Oscar Wilde Loved My Mother

Abstract

And Oscar Wilde; what shall I say, when so many have spoken? Frank Harris’s picture of him¹ is, in my opinion, perfectly true, but there are gaps in the story, and those gaps could be filled up by Bedford Square.² I wonder if Harris knew that Wilde was in love with my mother, and that he had been fool enough to tell her so, and that she first laughed at him, afterwards ordering him from the house, and that all that night he lay on the doorstep to sleep. Even I, as a child, knew that Wilde was what he was, and that his main source of income was by cadging and scrounging from his friends, who hoped to recoup their donations by securing some of his possible future work, which work only materialized in small, insufficient quantities. Any work that did materialize was sold many times to different people, and many times Wilde should have been in prison for offences in addition to those he committed and for which he suffered. He worked when he came out of Reading Gaol, but gradually fell off work, due solely to being unable to obtain any further advances from my father, who at last insisted on work being delivered before payment.

The Early Life & Vicissitudes of Jack Smithers (London: Martin Secker, 1939) pp. 18–23. Editor’s. title.