Melbourne Punch - Thursday, May 30, 1895

CURRENT NOTES.

PROBABLY, so far as the general public is concerned, the departure of Oscar Wilde from the dock on Saturday last to serve the sentence [of] two years with hard labour imposed upon him by Judge Wills, was the last scene of all in [this] strange eventful history. Not many people will regret with the Justice that the sentence [cou]ld not be made heavier, not because the punishment is in any measure adequate to the unspeakable crimes of the accused, but from the knowledge of the degradation to which the jury's finding commits this man, who a few [sh]ort weeks back was an object of admiration and envy to a large proportion of the people of every country in which the English language is spoken and read. The punishment the judge was empowered to inflict is trivial to that which must follow Wilde through life. If the prisoner's attitude in the court during the days of his last trial is any criterion, it is very evident that not all his extraordinary cynicism, nor his great affectation of contempt for the opinions of the vulgar, can render him indifferent to the contumely that must follow him wherever he goes henceforth. In fact, it would appear that Wilde's appearance of arrogant self-sufficiency was merely a cloak under which he sought to hide an abnormal sensitiveness, the result of extraordinary conceit, and he was simply crushed when he saw at last that there remained no means of escape from the consequence of his iniquities. He has been a notoriety hunter all his life; for the future he can only evade obliquity and the loathing of his fellows by one course — a course that must have suggested itself to him before this, as it has suggested itself to hundreds of thousands who have been interested in following his case — the use of the poison bowl or the "bare bodkin."