November 30, 1900 --- A Death in Paris

At two in the afternoon, Oscar Wilde dies in his rather dingy room at the Hotel d'Alsace in Paris. He was 46. A gruesome final hemorrhage brings to an end to several days filled with agonizing pain, eased somewhat by frequent doses of morphia.

Modern scholars believe the cause of death was cerebral meningitis, complicated by syphillis. Frank Harris claimed that the two years in an English prison had killed his friend. Still, disapproving of Oscar's "pet vice," Harris wrote: "If it is true that all those who draw the sword shall perish by the sword, it is no less certain that all those who live for the body shall perish by the body, and there is no death more degrading."

Almost to the end, Oscar remained true to character. He quipped that he was dying as he lived, beyond his means and bemoaning the wallpaper in his room, he cried, "It's killing me, one of us has to go." With death certain, a Catholic priest arrives to give the last rites. Oscar had asked that no priest be sent until "I'm no longer in a condition to shock one." As word of his death spread around Paris, dozens of the curious paid their respects, if only timidly as the French press noted the callers included "various English persons, using assumed names."

Lord Alfred Douglas, his beloved "Bosie," paid for Wilde's funeral and burial at Bagneux. In 1909, Wilde's body was moved to Pere Lachaise in Paris where he rests today beneath an inscription taken from his Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898). The story of his 18-month imprisonment, shunned by London's established imprints, was handled by the infamous Leonard Smithers, publisher and practitioner of the pornographic arts. It was an instant success, going into several printings; albeit in such small increments that a penniless Oscar complained that Smithers is so used to having his books suppressed, he's suppressing his own.

The epitaph reads:

Yet all is well; he has but passed
To life's appointed bourne.
And alien tears will fill for him
Pity's long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men
And outcasts always mourn.

November 29, 1872 --- The Stars & Stripes in London

Color-Sergeant Gilbert Bates of the United States Army arrives in London, the destination of his 330 mile march from Gretna Green on the Scottish border.  For the entire journey, the Yankee soldier carried aloft the American flag. 

It's all to prove a point and, not the least of it, to win a wager made with some fellow soldiers.  The bet was $1000 to his own $100 - that Bates could carry the American flag from northernmost England to the Imperial capitol itself without insult or incident. Bates reports receiving nothing but the most cordial reception along the way, leaving Gretna Green on the 6th of November and passing through Carlisle, Manchester, Birmingham, Oxford and on into London. After a rest in Shepherd's Bush, Sgt. Bates carries his flag to the Guildhall, traveling the final miles by carriage (sketch). In fact, in Bond Street, an enthusiastic crowd unharnessed the horses and pulled him the final two miles by hand. In return for his efforts, Sgt. Bates is presented with the Union Jack, which he promises to carry home to America.

The American press is remarkably unsupportive. The London correspondent for one newspaper referred to Bates as "an ass," whose effort to show British respect for the flag has only confirmed "a fact, the truth of which needed no proof, and which proved nothing if it was true." The New York Times wholly disapproved of the venture, condemning the "preposterous proceedings of this cheap military person (whose) unwarrantable liberties taken with a respectable and helpless flag, deserve the punishment of popular reprobation."

The good sergeant found a second career as a standard bearer in countless parades back in America.  He returned to London, appearing as "the renowned Sergeant Bates" in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in 1887.

The Penny Illustrated Paper

November 28, 1862 --- Garrotte-Mania

Harsh sentences and stern lectures are handed out to two thugs convicted of garroting their victims. 

The plague of violent street crime - dubbed "Garrotte-mania" - has literally strangled London with fear. The sentences imposed are meant to be exemplary severe --- James Anderson gets life, while his cohort George Roberts receives 20 years, for the daylight mugging of a medical student near the British Museum. The victim had been beaten unconscious, left in the street with his clothes nearly torn away in the frenzy to rifle his pockets. The two men are also believed to have committed the sensational attack on an MP in the heart of Clubland.

London is in the grip of an unprecedented crime wave; street robberies are commonplace, the preferred method being the garrotte, the Spanish means of execution. Working in pairs, the bandits jump their victims from the rear, one pulling a cord or stick across the throat, while the second loots the pockets. The Illustrated London News received dozens of letters from gentlemen, "bemoaning the prevalence of garrotting, and urging that they cannot enjoy a quiet rubber of whist or take their evening tumbler and havanna without running the risk of being strangled and plundered on their way back to chambers."

Many of the perpetrators are men who would have been transported to the Antipodes in the past. However, reformers had abolished transportation. When domestic gaols became overcrowded, inmates were released early - given a "ticket-of-leave." Both Roberts and Anderson are "ticket-of-leave" men, the latter having 17 convictions on his record! From the bench, Baron Bramwell shows no mercy to either: "Utterly destitute of morality, shame, religion, or pity, and if they were let loose they would do what any savage animal would do - namely prey upon their fellows." If tougher sentences don't work, Bramwell will recommend "alterations in the punishment."

Early in 1863, Parliament brought back flogging for convicted garrotters. The Times scoffed at those who felt chronic criminals could be reformed, calling it a "mere delusion, founded upon the weakness or concert of some theorist or some simpleminded gaol chaplain."

The sketch, from Punch, shows the satirical magazine's "patented anti-garrotte costume."

November 27, 1895 --- The Liberator Frauds

A London jury convicts Jabez Balfour, MP from Burnley, in one of the greatest financial scandals on the Victorian era.  The guilty man was reviled by The Times as "the most impudent and heartless swindler on record."

Balfour was a Croydon man who rose to financial and political eminence in the 1880's, managing a variety of enterprises, the most successful being The Liberator Building Society. With quasi-spiritual rhetoric, he promoted the bank as a great regenerator of the masses. He recruited prominent Non-Conformist ministers to serve on the board (as well as attract depositors from their flocks) and vowed that the LBS profits would go toward housing and improving the standard of living for Britain's downtrodden. To further such laudable aims, Balfour was soon elected MP, taking his seat in the Liberal ranks. By 1888, the LBS had amassed assets of £750,000. While some small-scale "good works" were funded by the LBS, Balfour used most of the money - other than to maintain his own comfortable lifestyle - to engage in speculative investments, abounding in the booming early 90's.

The crash came in 1892. When rumors swept the City of money problems at the LBS, depositors clamored for their savings. In October, the LBS shut its doors. At least 25,000 people were ruined, many of them decent God-fearing folk who'd put in their life savings at their cleric's behest. Balfour levanted to Buenos Aires, along with his wife - still spending money skimmed from the LBS.  Scotland Yard finally tracked him down and he was extradited to England, returning to London amid general execration.  Balfour - helped by expensive legal counsel -- delayed his legal reckoning for over two years. But when it came, it was severe. He gets fourteen years in jail; the judge expressing the hope that "No prison doors can shut out from your ears the cry of the widow and the orphan whom you have ruined."

The wrath of The Economist was typical:  "To the worldly-wise, the mixing up of religion and business, and the public appeals for Divine guidance in company matters, are regarded, and rightly regarded, as marks of the Pharisee, and as danger-signals which it would be unwise to ignore. Balfour's conduct would have been bad enough under any circumstances, but the hypocrisy which permeated it from beginning to end made it infinitely more contemptible than if he had been an ordinary financial scoundrel."

Balfour lived out his remaining years comfortably - aided by profits from his best-seller, My Prison Life.

The sketch from The Penny Illustrated Paper.

November 26, 1878 --- An Artist and his Critic

A London jury finds England's foremost art critic John Ruskin guilty of libelling the irascible Jimmy Whistler; the damage award however is but a farthing.

In July of the previous year, writing in his eccentric personal journal Fors Clavigera, Ruskin had famously condemned Whistler's Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket: "I have seen and heard much of Cockney impudence before now, but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face."

The painting depicts - in Whistler's description - a fireworks display at London's Cremorne gardens. On the witness stand, the artist conceded that he had he "knocked it off" in two days.  Ruskin's attorney queries: "And for the labor of two days you ask 200 guineas?" Whistler made the famous reply: "No. It was for the knowledge gained through a lifetime." Cheers and laughter filled ancient Westminster Hall.

The brief trial, followed with amusement in the "secular" world, divides the art community, creating lasting enmities. The highly strung Ruskin is too unnerved even to attend. Edward Burne-Jones, leader of the Pre-Raphaelites, appears on his behalf. He describes the Nocturne as "totally and bewilderingly formless." Asked if he considered it a work of art, Burne-Jones answers: "No, I cannot say that it is." (Whistler never tired of joking: "If you get seasick, you throw up a Burne-Jones.")

Ruskin's attorney claims for his client a "perfect right" to severe criticism, even ridicule, if fair and honest; to hold otherwise would be an "evil day for art in this country." Whistler's counsel seizes upon the issue of fairness; Ruskin's review was a "personal attack ... [a] pretended criticism on art."

Whistler celebrated his "victory" by wearing the famous farthing on his watch-chain but the court costs drove him into bankruptcy and he relocated to the continent until his fortunes improved. Ruskin's legal bills were covered by his admirers; some of the donors were accused of currying favor with the critic.

Within days of the trial however, Ruskin quit the Slade Professorship of Art at Oxford. "The professorship is a farce, if it has no right to condemn as well as to praise."

Nocturne in Black and Gold (The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, USA)

November 25, 1871 --- A Star is Born

At London's struggling Lyceum Theatre, there any many empty seats on this opening night for a little known melodrama starring a fairly unknown actor from the provinces. Soon, however, all London's theatre world would be talking about The Bells and its star, the 33-year-old Henry Irving.

The actor plays Matthias, a wealthy innkeeper who is haunted by his conscience for the murder and robbery of a rich Jewish traveler, who had sought shelter at his inn during a severe storm many years before. On the eve now of his daughter's wedding, amidst the recurring sound of sleigh bells, Matthias dreams of his exposure, conviction and hanging. He awakens and dies in a fit.

While the audience at the Lyceum is described as "neither numerous nor distinguished," the critics are uniform in their praise: The Athenaeum hailed Irving for "histrionic power of the rarest kind," the owner of The Daily Telegraph was among the first-nighters and tells his reviewer, "Tonight I have seen a great actor ... Write about him so that everyone shall know."

Irving and the play are a sensation, "Have you seen The Bells?" is on everyone's lips. For Irving, it is a night of professional triumph, after more than a decade as the proverbial struggling actor.  But the evening bears its cost. Leaving an opening night party, at which he celebrated perhaps too much, Irving and his wife, Florence, the daughter of an Irish surgeon, enter a cab for the ride to their West Brompton home. On the way, Irving - quoting the actor Kean following a similar triumph - exults: "Maybe now we can afford our own carriage." To which Florence replies: "Are you going to go on making a fool of yourself like this all of your life?" Ordering the cabman to stop at Hyde Park Corner, Irving got out and never saw nor spoke to his wife again.  They had been married two years with two sons.  They never divorced.

Irving continued to support his wife while enjoying a thriving on and off stage partnership with Ellen Terry, the leading lady of the late-Victorian stage. Frank Harris thought Irving was "more than an actor" and ranked him ahead of Parnell and Gladstone among the great personages of the period. Only one man could match him, wrote Harris, "Irving, like Disraeli, took the eye with him and excited the imagination."

In 1895, Irving became the first actor to earn a knighthood.

Irving as Matthias in The Bells, from gaslight.mtroyal.ca/mathias.html

November 24, 1859 --- My Accursed Book

Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life is published by John Murray in London. Bookdealers sensing controversy and, of course, sales, buy up all 1200 copies the first day at a cost of 15 shillings apiece.

"God knows what the public will think," wrote Darwin to a friend. The author - who suffered from a variety of health problems - has retreated to the spa town of Ilkley in Yorkshire: "I am here hydropathizing and coming to life again, after having finished my accursed book."  The work is based on research as much as two decades old that Darwin had heretofore hesistated to publish. But when rivals began to come forward - most notably Alfred Russell Wallace - Darwin had to go to print.

In brief, he argues that life is governed by three factors: (1) living things tend to vary from their parent, (2) the variations tend to be very minor, and (3) by the process of natural selection, those variations fittest for survival live on, those unfit die off.  In a famous passage, he concludes, "There is grandeur in this view of life ... from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved."  Herbert Spencer later coined the phrase "survival of the fittest" which Darwin admitted "is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient."

The reviews are mixed. In The Times, the scientist Thomas H. Huxley is favorable; in The Spectator, Darwin's old professor at Cambridge, the Rev. Adam Sedgwick is not: "You cannot make a rope out of a string of air bubbles." The most virulent attacks are from the clergy. Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, in The Quarterly Review, rejects the "ape" theory, or as he put it, the "degrading notion of the brute origin of him who was created in the image of God."

Darwin, other than making respectful references to "that heroic little monkey," left to others the public debate, confident that though "all the world might rail, ultimately the theory of Natural Selection would prevail."  By early December, the publishers announced a second printing and it has not gone out of print to this day.