Wednesday, June 1, 2022

The Showstopper Trial: From Oscar Wilde to Johnny Depp

In 1864, when Oscar Wilde was ten years old, his parents set a bad example by getting involved in activities formerly deemed "sordid," a word having almost no meaning anymore. Wilde's dad, Sir William, so prominent an eye and ear surgeon that he was appointed to attend to Queen Victoria, in the event she was troubled with ocular or otolaryngolic problems while travelling in Ireland, was being stalked by a former lover. Sir William had given the seventeen-year-old Mary Travers money to go away and leave him alone, and in revenge she snuck into his waiting room bathroom, filled the soap dishes with garlic, penned a pamphlet suggesting he had raped her, signing it with his wife's pen name, Speranza, hired newsboys to sell copies of his love letters in front of a hall where he was giving a lecture, and printed doggerel insulting his illegitimate children, of which he had at least three, in local papers. Mary even broke into Lady Wilde's boudoir, but was booted out. Lady Wilde took her children to Bray, a seaside result, to get away from Mary, who followed them there and hired more newsboys to sell pamphlets about the alleged rape--and this time, Oscar's young sister, Isola, wondered how they knew her mother's name. Fed up, Speranza, Oscar's mother, sent a scathing letter to Mary's father asking him to control his daughter. Poking around in her father's drawer, Mary discovered the letter and sued Lady Wilde, Speranza, for libel.

What a sensation--so big a trial the London papers reported it. Mary won, in the sense that Lady Wilde's letter was judged "not true in substance and fact," but she was awarded only a farthing in damages. Since she had technically won, the Wildes had to pay the crippling court costs. 

The result? Ten-year-old Oscar became fascinated by trials, telling a schoolmate he'd love to be the hero of a cause célebre and go down to posterity as the defendant in such a case as Regina vs. Wilde (the queen versus Wilde). The rest is history.

Fatty Arbuckle . . . Lorena Bobbitt . . .  can't begin to cover them all. 

Then there was O.J. Simpson, so guilty of murdering Nicole Brown Simpson that New York Magazine's cover showed him with bloody hands. The prosecution made the very dumb mistake (who doesn't know leather shrinks in liquid?) of making him try on the leather gloves the killer had worn. "If it does not fit, you must acquit!" said his lawyer, Johnnie Cochran.

None of their stories fit, in the sense of making sense of wildly jealous, vengeful, and violent behavior. How two gorgeously talented beautiful people, Heard and Depp, dissolved into toddler-style squabbling, bottle-throwing, name-calling, slapping, and other unseemly behaviors is anyone's guess. Maybe she'll go off into the sunset with Elon Musk or another billionaire--unless she sues Depp again, as she's threatening to do. Maybe he'll get to play Gellert Grindelwald again and really feel the part if he does. Maybe I'll get some work done after weeks of my guilty habit--just couldn't get enough of the pouting, the smirking, the dirty laundry, and the glow of celebrity--at a distance. Few things make me happier than the state of being a complete unknown. Anonymity is gold!

 

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