The Adelaide Observer - Saturday, April 27, 1895

ECHOES FROM LONDON.
[BY OXONIAN.]
London, March 15.

Apart from political clubs, the question of the vacant Speakership is not found so interesting as the forthcoming prosecution of Lord Queensberry for a criminal libel. The history of the case, which dates back for two years, is briefly as follows: — The Marquis of Queensberry has a son, Lord Alfred Douglas, of about three-and-twenty years of age. He was up at Magdalen College, Oxford, two or three years back, and ran a paper called the Spirit Lamp, an erotic and erratic effusion. The contents of this remarkable production were so startling and Hedonistic that the dons ought promptly to have repressed it. It was currently reported that they would have done so many times over had they been able to read the Verlainesque poetry which adorned its pages. But being mere professors of Greek and Latin they did not understand modern European languages sufficiently to appreciate the subtleties of up-to-date French verse written by an Englishman. However that may be, the fact remains that the Spirit Lamp continued the organ of a select and despised few until its proprietor, unable to get through his examinations, solved the question of his future career by retiring from the University. Oscar Wilde was a not infrequent contributor to the paper, and a very warm intimacy sprang up between the two. Now Oscar Wilde is a genius, and geniuses are eccentric. Lord Queensberry apparently does not seem to have thought that the companionship was doing his son any good. A fortnight ago he brought matters to a crisis by leaving a card at the Albemarle Club for Mr. Oscar Wilde. The four words written thereon were sufficiently startling for the waiter to note the day and the hour of its receipt on the face of the card and to enclose it in an envelope. The phrase has not been made public, but their import is not unfathomable. A sailor in his tenderest moments of endearment has a pleasing facility for emphatic expression. So has John Sholto Douglas. The perusal of the card was followed by a warrant, and in due course Lord Queensberry appeared at Marlborough-street. At the second hearing Lord Alfred Douglas walked into Court with Oscar Wilde only to be ordered to leave the building by Mr. Newton, the presiding Magistrate, who regarded the act rightly enough as one of gross filial indecency. The defendant was bound over to appear at the Old Bailey, and the very latest rumour is that the trio are at present at Monte Carlo, though their stay will be necessarily limited by the approaching sitting of the Court. Clubland, especially the Albemarle, which includes both ladies and gentlemen, is highly interested in the new development, and it is a wild conjecture as to whether their joint presences at Monte Carlo is due to arrangement or accident. The present Marquis of Queensberry is the eighth bearer of the title, which he succeeded to thirty-six years ago at the age of fourteen. To him we owe the famous Queensberry rules and some extremely bad poetry. He holds peculiar views on many subjects — religion, politics, and matrimony. He was considerably annoyed a few months ago on hearing himself described as a Unionist, and expressed a fear that the horrid statement might deeply affect his future reputation. For fifteen years he had been an ardent though silent Home Ruler. A lecture given by him some two years ago on our present system brought but little new material into the arena occupied by such champions as Grant Allen, George Egerton, and other opponents of the sanctity of the hearth. It was listened to with the respect which a career involving two marriages and two divorces naturally commands.