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When Wilde learned whom he would face in court, he replied in
typical Wildean fashion: "No doubt he will pursue his case with
the added bitterness of an old friend."
Returning from a holiday on the continent, Wilde was met by his
family and friends, who urged him for the last time to drop the
charges. They pointed out that if he should lose, the Crown would
have no choice but to charge him with gross indecency under the
Criminal Law Amendment Act.
"Who are you to set back the clock 50 years?" asked his
friend Frank Harris. "You haven't a dog's chance."
But Bosie laid down an ultimatum. It's them or me, he told Wilde,
storming out of the meeting. Suddenly realizing the enormous stakes,
Wilde could only shrug and say it was too late to go back.
On April 3, 1895, the trial opened in London. It was a celebrated
affair, for the men involved were of highest English society and the
testimony promised to be as entertaining as any of the fictions
Wilde had written.
Sir Edward Clarke opened the trial. In journeyman style he laid
out the history of the relationship among Wilde, Bosie and
Queensberry. He sought to dull the shock of the flowery language in
the letters Wilde wrote to Lord Alfred by introducing them himself,
rather than giving Carson the advantage.
"The words of that letter, gentlemen, may appear extravagant
to those in the habit of writing commercial correspondence, or those
ordinary letters which the necessities of life force upon one every
day" Clarke said. "But Mr. Wilde is a poet, and the letter
is considered by him as a prose sonnet, and one of which he is in no
way ashamed and is prepared to produce anywhere as the expression of
true poetic feeling, and with no relation whatever to the hateful
and repulsive suggestions put to it in the plea in this case."
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