Wilde believed in his way of life so strongly that he eventually spent several years in jail after his attempts to defend it.
At issue was Wilde's relationship with Lord Alfred ("Douglas"). Wilde was forty years old at the time of the trials; Lord Alfred was sixteen years his junior but no child, at age twenty-four, and certainly not an innocent. They first met in the early summer of 1891. Douglas was a devoted fan of Wilde's novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, claiming that he had read it either nine or fourteen times. Lord Alfred was a slight, handsome, impetuous young man who already had a very difficult relationship with his father. He had homosexual relations with several boys at Oxford and was blackmailed in the spring of 1892. He was especially irresponsible about money, often insisting that Wilde spend lavish amounts on him.
Lord Alfred's father, the Eighth Marquess of Queensberry (1844–1900), was irate about the relationship between his son and Wilde and sought to discredit Wilde. While Douglas was visiting Algeria, the father hoped to disrupt the opening performance of Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest but was turned away. On February 18, 1895, he left a card for Wilde at the Albemarle Club, addressed "To Oscar Wilde posing Somdomite," misspelling the last word. Homosexual activity was illegal in England.
Wilde had several choices. Having been accused, publicly, in writing, he might have cause to bring a libel suit against the Marquess. The card certainly was seen by the hall porter, Sidney Wright, who knew that an insult was intended and carefully noted the details of the card's arrival, although he was not able to deliver it to Wilde for ten days. Wilde wrote to his good friend, Robert Ross, stating that he felt compelled to pursue criminal prosecution of the Marquess. Ross wisely advised Wilde to ignore the card and allow Lord Alfred and his father to settle their differences themselves. Another alternative was for Wilde to visit France for a time and hope that tempers would cool.
