Relative Failures by Matthew Sturgis: Fascinating tales of sibling rivalry

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Sibling relationships are invariably fascinating and in the case of the famous, they cast a sideways light on the main character which illumines them differently.

Matthew Sturgis has written wonderful biographies of Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley — he inhabits the 1890s like a native — and his look at their siblings in Relative Failures gives a fresh perspective on them.

The third is Howard Sturgis, brother of novelist Julian Sturgis: both his great, great uncles.

“All of them made their mark on the crowded stage of the 1890s,” Sturgis observes.

“They were part of that fascinating era … when the high water mark of Victorian self-confidence was passing, old verities were coming under attack and a sense of fin-de-siècle recklessness and experiment vied with a sense of autumnal decadence and decay.”
Willie Wilde seemed like the more brilliant, older son; outgoing and charming where Oscar was bookish.

Yet he was fatally indolent, thirsty and extravagant.

He failed as a lawyer, went on to be a leader writer at the Telegraph in the golden age of journalism and as his fortunes decayed became the fourth, discarded husband of an American magnate.

The siblings’ relationship, originally affectionate, declined.

“My poor, dear brother, he could compromise a steam engine,” wrote Oscar.

Mabel Beardsley, clever and attractive, adored her brother Aubrey and was adored by him.

Theirs was the most important relationship for both, notwithstanding Mabel’s later marriage.

She was a moderately successful actor but she shone as a friend; after Aubrey’s death, she kept a salon immortalised in WB Yeats’s poems Upon a Dying Lady.

Howard Sturgis is fascinating.

An aesthete who enjoyed needlepoint, he was overshadowed by his brother.

Yet, family loyalty apart, wouldn’t, say, William James, brother of Henry, have been a better subject?

Or Henry Beerbohm Tree, half-brother of Max Beerbohm?

Perhaps Matthew Sturgis could add more siblings to this engaging and original study.

Relative Failures by Matthew Sturgis is out on April 16 (Head of Zeus/Apollo, £25)