The Evening Journal - Saturday, June 8, 1895

London Echoes.
[BY OXONIAN.]
London, May 3.

The effect of the month's imprisonment on Mr. Wilde while waiting for trial has been terrible. He has got that peculiarly livid appearance which imprisonment stamps on all its victims. Some take years to acquire it, others show it from the moment that the key turns in the lock. It is quite as much mental as physical. In the finer natures indeed it is mainly intellectual. Taylor, on the other hand, bears his share of care very lightly; £45,000 takes a certain amount of spending. That is the sum which Taylor has "fluttered" within the last four years. Extravagance with its attendant virtues leaves its traces behind also. But apart from these silent witnesses Taylor was almost jubilant. As usual the pendulum has commenced to swing back, and the people who were calling Mr. Wilde very harsh names are now bestowing sympathy upon him. The case has, however, brought up some interesting points as to the identity of an author with his books. A man has written a book containing, say, two or three very dubious and shady characters. Sentiments are put into their mouths not tending to edification; aphorisms, perhaps, of a questionable purport are scattered over the pages. The author one day finds himself in a witness-box facing a brilliant cross-examiner. Now, supposing the lawyer well versed in the witnesses' books, the most unfair results can be arrived at. A man's actions and his writings are and must be considered two totally different things, and we no more think of condemning a man for his leading articles than Shakespeare for having created, and no doubt delighted in creating, a monster of wickedness like lago. If an author is so unlucky as to get mixed up with causes celebres and Criminal Courts, at least his works ought to be strictly judged. If it became common to make implications against a man in a Court of Law because his books were of an immoral tendency, where would be the freedom of literature? It would, we hold, be dangerous and unjust to revive the censorship of the Press, particularly in the irregular and arbitrary form of cross-examination. And in saying this, we do not forget that there is such a place as France and such a man as Zola. We do not want the liberty of our own country to degenerate into the licence of our neighbours. On the other hand — and I wonder it has not been more often remarked — there is no art so indiscreet, so autobiographical in a word, as novel writing. George Moore, the hero of the recent squabble with Whistler, in which, however, bloodshed was happily averted, made this remark, we remember, of painting. It is just as true of the novel. No one, for example, who has ever read the works of Thackeray need read a life of their author. He stands confessed — that he was dilatory, that he gambled and was badly "taken in" in his youthful days, that he had domestic troubles, and that he loved the "vie de Boheme." All these facts are writ large over his work, and in a less degree it is true of most other novelists. If you want an insight into their character and their preferences read their works. So the cross-examiner was at any rate guided by a sound instinct. Ex pede Herculem.