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Lust, Lies & Lost Love: Uncovering Oscar Wilde's Forbidden Romance | Lost & Found | Time Travels
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Apr 4, 2025
Oscar Wilde was one of the famous playwrights in the world best known for writing The Picture of Dorian Gray. His secret love affair with another man was scrutinized and was kept a secret. Secret love letters were uncovered in Sydney, Australia from an unknown lover of Wilde. How did these letters end up in Sydney and who is this secret lover?
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0:00
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
0:38
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
0:47
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
1:00
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
1:10
But what nobody knew was that he was secretly writing to a much younger man named Maurice
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Schwabe 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 Riley asked herself when she came across them while researching Australia's gay history
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It was at the end of the day, end of the 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 or is it something really important
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And it was more than a laundry list, of course. It was definitely more than a laundry list, yes. 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 any more, as I do you
2:16
This was real. This was about two young people in love, and one missing the other because his lover had gone away
2:30
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 schwape Alfred and Oscar had developed a liking for London rent boys
2:52
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 and his beat included places like Sydney French Club
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a known haunt for homosexuals and, you guessed it, where Maurice Schwabe stayed in Sydney
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How Detective Rocher found the letters, we'll never know, but clearly he understood the trouble they could cause
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Detective Rocher, being the discreet and honourable fellow that he was, chose to keep these letters secret until shortly before his death
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when he donated them to the state library, and it turned out to be the perfect place
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For 90 years, they lay quietly in the stacks below, 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 love triangle on the other side of the planet
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found its way here thanks to one very meticulous, very proper, French copper
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It is how you say, très ironique. Ha ha ha! Tout alors, sacreble
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