The Adelaide Observer - Saturday, May 25, 1895

The Observer.
ADELAIDE, MAY 25, 1895.

"FORWARD" is the proud motto of the Queensberry family, and certainly several of its modern representatives have "gone the pace" at a great rate. In what direction they have advanced each reader may decide to his own satisfaction. The present head of the line has been known to the world in circumstances which made all the more remarkable his performance of a public service as censor of morals in the wretched cases with which the name of Oscar Wilde will ever be connected in history. The noble Marquis's principal claim to fame rests upon his invention of the "Queensberry Rules for the Government of Glove Fights." But though the preparation of this code has secured for him a celebrity only second to that of the great J.L. Sullivan, it is not his only noteworthy achievement. When Lord Queensberry was not witnessing bouts of fisticuffs he sometimes occupied himself in the hardly less questionable pursuit of writing what his friends termed poetry. His verses were, however, not so good as his Rules; and they would probably be deemed still more mediocre than the critics represent them to be but for the fact that they are recommended by external and adventitious considerations. When a poet is able to knock down a man who objects to hearing him read his effusions that poet has a better chance of appreciation than an ordinary paper-spoiler can boast.

But clearly enough there are limitations to the power of the inspired Marquis of the biceps and the Muse. He may regulate prize-fighters and subdue critics of poetry, but he has never been able to discipline his own family; so that evidently it will be useless for him to attempt to top off his fame by ordination as a Bishop. Bishops must be competent to rule their own households. The Marquis has failed egregiously in the effort to do this. Though only fifty-one years of age he has been divorced from two wives, and has quarrelled with nearly all his offspring. He was terribly annoyed because his eldest son, now dead, was given a seat in the House of Lords when the grant of a similar distinction was denied to himself. The differences between him and his third son, Lord Alfred Douglas, have recently been sadly disclosed in the Wilde case. It certainly seems at this end of the world as though the father were trying to save the young fellow from himself, but nobody can declare the real truth of the matter. Anyhow, there is painful significance in the unfilial conduct of that son, if his behaviour were judged only by his openly expressed regrets that he was unable to act as a bondsman for Oscar Wilde when that gross "transcendentalist" was committed for trial in consequence of the Marquis's revelations. The later action of the eldest surviving son in entering into recognizances for Wilde's appearance at Court is miserably suggestive in the same way. Indeed, the relations of the father and both sons represent a sorry spectacle for the contemplation of supporters of the hereditary nobility. The Marquis threatens with a whipping the stripling fascinated by Wilde, and is told promptly by the youth that he is "a man" and "carries a revolver." The father leaves him alone, whether because of his manhood or his revolver carrying does not appear. The other son meets him in a public street, grossly insults him, and is knocked down by him. Parent and offspring wrestle in deadly grapple until the police run them into the cells like any two Whitechapel costers. An appropriate ending to the first chapter of this melancholy history is the challenge of the wretched father to fight the unnatural son for £10,000. Surely if such a "fight to a finish" should in its result literally justify its name very few flags in Great Britain would be half-masted, and the public demand upon crape would not be embarrassing to the drapers.