live in a horrible nightmare in version of
Speaker 2: that where the machines are coming for the art and
Speaker 2: not the right word, right. But yeah, no, I just
Speaker 2: like I like him so much more than I I
Speaker 2: was like always cool, you know, Like, but I'm like, no, yeah,
Speaker 2: like socialism for art's sake, not art for socialism's sake.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm on board.
Speaker 3: I get it. I like it. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2: Well, that's that's fantastic.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for telling me all of this.
Speaker 3: I really like, I feel, I don't know, it's really
Speaker 3: it's making me rethink so much about my life because
Speaker 3: I've just I've loved Oscar Wilde and in such a
Speaker 3: you know, it's just such a specific way, and you know,
Speaker 3: it really does Like I think of his grave, you know,
Speaker 3: which is such a such a beautiful image for anyone
Speaker 3: who doesn't know, you know, like he had I believe
Speaker 3: like a marble tombstone would do you remember what it says.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's a quote from Deperfundus, but I don't remember
Speaker 2: what it is, right, or maybe it's a quote from
Speaker 2: the Ballad of Reading Jail.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's something. But people for years and years and
Speaker 3: years would like put on lipstick and leave lipstick kisses
Speaker 3: on the grave and it was just really lovely. And
Speaker 3: I think a few years ago they finally like put
Speaker 3: a horrible plastic barrier all around it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which I think people still kiss.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you got to, yeah, because he would just love that.
Speaker 3: They'll kiss Oscar Wilde's grave if you can jump the barrier.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: No. Oh.
Speaker 2: And then the person Robbie was the person who got
Speaker 2: the funeral arrangements and stuff in order, and I think
Speaker 2: was behind the At first, I think he was. It
Speaker 2: was a very poor grave, and then eventually enough money
Speaker 2: and enough people came together for it, like eventually people
Speaker 2: stop being so mad at him or whatever, you know.
Speaker 2: But he had it a little like there's like a
Speaker 2: slot in it for his own ashes, and so he
Speaker 2: had his ashes put in Oscar wild scra So.
Speaker 3: It was Oscar, Robbie and Bosie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Bosie. They actually did reconnect after they reconnected. Really,
Speaker 2: everyone's like, please, don't fucking meet up with Bosie, and
Speaker 2: they like meet up.
Speaker 3: We know that friend of ours. We're like, don't go
Speaker 3: yeah and see them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they actually did meet up again a little bit,
Speaker 2: but they they went their separate ways.
Speaker 3: Like, rob are they not get buried by each other?
Speaker 2: Oh? Is he buried by them?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 3: I thought you who who was buried next to?
Speaker 2: So Robbie Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, Robbie has got the
Speaker 2: cremation there. Yeah no, I think I did say buried
Speaker 2: next to earlier and that's not technically that's still very sweet,
Speaker 2: yeah no, And I love it too because it's like, well,
Speaker 2: these are the people that we come from, Like Dandy's
Speaker 2: are stronger than we like like thinking about like I
Speaker 2: mean like queen culture, right is like people who have
Speaker 2: hard life. I love the idea that someone sees like
Speaker 2: I'm making air quotes here an audience can't see, but
Speaker 2: like a man walking down the street dressed like a
Speaker 2: woman and thinks there's someone who's afraid, you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: like seriously, we come from stern stuff. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean we still can't be beautiful and soft
Speaker 2: and plant flowers everywhere and be limp wristed and lounge
Speaker 2: around on Shay's lounges. It's just sometimes you have to
Speaker 2: beat up four men at once and then rob them
Speaker 2: for their liquor.
Speaker 3: And slap the shit out of the school bully, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, well, thank you so much for being
Speaker 2: the guest. If people want to hear more of what
Speaker 2: you have to say, where can they do that?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can find my podcast, American Hysteria pretty much
Speaker 3: anywhere that you listen to podcasts, and you can find
Speaker 3: me on social media at American Hysteria podcast too.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, yeah, I'll plug. It's been a while at
Speaker 2: this point, but I finally finished Raw Dog by Jamie
Speaker 2: Loftus and it's real good. I listened to the audio.
Speaker 2: Looks great and good, and I love having conversations where
Speaker 2: speaking of something that gets presented as surface. You know,
Speaker 2: it's a book about the history of hot dogs and
Speaker 2: which hot dogs are best in America. It is also
Speaker 2: a incredibly radical book and has all kinds of value
Speaker 2: besides it, So I will shout out that you should
Speaker 2: go listen to raw Dog by Jamie Loftis or I
Speaker 2: guess read We'll.
Speaker 3: Say too that. If you want more Jamie Loftus hot
Speaker 3: dog content, I told Jamie a bunch of hot dog
Speaker 3: related urban legends on American Hysterio ones and that was
Speaker 3: a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: Oh shit, I'm going to listen to that, Sophie. You
Speaker 2: guys think the plug.
Speaker 1: Listen to all the podcasts I've made with Jamie loft Disk.
Speaker 3: I guess we're just doing a Jamie plug.
Speaker 2: Yeah me, the new Oscar Wild Oh oh, if anyone
Speaker 2: I can think of them immediately anyway, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, little bit, that's the podcast.
Speaker 2: See everyone next week.
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