By 1918, the first World War had been going on much too long. The British public were ready to consider the most preposterous theory of who was to blame, and Noel Pemberton Billing, a dementedly bigoted right-wing Member of Parliament, was ready to offer them one.
In a jingoistic London newspaper called the Imperialist, Billing explained that German agents, "so vile and spreading such debauchery and such lasciviousness as only German minds can conceive and only German bodies execute", had corrupted and blackmailed Britain's elite, preventing them from "putting their full strength into the war".
The Germans, Billing wrote, "with their usual efficiency", had compiled a "Black Book", a secret register of 47,000 influential English men and women who allegedly practised vices "all decent men thought had perished in Sodom and Lesbin (sic)".
Without citing names, Billing claimed that the book, which he had not actually seen, listed "Privy Councillors, wives of Cabinet Ministers, even Cabinet Ministers themselves, diplomats, poets, bankers, editors, newspapers proprietors, and members of His Majesty's Household".
Disappointed that persons of high rank did not publicly respond to his wide-ranging but vague accusation, Billing tried a different way of causing what Philip Hoare calls "a nationwide uproar".
Billing renamed the Imperialist the Vigilante to declare its "connection with the movement for Purity in Public Life known as the `Vigilante' movement". He then focused his crusading attention on a new production of Oscar Wilde's Salome which, he contended, epitomised the decadence that was making it so difficult to win the war.
Billing blamed Wilde's continuing influence for the most demoralising evils of London society. Furthermore, he blamed Maud Allen, an Isadora Duncanesque dancer already notorious for her prior performance of "The Vision of Salome", who was to star in Wilde's play.
In the Vigilante, Billing wrote that if Scotland Yard took the names of patrons of the play they would discover the identities of some of the subversives listed in the mythical Black Book. To make sure Maud Allan got full discredit for her participation, the article was headed, "The Cult of the Clitoris". The headline attracted the attention of at least one peer of the realm. Lord Albemarle "walked into the Turf Club," Hoare relates, "and asked who was `this Greek chap Clitoris' they were all talking about?' "
Said to have been encouraged by the Lloyd George government, who were tired of Billing's maverick campaign, Maud Allan, under the auspices of the Crown prosecutor, sued Billing for libel. The court case is reported here in detail, as is the manner in which Billing survived it.
Sleaze is a newish word (a backformation from sleazy and sleaziness); however, what it denotes is old, usually detected, truly or imaginarily, by politicians craving attention. The public lapped up scandal in 1918, as in 1997. Wilde's Last Stand is a sleazy book, but it is a clever one, written with lubricious glee, which may provide jaded readers with a few summer giggles.
Patrick Skene Catling is a novelist and critic