History

Born the first son of a wealthy family, Oscar grew up with all the privilege but little of the attention one might expect. He was two months old when his mother, still struggling from a difficult birth, left him in the larder of a friend’s estate, slipping away from the ongoing Sylvester party without her husband—or her shoes. What followed was nearly a decade in and out of various sanatoria, while his father, unwilling to challenge the opinion of her doctors and unable to face his wife’s suffering, retreated to the north under the pretense of tending to the family business.

Meanwhile, Oscar was raised on the family’s country estate, surrounded by tutors, governesses, and the occasional matronly servant—all too eager to spoil the only child of a sickly mother who, having been strongly encouraged to avoid undue excitement, inadvertently imposed the same restriction on the rest of the household. In the absence of any real entertainment worthy of the name, Oscar quickly learned to make his own fun and turn his boyish charms on the staff for extra attention.

A delicate, introspective teenager raised to expect a certain deference from his surroundings, he should have struggled in Eton’s elitist environment—but, proving unexpectedly resilient to changed circumstances, Oscar hit the ground running. After the dearth of stimulation that had marked his childhood, boarding school provided an abundance of new experiences and a hunger for the novel that never quite faded. He turned out to be a capable student, his good marks owing as much to his natural curiosity as to the recognition he received. His propensity for mischief endeared him to his peers, and though the thrashings he received from his tutors did little to deter him, they tempered his impulses with much-needed restraint.

Oscar wasn’t initially taken by the idea of pursuing art. When he first arrived in Oxford, he intended only to do his due diligence as his father’s heir and prepare for his future role as the Earl of Orkney. But by chance, he accompanied a friend who had been invited to sit for a group of art students, and he fell in love—first with the atmosphere, then with the art itself. Before long, he was taking classes on the side and spending his weekends among fellow creatives, reading medieval literature, discussing aesthetics, and wandering the countryside. He kissed his first boy in the shadow of Godstow Abbey, and when that first attempt at love ended in heartbreak—as they so often do—he fell into a tumultuous affair with a fellow poet. When the atmosphere in town inevitably shifted following Simeon Solomon’s trial for gross indecency, Oscar, ruefully, guilty, applied himself to his studies with renewed vigor.

Though he was initially eager to take his place in the family business, Oscar soon found there was little room for him to do so. His father, now well past fifty, neither welcomed his input nor approved of his artistic inclinations, which he blamed for his wife’s nervous disposition. Having spent two decades buried in estate matters to avoid facing her illness, he had no interest in sharing the responsibility now. After two months of wandering the island while his father conducted business with one of their shipyards, Oscar was all too pleased to receive a visit from fellow graduates intent on undertaking the Grand Tour of Europe. Begging leave from his father, he absconded across the Channel soon after.
It was supposed to be a great Grand Tour. Eighteen months, the way their grandparents might have done, going over Paris, Vienna and Rome all the way to Greece. But four months in, Oscar lost two of his companions to the charms of Montmartre and another to a doe-eyed servant girl in Zurich. By the time he arrived in Italy, he was alone but determined to go on.

He met Bartholomeo in a café after wandering the underground city of Perugia. The son of an impoverished aristocratic family, Bartholomeo was, like Oscar, an artist with a passion for cultural heritage. On his suggestion, they teamed up for company.

For Oscar, it was love. For his companion, it was... something else. Allowing Bartholomeo to persuade him into taking a risqué photograph as a "small memento" proved as poor an idea as it sounded on paper, for it didn’t take long before Bartholomeo demanded money in exchange for the plates. Devastated and embarrassed by his own naivety, Oscar parted with most of his travel funds and fled north, where he spent a month in a small Tyrolean border town, waiting for his father to wire him enough money to return home after his alleged "robbery."

Unready to face his family, he moved to London to lick his wounds. He enrolled in classes at the Royal Academy of Arts and published a few poems he had written on the continent (to limited acclaim), but mostly, he languished, restless and searching for something to hold his attention.

In the end, he found an unlikely business partner in Mrs. Douglas, a madam he had met through one of his occasional models. Her proposal was simple enough: a business he would own, and she would run; a place both exclusive and discreet. She would bring the expertise, he would provide the money, and they would both benefit.

Not long after, Maggie’s Place first opened its doors.