Lord Arthur Savile's Crime by Oscar Wilde (1887)

                 Enter Mr Podgers and the awful meaning of Doom    

                                                                         

A strange sense of fatalism surrounds Oscar Wilde's short story Lord Arthur Savile's Crime. A dark humour murder tale with a sort of Guy de Monpaussent type twist at the end. Centred round salon hostess Lady Windermere, seemingly infatuated by cheiromancers (palmreaders ) and fortune tellers generally. Amongst her guests is a young aristocrat by the name of Lord Arthur Savile, who is recently engaged. The hired Cheiromancer is Mr Podgers. There are plenty of Wilden type witticims in play, but the old age problem emerges. What happens if a psychic happens to detect some quite unpleasant destiny? Do they disclose this to their client or bluff their way through the consultation? 

What is odd is that there was a Lord Arthur Somerset who fell from a charmed life of being part of the Prince of Wales's inner circle into 'never to return' state of exile in 1889. Lord Arthur was named by rent boys and police alike as being a notable client in the Cleveland Street male brothel scandal in July of that year. Lord Arthur fled before a warrant was issued for his arrest. His nickname was 'Podge'. Of course Oscar Wilde's involvement with young male prostitutes- once exposed in court- arguably destroyed him. It is sometimes assumed that Lord Arthur Savile's Crime was a reference to Lord Arthur Somerset, but the first version of the story was published in three parts in The Court and Society Review 1887-before Cleveland Street- though republished as a single edition in 1891 when the scandal would still be quite recent news.

In fact Lord Arthur Savile's Crime is very different from the downfall of either Wilde or Lord Somerset. Mr Podgers is very disturbed to read the outline of Lord Arthur Savile's destiny as it appears in his palm. In fact he will not disclose to the party what he has seen.After some persuading he predicts that Lord Arthur will go on a journey and that a distant relative will die. Lord Arthur Savile manages to corner Mr Podgers later in the evening without others present. After Lord Savile promised a hundred guinea cheque (£105 sterling, about £17,000 today), the men sit down to talk. The actual conversation is not disclosed. 

Ten minutes later  a distraught Lord Savile is walking around Picadilly. It transpires that Mr Podgers has informed him that he will commit murder and was discreet enough not to want to entertain the whole party with such a prediction. Lord Arthur Savile postpones his marriage and decides that he might as well get the killing over with. He embarks on two hopeless attempts at murder, which fail dismally. Finally Lord Savile fulfils the Cheiromancer's prediction by throwing Mr Podgers into the Thames one dark night. There are no witnesses and a leading newspaper suspects that Mr Podgers has taken his own life. Lord Savile is free to marry, but can not escape his fate as a murderer. Mr Podgers had effectively sealed his own doom via his prediction. Apart from Picture of Dorian Gray , Wilde tended not to include murders in his work. 

The story ends with Lord Arthur Savile marrying the girl whom he loves. He encounters Lady Windermere some years later who has by now moved on from cheiromancy, declaring that Mr Podgers was a "dreadful imposter", and  advises that she was now intrigued by telepathy. 

It is known that Oscar Wilde met the famous 'reader of palms' and all round psychic Cheiro ( William John Warner also known as Count Louis Hammon ) in 1893. The latter was at a reception held by Blanche Roosevelt. Guests who were meeting Cheiro produced their hands from behind a curtain. Cheiro advised that Wilde's palms were quite contrasted. "The left hand is the hand of a king, but the right that of a king who will send himself into exile." Wilde was advised that this would happen when he was 41. CHEIRO 1912 .  Cheiro also claimed to have seen Wilde in a cafe in Paris in 1900 and went over to talk to him ( at a time when many people were 'cutting' Wilde out). Cheiro found Wilde depressed and ill but was sympathetic to his plight. Cheiro also claimed to have been one of "the few who followed Wilde's coffin to the grave". CHEIRO 1912. Yet such statements were made some 20 years later after Wilde's death, and Cheiro could have embellished his contact with Wilde. 

In 1894 Wilde consulted another cheiromancer, Mrs Robinson, 'The sybil of Mortimer Street' who advised "I see a very brilliant life for you up to a certain point.Then I see a wall. Beyond the wall I see nothing." Paradoxically, Mrs Robinson predicted that Wilde and Bosie would go on a long voyage, the following January, and would be "always hand in hand together". (Wilde and Bosie did in fact go to Algeirs at the next Winter)  STURGISS Mrs Robinson's The Graven Palm from 1911 contained an illustration of one of Wilde's hands. 

Later in De Profundis, Wilde's was to claim  "To each of us different fates are meted out." ......

The above is another adapter extract from a longer piece  titled Podge and Prejudice- The Downfall of Lord Arthur Somerset 

Picture Credit 

Edouard Manet, The Cafe Concert (1978), currently at The Walters Art Museum. In the public domain, courtesy of Wikipedia UK

Online 

Analysis of Oscar Wilde's Lord Arthur Savile's Crime by Nasrullah MAMBROL from Literary Theory & Critcism blog

Cheiros Memoirs Text of CHEIRO's book from 1912. To give its full title Cheiro's Memoirs The Reminisences of a Society Psalmist,including King Edward the Seventh, W.E. Gladstone, C.S.Parnell and others. 

Genius At Life   -Oscar Wilde Endlessly Reimagined by Academics  and Aficionados   Review by Annette FEDERICO , Times Literary Suppplement, 24th January 2020. 

Palmistry for All   Text of Cheiro's book (1916 edition of 1894 original) from Internet Archive

Remembering Cheiro The Dublin Man Who Became An Infamous Member of the Occult, History Blogspot post from 2018 (writer not credited) 

De Profundis   Oscar Wilde online text, contains advertising

Lord Arthur Savile's Crime Oscar Wilde online text, contains advertising

Books

Oscar Wilde, Richard ELLMAN,Hamish Hamilton, 1987

The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde, Joseph PEARCE, Harper Collins, 2000

Oscar A Life , Mathew STURGISS, Head of Zeus Limited, 2018 

Linked Post from this blog

Oscar Wilde's Scandalous Summer  Review of work by Antony Edmonds concerning Wilde's visit to Worthing in 1894. 

Other blogs from this writer 

A Burnt Ship  17th century War & Literature 

World War 2 Poetry   As stated on the tin.

Thank you once again to all visitors from around the world who are visiting this blog. Your interest is so appreciated. 

Michael Bully

Worthing

West Sussex, England

7th October 2026

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