Robert Sherard: Friend of Oscar Wilde

ROBERT SHERARD: FRIEND OF OSCAR WILDE By Kevin H. F. O'Brien (St. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia) Lord Alfred Douglas, Robert Ross, Reggie Turner, More Adey, Robert Sherard: all were friends of Oscar Wilde before and after his three trials in 1895, and all were involved in the interminable squabbling after his death in 1900. Douglas , Ross and Turner have merited biographiesl largely because of their friendship with Wilde. Robert Harborough Sherard (1861-1943) was also a close friend, yet we have heard little about him, save for fugitive references in the many biographies of Wilde and his circle. The published sources of information on Sherard are mainly The Letters of Oscar Wilde (1962), edited by Sir Rupert Hart-Davis, and Hesketh Pearson's and H. Montgomery Hyde's biographies of Wilde, as well as Sherard's own books, which are full of personal references. Sherard was Wilde's first biographer, writing in quick succession three spirited and partisan defences: Oscar Wilde: The Story of an Unhappy Friendship (1902), The Life of Oscar Wilde (1906), and The Real Oscar Wilde (1917) . In the 1930s, he reared up to smite Wilde's "enemies" again with Oscar Wilde Twice Defended (1934) and Bernard Shaw, Frank Harris and Oscar Wilde (1937). Sherard's tone is often righteous and proprietary, but there is no doubt that his claim to privileged friendship with Wilde is well-founded. This relationship is important enough that Sherard's side of it deserves a closer look. First of all, Sherard did not make his living writing books about Oscar Wilde, nor were they his sole claim to recognition. Sherard's thirty-four published books include fourteen novels, mostly undistinguished mystery-thrillers; however, After the Fault (1906) is mature and powerful and it affords an insight into Sherard's old-fashioned spirit of noblesse oblige and self-sacrifice. Sherard's fiction did not sell well, and he supported himself by journalism. During most of the time Wilde knew him, Sherard lived in Paris, contributing excellent interviews and vignettes of Parisian political, social and artistic life to three New York newspapers —the Herald, World, and Times—as well as the London World, Daily Graphic, Pall Mall Gazette, Weekly Times and Echo and Westminster Gazette. He also wrote occasional articles for magazines like The Idler and McClure's. His most laudable efforts as a journalist were his investigative reports for Pearson ' s Magazine and The London Magazine which resulted in his books The White Slaves of England (1897), The Cry of the Poor (1901), The Closed Door (1902) and The Child Slaves of Britain (1905). Sherard went "undercover" in pursuing his investigations and showed considerable pluck and tenacity, enduring privation for months at a time. He was not merely a "muckraker." Passionate, loyal and sympathetic, Sherard displayed his charity in his ready assistance when Wilde needed him in 1895 and when a destitute and dying Ernest Dowson lived with him for six weeks in Catford and died in his arms in February 1900. Despite some successes, Sherard never prospered nor did he become the famous writer he so dearly wanted to be. These frustrations, combined with his emotional, aggressive, bragging personality, made his life a violent and distressing one. He suffered poverty at times as well as humiliating marriages to the unfaithful Marthe Lipska and the bullying rich American novelist, Irene Osgood. He finally reached a measure of contentment in the 1930s living in Corsica with his third wife, Alice Muriel Fiddian. He died at age 82 in London in 1943. I. 1883: Paris and London The most important and meaningful event in Sherard's life was his friendship with Oscar Wilde, which Ian Fletcher has appropriately characterized as Sherard's "dogged devotion " to Wilde.2 The two met in the spring of 1883, and for the first year their friendship was male bonding at its most intense and enjoyable. Both Sherard (age 22) and Wilde (28) were ambitious young writers looking forward to fame and glory. Full of energy and curiosity about life, they both loved literature, France, and the excitement of urban social life. The first two months of their friendship in Paris were claustrophobic: together almost daily from...