The Herald - Thursday, May 9, 1895

THE LONDON HORROR.
QUEENSBERRY ON TRIAL
WILDE IN THE BOX.

It is not often that London has been provided, remarks our correspondent, with such a strong, nasty and extraordinary sensation as the prosecution of the Marquis of Queensberry by Mr Oscar Wilde for leaving a libellous card at the Albemarle Club. There has been a tremendous rush for the evening papers, most of which gave verbatim reports of the truly nauseating evidence. The case came to an abrupt and dramatic close this morning, 5th April, with the sudden collapse of the prosecution and the Marquis triumphantly leaving the dock amid the loud cheers of his friends. This unexpected ending is, of course, tantamount to an expression of relief that the well-known poet of the aesthetic craze, and the successful dramatist of recent years, has been guilty of the unnatural offences that he was accused of by Lord Queensberry. His cross-examination by Mr Carson, Q.C., M.P., lasted for two days, and was of the most searching and severe on record. Lolling, and seemingly perfectly at his ease in the witness box, Oscar amused the crowded court with the numerous smart sayings, paradoxes, and epigrams that he introduced into the answers he gave to the questions of the cross-examining counsel. "I have never given adoration to anybody but myself," was perhaps his best and most audacious remark. "There is no such thing as an immoral book" was a pronouncement that made the judge and jury elevate their eye-brows, and when Oscar coolly observed that "religions die when they are proved to be true" the groundlings laughed and the judicious grieved. "Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others," was one of the strongest and spiciest of Oscar's utterances in the witness-box. Oscar Wilde is undoubtedly a man of considerable native talent, but his career may now be regarded as closed.