Bristol Mercury - Saturday, April 6, 1895

SATURDAY, APRIL 6, 1895.
THE BRISTOL MERCURY was established March 1, 1790, The BRISTOL DAILY POST was issued in conjunction with the MERCURY January 24 1890, and incorporated withit January 26,1878.
TELEPHONE NO: 149.
Oscar Wilde.

THE most striking event of the week is the sensational ending of a notorious trial which closes in nameless infamy the career of the apostle of aestheticism, the most fashionable of society playwrights. The Queensberry family has been eccentric for generations, but the Marquis must be given credit in this case for a courage which was lacking to other men, in getting rid of a pest which must have been known to many others in London beside himself. Egotistical effrontery has always been the main stock in trade of the author of "A Woman of No Importance," but it was simply colossal when, with the knowledge he possessed, he could stand in the witness box and engage in a clever play of wit with Mr. Carson, whose cross-examination was most masterly and at last beat down the guard even of his agile antagonist. Profound sympathy must be felt for the family of the sinner, and particularly for the two sons upon whose name an ineffaceable stigma will henceforth rest, but we are very strongly of opinion with the judge and jury that the action of Lord Queensberry and its results will be very greatly for the public good. As Mr W. S. Gilbert endeavoured years ago to show in drawing the character of Reginald Banthorne, there is something unhealthy and unwholesome even in the greenery yallery phase of maudlin aestheticism. The later developments of the same school both in literature and the drama have become undeniably sensual, and have made the most sacred relations and the most solemn obligations the subject of jeer and gibe. It is impossible to take up a review without seeing some protest against the outburst of hysteria from which literature is suffering. This trial sweeps away all the sophistries which are put forward in the name of art, and comes back to the plain old English proverb that it is impossible to touch pitch without being defiled. Oscar Wilde wrote and said many things which were shocking to ordinary minds, and seemed to have no further merit than that they were what other people would not think it right to say. He carried it off because Society is prone to take its entertainers at their own valuation, and he pretended that all this was cultured wit and the highest art. But we see what it has degraded him to when it makes a page of the "Daily Telegraph" read like a page from the life of Tiberius. In the light of this lurid commentary, Society will not wish to appear as what he painted it, and his downfall may be a public benefit in purifying the atmosphere of the stage and of the fashionable novel.