Galignani Messenger - Saturday, April 6, 1895

LONDON ECHOES
FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT

LONDON, April 5.

The collapse of the Oscar Wilde case surprised nobody. The marvel is why this apostle of the beautiful—knowing what was in the background of his life—should have thought it advisable to take proceedings against Lord Queensberry. After the first day's cross-examination it was plain that the man had walked deliberately into a morass of infamy from which there was no escape. Mr. Carson managed his case with consummate skill. He invited Oscar Wilde to unfold those peculiar views of morality which may be amusing enough in a flippant farce, but were utterly out of place in a court of justice. That in the gravest emergency of his life this man, who complained of being charged with "posing as an immoral person," should pose before the jury as a philosopher who saw no distinction between right and wrong, simply amazed his auditors and disgusted his counsel. The evidence which Mr. Carson was not obliged to produce was, I understand, of the most appalling kind. The mere shadow of it has overwhelmed Oscar Wilde with social ruin, even supposing there are no graver consequences. He is extinguished as a playwright, for I hear that contracts for the performance of his pieces are being cancelled right and left.