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Now, about the time the Tasman map was found, some rather controversial letters were very conveniently getting lost
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My darling pretty, I am so sorry you've gone. In fact, I am quite miserable
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I really love you more than any other boy in the world. Isn't that lovely
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I send you all my love and millions of kisses all over your beautiful body
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I'll have what he's having. Oh. And listen to this bit. I am your loving boy wife, or your little , if you prefer it
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This is not what I was expecting. And these are not your average love letters. Not when you consider they were written between two young men in 1893
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The writer was part of a love triangle with none other than Oscar Wilde
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and these letters reveal vital, previously unknown clues to Oscar's eventual demise
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Lord Alfred Douglas was the author of these steamy scribblings. Oh. It's well known that he was the lover of famous playwright Oscar Wilde
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But what nobody knew was that he was secretly writing to a much younger man named Maurice Schwabe
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So how did these illicit love letters end up thousands of kilometres away from gay old London town in the State Library of New South Wales
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Well, that's what curator Margot Wrongly asked herself when she came across them while researching Australia's gay history
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It was at the end of a day, end of a week of doing research that I stumbled across the record
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I thought, gosh, what are we doing with correspondence from Lord Alfred Douglas in Australia
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He didn't come to Australia. Who's Morris Schwabe? All these questions. I thought, well, I've got to go down and pull them off the shelf
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and just see what this is about. Is it just, you know, a laundry list
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or is it something really important? And it was more than a laundry list, of course. It was definitely more than a laundry list, yes
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Darling, pretty boy, I always think of you every night when I go to bed
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Please do the same for me. That is if you still love me anymore, as I do you
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This was real. This was about two young people in love, and one missing the other because his lover had gone away
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Lord Alfred Douglas' lover, Maurice, was banished to Australia to save his well-to-do family from the disgrace of his homosexuality
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which was a crime at the time. But he left behind a scandal in the making Through the naughty schwaib Alfred and Oscar had developed a liking for London rent boys
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And it was these male prostitutes that would lead to Oscar Wilde's ultimate downfall
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In 1895, Oscar Wilde was brought to trial for gross indecency and jailed for two years
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we know what happened to Oscar but what happened to Maurice from another letter in the collection
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this time from his old mum we find out things may not have changed much
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I feel much that you have again fallen in with bad companions in Sydney
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she writes if so I implore you to have the strength of mind to break away from them
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and try and get the necessary strength from the teachings of your religion
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your affectionate mother. I get the feeling Maurice didn't follow this advice
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So we know why the letters were sent to Sydney, but how did they end up in the State Library of New South Wales
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Enter Detective Jules-Pierre Rocher of the New South Wales Police Force. He was a very intriguing character
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He really was like the Hercule Poirot of Australian detective work in the late 19th century He specialised in hunting down foreign criminals
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And his beat included places like Sydney's French Club, a known haunt for homosexuals
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and you guessed it, where Maurice Schwabe stayed in Sydney. How Detective Rocher found the letters, we'll never know
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but clearly he understood the trouble they could cause. Detective Rocher, being the discreet and honourable fellow that he was
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chose to keep these letters secret until shortly before his death when he donated them to the State Library
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and it turned out to be the perfect place For 90 years they lay quietly in the stacks below
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until in 2011 it was finally safe for these letters to come out
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So, what started out as Oscar Wilde's sort of little love triangle on the other side
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of the planet, found its way here, thanks to one very meticulous, very proper, French copper
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It is how you say, très ironique. Tout alors, sacreble
