LARGER THAN LIFE, the statue of John Betjeman (1906–1984) in the newly renovated St. Pancras International Station in London serves as a reminder of the late Poet Laureate’s love of rail travel. But its proximity to the Victorian Midland Grand Hotel has an added poignancy, for the hotel’s dining room was the scene of one of Oscar Wilde’s public humiliations. Decades after that incident, what A. N. Wilson would describe as Betjeman’s “lifelong hatred of the society which sent Oscar Wilde to prison” led to an unlikely friendship and would inspire one of his best poems.
In the mid-1890’s the Marquess of Queensbury (“the screaming scarlet Marquess,” as Wilde called him) was hounding the playwright around London, threatening hotel managers and headwaiters with a brawl if his son, Lord Alfred Douglas, was ever found with Wilde on their premises.
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