The Battle of the Bohemian Club was not about booze, but about brains. Oscar Wilde did not "drink the Bohemians under the table" as reported in such works as Kevin Starr's Americans and the California Dream 1848-1915 and in David M. Friedman's just-published Oscar Wilde and the Invention of Modern Celebrity, but he did turn the tables on the Bohemians.
For those who don't know, the Bohemian Club is one of America's powerhouse gentlemen's clubs, originally started in 1872 by newspapermen, but whose subsequent membership has included Ronald Reagan, Jack London, Herbert Hoover and George H.W. Bush, along with Charles Coburn, Maynard Dixon, Tennessee Ernie Ford, William Randolph Hearst and Teddy Roosevelt.
To get the facts in the Wilde case, one goes to a source document, which in this case happens to be an article published in the San Francisco Chronicle on October 24, 1897. The author is a journalist named Dan O'Connell, Irish-born grandnephew of Daniel O'Connell, "The Liberator," who had won Catholic Emancipation for the Irish in 1829 �" that is, Irish Catholic men could vote and be elected to the British Parliament. San Francisco's Dan O'Connell, who spoke Gaelic along with other languages, had left the British Navy to join an uncle in New York. Upon his uncle's demise in 1868, O'Connell moved to San Francisco and settled here. In a wonderfully drawn-out metaphor, he tells us exactly what happened that evening on April's Fool's Day of 1882 when Oscar Wilde visited the Bohemian Club. The Bohemians were lying in wait to put this young Caesar in his place.
O'Connell was present that evening, as he had been present at Wilde's first lecture in San Francisco (the Irishman would give 10 lectures here in 12 days). Dan had been one of the founding members of the Bohemian Club in 1872. He had quite a few publications, including a book whose title hints at his sense of humor, The Inner Man: Good Things to Eat and Drink, and Where to Find Them. He also was a professor of Latin, Greek and Mathematics at Bay Area Catholic universities. He makes a formidable witness as to the proceedings the night of April 1.
Some Bohemians had been among those who welcomed the 28-year-old Dubliner Wilde at the train terminus in Oakland a couple of days previously. They accompanied him on the ferry, and to his lodging at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, a luxurious establishment where he would have his choice of 13 restaurants. O'Connell notes that in San Francisco, Wilde was "regarded in about the same light as the Wild Man of Borneo."
The Bohemians invited the visitor to come to dinner at the club during his stay. O'Connell describes the set-up: "I must say that the feeling in the club was one of mingled curiosity and enthusiasm. The wise men of Bohemia [had] held a conference and decided that the mask should be torn from the face of this imposter. Figuratively speaking, every guest attended the feast with a dagger hidden beneath his toga.
"The chief conspirators, those who were expected to administer the coup de grace, were Judge Hoffman and General Barnes. Oscar was to be well fed and wined, and when bursting with viands and liquid to be led to the altar and knifed. Judge Hoffman, whose reputation as a classic stood high in the clubs and the Bar Association, was to do him up with the ancients, and General Barnes was to wipe the floor with him on English literature."
Oscar arrived in his black velvet coat. "At dinner Wilde was placed upon the right of General Barnes, and Judge Hoffman opposite, with instructions [to them], when the proper time arrived, to open the attack and demolish Oscar.
"There was a feeling of impatience among the crowd. Even as the Roman grew impatient for the hustling of the Christian martyrs into the arena, so did those bloodthirsty Bohemians await the sacrifice of Oscar. When the walnuts and the sparkling wine came in, Judge Hoffman opened the attack. But the old gentleman was no match for a young man fresh from Oxford, where he had taken a gold medal for those things with which the Judge endeavored to confound him.
"[Eventually] Wilde grew nettled and not only parried Hoffman's thrust but lunged back in return, until the Judge lost his temper and the contest. General Barnes pitched in to the aid of his fellow Bohemian," but the young Irishman outclassed them.
As O'Connell (who, you will not be surprised to hear, was also a fencer) put it, "When the guests arose from the table Wilde's victory was complete �" the old gladiator, bleeding from a hundred mortal wounds, is removed, feebly babbling about the unfairness of his defeat."
All reports agree Oscar departed the Bohemian Club that evening in the best of spirits, thanking his hosts for a fine event, and ready the following day to continue to lecture San Franciscans and America on the art of living graciously. How different this is from the booze-dominated accounts of such historians as Kevin Starr and David M. Friedman, both of whom portray Wilde as merely a formidable young Irish drinker rather than as the wit, poet and intellectual that he was.
O'Connell was an eyewitness. He recorded the true Battle of the Bohemian Club. But the false version is still promoted in book after book. I wonder what Oscar would say.