Benjamin Tucker on Oscar Wilde

THE MOORFIELD STOREY INSTITUTEMERCREDI 7 DCEMBRE 2016

In 1895, libertarian Benjamin Tucker, editor of Liberty newspaper,

published a short comment on the trial of Oscar Wilde for gross
indecency. Tucker set off a debate among the various anarchists who
read his publication and not all of them were favorably disposed
toward homosexuality. Here is Tuckers original essay. The footnotes
we added to explain some of the context of Tuckers article. Liberty
writer E.B. Foote, Jr was outraged and sent a reply to Tucker, which we
include, followed by Tuckers reply to Foote.

Stewart D. Headlam

The Fabian Daily Chronicle of London(1), organ of a brutal political

philosophy, has consistently outdone even the Philistine press in its
brutal treatment of Oscar Wilde. But Rev. Stewart D. Headlam(2),
editor of the London Church Reformer, whom economic error still holds
in semi-bondage to the same brutal philosophy, has been led, by his
natural love of liberty and his sympathy with the persecuted, into the
magnificent inconsistency of becoming Oscar Wilde's surety. Just as Mr.
Headlam scored his consistent fellow-Socialist, John Burns(3), for his
tyrannical treatment of the London music halls, so he befriends this
later victim of a still more cruel tyranny. And even bolder and more
admirable than Mr. Headlam is one of his contributors, Mr. Selwyn
Image(4), or whose following words, reprinted from the Church
Reformer, Liberty offers him heartiest thanks:

The law of the land has found Mr. Wilde guilty of the charges laid
against him, and has condemned him to two years' imprisonment with
hard labor. Some of our papers have clapped their hands over that, and
shouted: Thank heaven, a scoundrel has got his due! " Some of our
papers, with greater delicacy and justice, have felt the tragedy of the
situation, and exclaimed: "How terrible a fate! here closes forever the
career of a man whose promise was so brilliant."

Liberty

For the former papers I have no expressions of scorn contemptuous

enough; for the latter, I can understand their view and appreciate their
spirit. But both those and these are wrong. During the past days of his
overwhelming trouble I have come to know Mr. Wilde far better than I
ever knew him before; and I have no hesitation in saying that,
whatever in past days may have been his weaknesses, or follies, or
sins, he has behaved in the hour of trial with a courage and generosity
of spirit which I fear few of us under similar circumstances would have
been virile and self-sacrificing enough to exhibit. As regards his future,
so far from being in despair, I am full of hope. My acquaintance is not
altogether a small one, nor an unrepresentative one: and I know that
there are men and women amongst them, thank God, true enough to
champion his name and memory during the months that he is
undergoing his imprisonment, and ready, when that imprisonment is
over, to welcome him as their friend, and to help him to recover his
spirit and to do good work for the world. I do not believe for an instant
that Mr. Wilde's career is over: I rather believe that, if his health lasts
out under the sentence imposed upon him, he has far better work to
do than he has ever done, and a far better audience awaiting him to
appeal to. And if in any way my friendship and services may be in
some measure of use in helping him to this end, I shall esteem it as
one of the privileges and honors of my life.

Good as this is, there is still something to be added,namely, that the

imprisonment of Oscar Wilde is an outrage that shows how thoroughly
the doctrine of liberty is misconceived. A man who has done nothing in
the least degree invasive of any one; a man whose entire life, so far as
known or charged, has been one of strict conformity with the idea of
equal liberty; a man whose sole offence is that he has done something
which most of the rest of us (at least such is the presumption) prefer
not to do,is condemned to spend two years in cruel imprisonment at
hard labor. And the judge who condemned him made the assertion in
court that this was the most heinous crime that had ever come before
him. I never expected to hear the statement of the senior Henry James,
uttered half in jest, that "it is more justifiable to hang a man for spitting
in a street-car than for committing murder" substantially repeated in
earnest (or else in hypocrisy) from an English bench. Whatever Mr.
Arthur Kitson may think of the need of standard of value in finance, he
surely will admit, after this judicial utterance and sentence, that we are
sadly in need of a standard of value (or its opposite) in crime. Men who
imprison a man who has committed no crime are themselves criminals.
LIBERTY RUN WILDE by E.B. Foote, Jr. To the Editor of Liberty:

Your editorial on The Criminal Jailers of Oscar Wilde denounces his

imprisonment as an outrage that shows how thoroughly the doctrine of
liberty is misconstrued. Following this, you speak of his sole offence as
a matter which concerned himself only. If so, I got a very wrong view of
the case in court, and what he was tried for. As I understand it, he was
not tried and convicted on any charge of committing an unnatural
crime, but on the charge of seducing others to his evil ways. One who
may deprecate any interference with the liberty of a woman to dispose
of her person as she chooses, for love or money, might nevertheless
advocate criminal prosecution of a procuress, especially one who
sought new victims among the very young.

This is the crime of Oscar Wilde, as I see it, and for which he is now
serving his term of two years, unless I am much mistaken. He
confesses to being greatly attracted to youth, though denying any such
serious accusation as he was indicted for; but one who has any
knowledge of men of his class knows well that one of their worst points
is the disposition to seek out and make new victims of promising youth.
This is made evident in their own confessions as quoted in Kraft-
Ebings Psychopathia Sexualis. In it a long chapter is given to urnings
(5), a study of their peculiarities and how they come to be. Some
almost seem to be proud of their perversity, and as anxious to make
converts as the advocates of the most innocent fads or fancies. In the
story of The Picture of Dorian Grey, by Wilde himself, the same
propensity forms a large element of the story, and offers a valuable
moral lesson as to the danger of evil associations that corrupt good
manners, while it further shows that the hero becomes utterly lost to
all propriety and morality, and suicides at last as a complete physical
and moral wreck. One who reads that story since the fall of Wilde can
hardly escape the belief that it is largely autobiographical and so
thinking could even wish his sentence were twenty, instead of two,
years.

Rev. Mr. Headlam hopes Wilde may yet recover his spirit and do good
work for the world. To me this seems incrediblehopeless. If Wilde be
not a victim of incurable insanity, his record must bar the way to any
reform. One can no more reasonably hope for reform and useful life in
him than in Dorian Grey after he had slain his friend and victim. The
story carried him along to the only possible end of such a life,self
obliteration.

If the logic of equal liberty and personal freedom can sanction keeping
hands off from such as Wilde and Taylor so long as they revel only in
their own debasement, it can hardly justify the let-alone policy when
they set up shop to increase the cult of this sort of sthetic culture; for
they are not at all satisfied to find each other out (among the perverts
of the same taste), but they are hell bent on discovering fresh, virile,
healthy, vigorous, and unsophisticated young men of whom to make
victims for vampires. You may say that youth should be so instructed
and trained as to be safe against the wily, seductive attractions of
even such glittering geniuses as that of Wilde, and so say I; but, if
State interference is permissible anywhere, it is against this vicious
invasion of the family, which lures to destruction the finest specimens
of manhood; and if the State have no function in this matter, it will also
have to let alone the marquis who uses a gun against his sons uncle.
As to this particular son, very likely you can fairly retort that he was old
enough to mind his own business, including his most private affairs,
but men of the Taylor-Wilde type dont recognize any youthful age limit,
and boys are their constant prey.

Those who admit any sphere for the State will also find good reason for
its laying a curbing and confining hand on urnings, as upon insane of
any dangerous kind. Heredity is admittedly a large factor in their
production, and, contrary to what might be expected of such perverts,
they are prone to marry and beget. So one of Wildes greatest sins
against his race was the fathering of some boys who look like him,
paralleled only by his second crime against them of so conducting
himself as to give them a public stamp of opprobrium. If such perverts
would have sense and decency enough to avoid propagating their kind
and abstain from attempting to drag down the children of other
families to their own unfortunate level, the rest of mankind might well
be content to keep hands off, let them live out their lives, and enjoy
the equal liberty of the pursuit of happiness in their own way,in
short, let the dead bury their dead. But they cant and wont keep to
themselves, and so a fewtoo fewget their deserts.

Our own late example is simply another evidence of what I say. Dr.
Tonner gets two and a half years, not for any vice peculiar to himself
and his own individual liberty, but for being caught in the attempt to
inveigle another, and to procure a fresh victim for his patrons, or
patron for his bagnio. The judge who sentenced him said, if he had any
friends in the medical profession, they should institute an examation as
to his sanity. Whatever the decision of experts may be as to the sanity
or insanity of such men, the best place for them, perhaps even for their
own sake, and certainly for the rest of society, is either in prison or an
insane asylum.

Should this letter draw your fire, I hope you will not stop short of
instructing your class in liberty as to what would be done, under
liberty, with the varied assortment of sexual perverts who make a
nuisance of themselves to more decent folks, from the librarian, aged
fifty-one, just caught in Prospect Park trying to seduce little girls to the
ways of prostitutes, to Jack-the-Ripper, who no doubt found a similar
satisfaction in his murderous acts.

A Reply to Foote by Benjamin Tucker

It is not agreeable to pass harsh judgment upon opinions uttered by a

friend, especially so good a friend of Liberty and its editor as Dr. E.B.
Foote, Jr., has been and is; but, since he forces upon my notice his view
of the States attitude toward Oscar Wilde, I do not see that I can well
avoid the necessity of saying that the letter from him which is printed
in another column seems to me the most intolerant, fanatical, and
altogether barbarous utterance that has come from a professed ultra-
liberal since I have engaged in reformatory work. Even were the claim
made out that Oscar Wilde has been guilty of invasive conduct, the
mere expression of the wish that he spend twenty years, instead of
two, at treadmill service or at oakum picking, would still betray such an
inability to distinguish between the varying degrees of interference
with liberty as is generally due to the fanatics hatred of sin rather than
to the sane mans desire to protect against crime. To exhibit ferocity in
this degree a man must be ready to punish for indirectly and
theoretically harmful consequences as was the Catholic Church when it
burned men at the stake for what it considered the most pernicious of
practices,the teaching of heresy.

Vyvyan Holland, Oscar's son

But the claim of invasive conduct is not made out. In the first place, I
believe Dr. Foote to be entirely mistaken in his conception or the crime
or which Wilde was convicted. I have nowhere seen it stated that he
was tried for "seducing others to his evil ways." It is true that the
absurdly squeamish public opinion which was forced upon a press that
usually shrinks from filth only when it sees no money in it, a certain
degree of circumspection in its accounts or this affair has left us all a
good deal in the dark, not only as to the seduction, but as to the "evil
ways" themselves. Still it is my understanding that Wilde was found
guilty of illegal practices, not of inducing others to participate in them.
This view is born out by the remark of the foreman of the jury, made in
the court-room, that, if Wilde was guilty of the charge preferred against
him, then Lord Alfred Douglas was guilt also.

Such a remark conveys the idea that the charge was not seduction, for
the law does not consider mutual seduction a possibility in such a case.
If any of my English comrades can inform me definitely what the
charge was, I would be glad to have him do so. Meanwhile, unless Dr.
Foote can show that the charge was seduction, I adhere to my view
that seduction did not enter into the case, even legally; and, if this be
so, then Dr. Footes entire argument falls to the ground. For he seems
to admit, though with numerous ifs and buts an evident reluctance
that is significant of the authoritarian spirit within him, that mature and
responsible persons who simply "revel in their own debasement " are
entitled to be let alone.

In the second place, supposing the charge to have been seduction and
the facts to have been as claimed by the prosecution, the indictment,
in a court of equal liberty instead of ordinary law, would have been
promptly dismissed on the ground that the alleged victims (not only
Lord Douglas, but the others) were themselves mature and responsible
persons and, as such, incapable of any seduction of which justice can
properly take cognizance. Will Dr. Foote maintain that there is anything
sacred and God-appointed about the age of twenty-one which certain
men have undertaken to fix as the age of maturity and responsibility?
In the eyes of an Anarchist every person is mature and responsible who
can assert and maintain his self-sovereignty. Every such person has a
right to do as he chooses, provided his conduct is non-invasive; and no
one can rightfully be punished for persuading such a person to perform
an act not in itself invasive and punishable. All of Oscar Wilde's
associates, so far as known, were in this sense mature and responsible,
and therefore it is entirely unjust to charge him with seducing them. Dr.
Foote, in treating these persons as irresponsible minors, is simply
paralleling the absurd and outrageous agitation of the "Arena" people
for a high-age-of-consent regime. He desires to force upon boys, as
they desire to force upon girls, a condition of infancy unnaturally
prolonged,and with even less excuse, because under present
conditions boys are able to assert and maintain their self-sovereignty
at an earlier age than girls. This being the diagnosis of Dr. Foote's case,
I am not the proper party to attend to it. I commend him to the
attention of Mrs. Lillian Harman.

Dr. Foote is not an Anarchist, and has never claimed to be one; though
not adhering consistently to any political philosophy, for some years he
has seemed to me State Socialistic in his tendencies. But I did suppose
that he had arrived at a degree of understanding of what Anarchism
means. I now see, however, that equal liberty is a complete mystery to
him. This is shown conclusively by the following sentence:" If the State
have no function in this matter, it will also have to let alone the
marquis who uses a gun against his son's 'uncle."' It is obvious that Dr.
Foote here uses the word State not in accordance with the Anarchistic
definition, but as covering voluntary association for defence; and his
declaration, then, is that, if associated citizens may not punish Oscar
Wilde, then the Marquis of Queensberry may. Now, it directly follows
from the doctrine of equal liberty that what one individual may
rightfully do a number of individuals voluntarily associated may
rightfully do, and, conversely, that whatever such associated
individuals may not rightfully do, no one of them may rightfully do.
Applying this to the case in point, we see that, if the Marquis of
Queensberry is entitled to punish Oscar Wilde, then the community of
which the marquis is a member is equally entitled so to do; and that, if
the community has no such right, then neither has the marquis.
Assuming that Oscar Wilde is not an invader, it would be incumbent
upon the defensive association to punish any one, even the Marquis of
Queensberry, who should assume to treat him as such. How absurd is
Dr. Footes misconception of Anarchism when he declares that it must
allow an individual to assault a non-invader.

Merlin Holland, Wilde's Grandson

The question of Oscar Wildes sanity I do not propose to discuss,

though I will allow myself the remark that, comparing Wildes writings
with Dr. Footes present letter, I find Dr. Foote the less sane of the two.
But we have no occasion to consider the matter of sanity. All non-
invasive persons are entitled to be let alone, whether sane or insane.
The question of sanity arises only after invasion has been established,
and it arises then only to determine the manner in which the invader
shall be treated.
The claim that there is no possibility of useful life on the part of Wilde
after he comes out of prison (putting aside, of course, the fact that the
imprisonment itself may cripple him forever) is best met by the
statement that, even if everything allegcd against Wilde be true, he
has been from the beginning of his career one of the most useful of
men. Not only are his writings a permanent addition to the world's
literature that cannot be offset by his personal vice, but even his
enemies admit that he has been perhaps the most influential factor in
the achievement of that immense advance in decorative art which
England and America have witnessed in the last decade. Now, unless it
be true, as some foolish persons think, that art is a matter of little or
no importance, Wilde has here contributed to the world's welfare a
great, broad, far-reaching, and long-enduring force beside which the
influence of his personal habits, however objectionable, must appear
only as dust in the balance. If Wilde's two sons, "who look like him,"
turn out to be really like him, I think be will he forgiven for fathering
them. The impertinence of authoritarianism reaches its climax in this
proposition of the Foote family, father and son, that the State shall
decide who may procreate. Moreover, it tende to verify my prophecy,
in "State Socialism and Anarchism," regarding the culmination of
governmentalism.

Answering now the questions put to me in Dr. Foote's concluding

paragraph, I will say that, if the "little girls" seduced by the librarian in
Prospect Park, were as big as those "boy " victims(6) of Oscar Wilde,
whose cases Dr. Foote finds so interesting, then the persons who
"caught" the librarian ought to be deprived of their liberty for a period
long enough to enable them to learn what equal liberty means; that, if,
on the other hand, the girls had not reached an age of responsibility
(as defined above), a similar deprivation of liberty should be inflicted
upon the librarian; and that Jack-the-Ripper should be treated precisely
as any other murderer. Upon the varied assortment of sexual prevent
ranging between the librarian and Jack-the-Ripper I must decline to
pass in a lump. Simple sexual perversion is not a crime, and I refuse to
sentence any sexual pervert until I know precisely what he has done.

Oscar's great-grandson, Lucian Holland

And now, if I may apply the argumentum ad hominem, let me ask Dr.
Foote, Jr., if he is aware that his own father, Dr. Foote, Sr., by the
unorthodox attitudes that he has taken in his public and medical career
(and I refer to them for my part only to his credit), has so conducted
himself as to give his sons a public stamp of opprobrium? If his sons
are so sensible as to accept this stamp as an honor rather than a
shame, the fact is accidental; perhaps, too, Oscar Wildes sons may not
be ashamed of their father.(7) Of course, I must be misunderstood as
instituting any intrinsic analogy between the course of Dr. Foote, Sr.,
and the acts of Oscar Wilde, but the necessities of the argument justify
me in reminding Dr. Foote, Jr., that, in the eyes of the public, to be
convicted by Comstock is scarcely a less disgrace than that which has
fallen upon Oscar Wilde, and that, if to bring opprobrium on ones
family is in itself a crime, then Oscar Wilde and Dr. Foote, Sr., are alike
criminals. It is within my knowledge that there are not a few people in
this community (some of them radicals, too) who look upon Dr. Foote
and his son as leading lives, if not villainy, or something bordering
upon it. I hope it is needless to say that I do not agree with them, and
that I hold, in fact, precisely the opposite opinion. In referring to this,
my sole purpose is to warn Dr. Foote, Jr., of the tyrannical attitudes
which he takes when he advocates the imprisonment of non-invasive
persons who he happens to consider dangerous. The letter which he
has just written might have been penned by Anthony Comstock
himself; even its phraseology is Comstockian. It forces me to look upon
its author, much to my regret, as another Comstock, not yet in power.

Footnotes

(1.) The Fabian Society, founded in 1884, is an organization founded to

promote socialism, particularly from within the Labour Party in Britain.
The Daily Chronicle, however, was not officially associated with the
Fabians though it was a radical left newspaper, published from 1872 to
1930.

Alfred Havighurst (1860-1924), the biographer of the Chronicles editor

H.W. Massingham describes a situation contrary to that stated by
Tucker. He states: The Daily Chronicle had reviewed unfavourably The
Picture of Dorian Gray and in Wildes two trials in 1895 for
homosexuality took no side, though it was credited with Reynolds
Newspaper with the most impartial reporting of the proceedings.
However, see footnote 2 for more information.

Alfred F. Havighurst, Radical Journalist, H.W. Massingham (1860-1924),

Cambridge University Press, London, 1974, p. 67)

(2.) Stewart Headlam (1846-1924) was a Church of England priest and

a socialist activist with the Guild of St. Matthew, a Christian socialist
organization. Headlams willingness to help Wilde lost him, at least for
a time, the friendship of Mr. Massingham, editor of The Daily Chronicle.
The Church Reformer was the publication of the Guild, published from
1884 to 1895. Headlam was also active in the Fabian Society. Headlam
put up half the 5,000 bail money required for Wilde, though the two
did not know each other. Wilde did briefly visit him in 1897 after his
release from prison for six hours, as he was traveling to leave the
country permanently.

Headlam, according to biographer John Richard Orens, was appalled

by the abuse to which the press was subjecting Wilde. His sympathy
was doubtless all the greater because others close to him had been
caught in similar sexual tangles. His beloved Eton master, William
Johnson, had been dismissed because of an indiscreet letter to a
student. Headlam may have also heard rumors of C.J. Vaughans
homosexuality. A large number of members of the Guild of St.
Matthew, however, were not tolerant of homosexuality and resigned
the organization because of Headlams support for Wilde. Headlam,
however, was not going to backdown and said, I make no apology. I
refuse to disavow my actions. I am not ashamed of anything I have
done. ( p144, Orens)

Bernard Markwell, author of The Anglican Left: Radical Social

Reformers in the Church of England and the Protestant Episcopal
Church, 1846-1954, wrote that the Oscar Wilde case destroyed the
Guild of St. Matthew because so many socialists were the intolerant
Puritans Tucker implied. Marwell said the group limped along for
another fifteen years of official life but never recovered from the
events of 1895. (Carlson Publishing, Brooklyn, NY 1991, p. 67)

(3.) John Burns (1858-1943), was an English trade unionist and socialist
activist. He was a staunch advocate of government run monopolies but
also described as an advocate of teetotal Puritanism because his
social conservatism. Headlam considered himself an anti-Puritanism
activist. Chris Waters, in British Socialists and the Politics of Popular
Culture, 1884-1914, writes: Socialists attacked music halls, then, only
when they believed the desire for profit might be inimical to the
provision of rational recreationonly when they remained unconvinced
by the advertising strategy of music-hall proprietors. John Burns
believe that the best interests of the profession are subordinated to
dividends, and that the quality of entertainment offered by the halls
had declined because more and more of them were now operated by
major syndicates. Burns, as a borough councilor for Battersea, member
of the London County Council and self-proclaimed socialist, was noted
for his opposition ot various forms of popular culture. Thus, it is not
surprising to find him suggesting the music halls were not what they
ought to be, namely places of education and instruction with
amusement and delight.

Chris Waters, British Socialists and the Politics of Popular Culture,

1884-1914, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1990, p. 31.

(4.) Selwyn Image (1849-1930), A Church of England clergyman

strongly influenced by the socialist ideas of John Ruskin, as well as a
poet. Wilde had attended lectures by Image on art and corresponded
with him. Image and Headlam, spent many an evening at the Crown
pub on Charing Cross Road, where [they] enjoyed the company of
ballerinas and of the poets who were part of Wildes circle: Ernest
Dowson, Arthur Symons, and Lionel Johnson, the man who introduced
Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas, whose relationship with Wilde had led to
the trial. It was Image who asked Headlam to provide half the bail
money, the other half being provide by Lord Douglas of Harwick, the
older brother of Alfred Douglas, and son of the Marquis of Queensberry,
the man who started it all.

John Richards Orens, Stewart Headlams Radical Anglicanism: The

Mass, the Masses and the Music Hall, (University of Illinois Press, 2003)
(5.) The term urning was coined by Karl Heinrich Ulrich (1825-1895),
who saw homosexuals as some sort of third sex or female souls
trapped in male bodies. Ulrichs term did not catch on. The libertarian
Karl-Maria Kertbeny (1824-1982) was dissatisfied with the term and
wanted a word which he felt came with no moral judgements of any
kind. He coined the terms homosexual and heterosexual, which
gained acceptance over the years supplanting Ulrichs odd
terminology. (6.) The main witness against Wilde was Charles Parker.
Parker was no child, but 21 years of age. In his testimony Parker said
that, prior to meeting Wilde, he told a friend of Wildes if any old
gentleman with money took a fancy to me, I was agreeable. I was
agreeable. I was terribly hard up. Parker then had dinner with Wilde a
few days later and went with him to his hotel where they had sex. (7.)
Wilde had two sons: Vyvyan and Cyril Holland. Wildes wife took on the
name Holland after her husbands conviction and took her children to
Europe to escape the scorn and ridicule found in England. Neither child
was allowed to see their father again. Cyril was killed by a German
sniper during World War I. Vyvyan (1886-1967), however, defended his
father. In 1909 he accompanied Wildes friend and former lover, Robert
Ross, to witness the reburial of his fathers remains in Pre Lachaise
Cemetery. In 1954 he authored his memoirs Son of Oscar Wilde. His
son, Merlin Holland (1946-), continues the tradition of defending Oscar
and is an expert on Wildes life. He and his son, Oscars great-
grandson, Lucian (1979-) attended the unveiling of a statue honoring
Wilde in London. I believe, like Wilde, Lucian Holland is gay.