ANOTHER VOICE

How Oscar's selfishness would have coloured a London winter

MATTHEW PARRIS

Weather attacks in many guises. The grey of a grey November day in London is not a gentle greyness, not a soft blurring of the light, not forgiving, not neutral, not kind. It is a raised fist in the face of the human spirit, a mouthed curse, a crushing of merriment, a denial of every sharp feel- ing, an abnegation even of black. The sky shouts at you, defies you to be gay. The trees surrender their colours; even the buses struggle to be red.

Monday 30 November was such a day. I struggled through the morning traffic to reach Adelaide Street, where, within a Pigeon's flight from Charing Cross station, grey bird against grey sky, we were unveil- ing a monument to Oscar Wilde.

I could not see the sculpture, the crowds were too pressing; but I already knew it. Our committee had paced before a handful of maquettes, entrants to our competition, and chosen Maggi Hambling's. Her swirling, feathery, half-impressionistic head, all wire and holes and cigarette held aloft, was by common consent the best as art — but would it work as street furniture?

At first I had thought not; I had wanted for Oscar the bronze and granite respectability our Edwardian forebears had Conferred upon so many lesser men, but not him. I had wanted to see the Daily Tele- graph obliged to count him among the field Marshals.

He had his audience now, anyway. Hun- dreds gawped and strained to hear as Nigel Hawthorne and Dame Judi Dench trod lightly through lines from A Woman of No Importance. I stood at the back, in the Camel coat I nearly broke my bank account to buy for that candidates' selection meet- ing 21 years ago, where I was to pretend to be respectable enough to represent West Derbyshire in Parliament.

I could only just hear the speeches. Sir Jeremy Isaacs, who has pushed this whole Project through, thanked all those who had to be thanked. Stephen Fry, who certainly had to be thanked, had come. Wilde's great-grandson, Lucian Holland, now an undergraduate, spoke. And then the unveil- ing, which I still could not see.

,_ Few seemed to be trying to. All around the monument the big fluffy microphones of radio and television crews waved before the faces of famous people. 'Could you just stand there, Sir Jeremy?' A thoughtful Pose here, by Oscar's head, could you, Stephen?' Lucian — Lucian — look this way, would you?'

Conversation in the crowd around me began to intrude. 'Do you know Stephen?' `Of course. Isn't he a dear? So natural.' `George Melly's here, you know — look, over there, in that funny blue hat, what a scream.' Mr Melly was being a scream with great dedication. 'And Kenneth Baker on the monument committee! Imagine! But of course he always was a hugely civilised man, privately.' Isn't it marvellous of Jere- my to have done all this?' Eyes were roving around, diving for famous faces like birds of prey. 'Do you know Judi — yes? — we do too, of course; wasn't she good? And out of doors, too! . . . ' Hard, hard people, the English cultural establishment.

and dear Nigel's such a brick. Wasn't he just hugely funny!'

Ever since I got drunk at a postgraduate party at Yale a quarter of a century ago and started kicking people indiscriminately in the shins, I have been aware of this nasty repressed urge to turn over tables at feasts, so perhaps it's just my problem, but as I lis- tened to all the haw-hawing and watched the sidling, the sleeve-tugging and the cal- culating eyes I began, most unfairly, to feel angry with everyone. Unfairly, for heaven's sake, because these were the good people, the ones who had bothered to come, the ones who had made the effort, raised the funds.

But I kept thinking, Where were you at Wilde's trial? Where were you in 1895? This was silly because not one among us, not even Michael Foot, was born then. Besides, what if we had been? Where would I have been, in 1895, me in my camel coat with real leather buttons, making care- ful calculations before departing for that selection meeting in Derbyshire, at which a telephoned message from my friend Ann would be handed to the chairman regret- `So they've reduced class sizes.' ting that last-minute business had prevent- ed her from coming with me?

Once Stephen Fry had left, fluffy mikes in amiable pursuit, most of the crowd left too, some of them, I swear, without once looking at Maggi's sculpture. I was able to break through to the foot of the monument and look along the polished granite, tomb-like, from which Oscar's head, hand and cigarette rise at the other end. He would have been amused to be at the centre of all this, would have had a better ear for the absurdities of the conversation than do I, could have sent it up with affection and without sourness, as I cannot. He would have smiled at the reporters from newspapers that hounded him so mercilessly a century ago and secretly hate him still, smiled at the Secretary of State and the former Tory home secretary, smiled at the tributes from those who would once have been his persecutors.

For Wilde — and this I admire and envy in him more than words can express — did not stand for anything except, perhaps, the human spirit. That is what his great-grand- son Lucian said to the crowd. It was imme- diately controversial, it is true, and it is the only interesting thing that was said all morning. Wilde waved no fists at public meetings, penned no earnest, agonised manifestos, said that the trouble with socialism was that it took up too many evenings.

He was just, and quite selfishly, himself. He would not have been a homosexual rights campaigner today, he would have been as funny about us as about the bigots, and perfectly detached from our respective furies. He would have felt no stupid urge to rise from Maggi's sculpture and confront the hypocrisies of those paying tribute to him here, no need to argue with their inconsistencies. He would not have berated them. Loving himself, he would have been able to love them, and in loving them laugh at them, and in laughing at them make them laugh too, and in their laughter change them. Despairing of himself, he would have joined us in the despair, and made it ours too.

He would have looked up with a feathery smile at that grey London sky, and brought back the colours, even black. Maggi's sculp- ture was the right choice, after all.

Matthew Parris is parliamentary sketchwriter and columnist of the Times.