Reynolds's Newspaper - Sunday, June 2, 1895

SOME MYSTERIES OF THE WILDE CASE.

One curious change of policy was observed during the trial of the Queensberry, Wilde, and Taylor scandals. In the early stages of these cases everybody seemed agreed that no names should be mentioned unnecessarily, and the evidence became a patchwork of naughts and crosses, dotted with X, Y, and Z, where proper names should have been. The blanks were at first numerous, and a full score of little pieces of paper, with mysterious names written upon them, were handed to the various Judges and Magistrates who have had a hand in this unsavoury stew. Then on the Wednesday Taylor was called into the box, and being pressed for the name of one of his associates at Little College-Street, asked, "Must I mention my friend's name? I would RATHER WRITE IT DOWN."

"No," said the Solicitor-General, "we will have no names kept, back!" and Mr. Justice Wills quietly added, "if you write it, I shall read it out. I do not approve of mystery in cases of this kind. It is sometimes done good-naturedly, and great mischief is caused. It is supposed that there is some kind of mystery, and that the Judge and everybody else are concerned in a kind of conspiracy. We will have nothing of that kind."

Now, if this is a good rule for one, it is a good rule for all, and the public may be excused for trying to fill up some of the blanks which remain. For example, the Star says, it would be interesting to know:-

1. Who is the Oxford undergraduate who created the Chameleon, and seduced the unsuspecting Wilde and the innocent Lord Alfred Douglas into contributing to pages.

2. Who wrote the story of "The Priest and the Acolyte," which so polluted said pages, that even Wilde - he says himself - protested?

3. Who was the "friend of Lady Queensberry" who first took Lord Alfred Douglas to Tite-street and introduced him to Wilde in 1891?

4. Who was the friend of the Marquis of Queensberry who accompanied him on his visit to Tite-street in 1894, when he threatened Wilde with condign punishment if he did not cease to associate with Lord Alfred? Wilde applied to this friend his perpertually reocurring phrase, remarking that "his name was of no importance."

5. Who was the "gentleman" who lived at Margaret-street, Regent-street, in whose house Wilde first met Atkins and Mavor? (It may have been Schwabe, whose name was in the early stages of the case treated as a profound mystery.)

6. Who is the gentleman "whose name it is not necessary to mention" in whose company Charles Parker on one occasion called on Wilde at the Albemarle Hotel?

7. Who is the gentleman who was blackmailed of £500 by Allen and Wood at their den in Regent-street on accusations of misconduct with Charles Parker?

8. Who is the musical composer with whom Charles Parker went to Paris for a month - according himself as valet - six months after he first met Taylor?

9. Who is the "Birmingham gentleman" whose name was handed to Atkins on a piece of paper with a suggestions that he tried to blackmail him at 124 Tachbrook-street, on the occasion when he and Burton were taken to Rochester-row Police Station?

10. Who is the gentleman the same scoundrel are scorned of having blackmailed of £200 at 35, Alderney-street, in August, 1892?

11. Who are the "two American gentlemen" they are accused of having trial to blackmail at the Hotel Victoria in Northumberland-avenue in 1893?

12. Who is the "foreign nobleman" whose yacht lay off Scarborough whom they are accused of blackmailing of £500?

13. Who is the "elderly City man" they are accused of blackmailing by picking his pocket of his papers at their lodging in Buckingham-palace-road, afterwards going to his office and threatening to expose him?

A STRANGE STORY.

We have received some information which clearly establishes the fact that Oscar Wilde had at no time any intention of endevouring to escape from the country. It appears that every night for a week or more, a yacht was waiting at Gravesend to convey him across to the Continent. But Wilde would have nothing to do with this plan of his friends. He was determined to resolutely face the trial and its consequences. We are of opinion, however, that if he had attempted to get away the Government would not have been sorry, and no obstacle would have been placed is his path.

LETTER FROM THE REV. STEWART HEADLAM.

The Rev. Stewart D. Headlam, writing in his journal, the Church Reformer, yesterday, says:-

"I think it due to my friends, to make the following statement:-

"I became bail for Mr. Oscar Wilde on public grounds: I felt that the action of a large section of the Press, of the theatrical managers at whose houses his plays were running, and of his publisher, was calculated to prejudice his case before his trial had even begun.

"It was a surety, not for his character, but for his appearance in court to stand his trial. I had very little personal knowledge of him at the time; I think I had only met him twice; but my confidence in his honour and manliness has been fully justified by the fact that (if rumour be correct, notwithstanding strong inducements to the contrary) he stayed in England and faced his trial.

"Now that his trial is over, and Mr. Wilde has been convicted and sentenced, I still feel that I was absolutely right in the course I took, and I hope that, after he has gone through his sentence, Mr. Wilde may he able, with the help of his friends, to do good work in his fresh life."

TO THE EDITOR OF THE REYNOLDS'S NEWSPAPER.

SIR, - The Daily Chronicle has well said that the sentence on Oscar Wilde, "enforced, as it will be, by the severest rigours known to our abhorrent penal system, is virtually a sentence of death or of madness." And yet, notwithstanding this admission, the same journal, in a leaderette written two days after, refuses to publish any of the large number of letters addressed to it by "distinguished literary men" protesting against the severity, of the sentence--ergo, the Chronicle is content that Wilde shall suffer death for misdemeanour (not a crime or a felony, be it remembered), for which the law adjudges two years' imprisonment an adequate punishment.

The hostile attitude of the theatrical profession to the man who promised to be the greatest ornament to dynamic literature since the days of Sheridan is revolting. I know nearly all the artists in London from the highest to the lowest, and am sincerely attached to many of them; but their warmest admirers will hardly claim for them as a body a double dose of virtue. Yet managers have expunged Wilde's name from their avertisements, while pocketing the plunder attaching to his admirable work. I have no patience with the smug respectability which uses the work and disowns the workman. Why not mete the same treatment to Shakespeare, who has been directly accused--and by a well-known historian--of like sympathies, if not of like practices? Why not divorce Byron's name from "Childe Harold," and Marlow's from "Faustus," because both have been similarly suspected? Why not cloak the fact that Burns wrote "Tam o' Shanter," seeing that, in moral matters, we are told that he was "like a bull let loose on a herd"?

ADVOCATUS MISERICORDIA.

May 29, 1895.
TO THE EDITOR OF REYNOLDS'S NEWSPAPER.

SIR,--In your issue of May 26 in the article on "Male Prostitution," commenting on the recent trial of Oscar Wilde, the writer observes in references to the chief witnesses:--

"It is appalling to think that the conviction of any man should depend upon the testimony of such loathsome creatures. . . . Are the male strumpets who have given evidence in this case to go unpunished?"

Permit me through your columns to draw earnest attention to to your bold and salutary words. As one consequence as a result of this trial, we are menaced with a most serious social danger. Through the medium of Reynolds's Newspaper alone can the distateful topic be efficiently discussed. Elsewhere the Press appears to suffer from spurious delicacy.

See what has happened. Several persons, according to their own statements at the late trial, voluntarily committed, for payment, unlawful acts with Wilde. They are not put on their trail but Wilde is. Their evidence is accepted as proof of his guilt, and he is sentenced. But Shelley, the only "untrained" witness, is put aside, on the ground that his evidence is not sufficiently corroborated. To what class belong the others whose evidence was deemed satisfactory? To the most infamous and dangerous class with which Society is infested--the class of well-dressed "black-mailers." Thus "tainted" witnesses have secured a victory for the prosecution!

Now comes the question--Is this a victory for the prosecution alone? Is it not a victory for the black-mailing class also? What is to hinder these scoundrels from having imitators? Wilde suffers, not they. The results gives them a leverage with which to bear upon their future victims. You, sir, may well term this state of things "appalling."

Again, the evidence of confederates and black-mailers was admitted to be worthless. What turned the scale in the prosecution's favour? Corroboration. But if direct evidence is worthless, how can we be sure that apparent corroboration is not a mere concurrence of accidents, illusory as establishing Wilde's guilt?

"Oh, but," replied Sir Frank Lockwood, "what would you have? These vices are practised so secretly that full corroboration is difficut to get, it not impossible."

So it comes to this, that a man may be charged with indecency, and pronounced guilty, on the evience of confessed participants, who are, as blackmailers to boot, more criminal far than he is. Further,corroboration in all such cases is necessarily imperfect.--

Respectfully yours,

SIDNEY FITZGERALD.

May 20, 1895,
TO THE EDITOR OF REYNOLD'S NEWSPAPER.

SIR,--Once more and for the last I feel myself compelled to write a few words in defence of the unfortunate Oscar Wilde. I have read the forcible leading article in the Sunday edition of May 26, and I agree with everything in it except certain remarks bearing upon Mr. Wilde himself.

Those remarks I never will agree with, because I do not believe him to be guilty, even now. I know of no words forcible enough to express my own loathing, my disgust, my horror of such vile and trashy counterfeits of men as Messrs. Parker, Wood, Atkins, and Co.

I do not not think that a colder-hearted nor a more selfish creature than I am ever stepped in shoe leather. I have never felt interested in anyone hitherto, and I never cared for anybody except myself. But I suppose there must be a spark of womanly feeling in me after all, and if there is it has been called into some sort of life by the unfortunate subjet of this letter. What little sympathy I can give I have given to him from the very first, and I shall give it still.

I have waded through the evidence over and over again, and I can't see a single instance in which Wilde has spoken one ill word against his accusers nor any other person who may have been concerned in bringing about his social ruin for purposes of their own. He seems to me a just-dealing man, and a man of principle also, and, as far as I can see, he has never been unkind in his acts, nor spoken unkindly to anybody at any time. Even if I could bring myself to believe him a guilty man, I should consider that his punishment had already far exceeded his wrong-doing.

I cannot close this letter without saying what I think of the creature who has flaunted about in and out of the Old Bailey with yellow roses in his buttonhole, and his hat stuck airily upon the end of his walking-stick. If I were a man I would meet him face to face, and give him his deserts with my own hands. God, I would! He is the most outrageous little snob it is possible for one to conceive.--Yours, very angrily,

"A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE."