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OSCAR WILDE'S SECRET LIFE The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde. Neil McKenna. Century. £20.00. 535 pages. ISBN 0-7126-6986-8.
The circumloquant litterae Oscariensis are, by any count, wildly in excess: the shelf bows beneath the bulky figure. Is Mr McKenna's hefty, post-Ellmann 535-pager de trop! I think, warts and all, not. The theory it vaunts, Wilde, the political pawn, playing official sacrificial ram to the salvation of Rosebery and Drumlanrig is by no means novel. Neither, though long ago burked, has it ceased to breathe. But it is not here, or anywhere else, neatly, geometrically as it were, a proposition to be tagged quod erat demonstrandum.
Mr. McKenna's account of the Wilde-Miles liaison, and of Frank Miles' overall circumstances, is not quite accurate, and the corruptive role of Lord Ronald Gower in the lives of both is not allocated its full due to discredit. Close scrutiny distinguishes a number of generally minor blemishes upon an otherwise wholesome, if that is the right word, body of work.
The secret life, which is to say the sexual life, of Wilde is quirkily seedy. Love is blind and cruel. Lust likewise. Constance, the constant wife, was...