Evening Herald - Monday, April 8, 1895

"ART."

"You are not an artist," said Wilde at the Old Bailey when Mr Carson refused to take some piece of shameless immorality as "a work of pure beauty." "No, I am not an artist," rejoined Mr Carson, "and when I hear some of your answers, I am very glad of it." Of the many scathing things said by the same counsel in the course of his powerful conduct of a most painful case, this was perhaps the most trenchant and memorable.

It is, of course, a great error and a great injustice to confound a school in the condemnation of an individual. But every reader of our columns, as he passes his eye over the report of Wilde’s apology for his life and work, at the Old Bailey; must surely have realised, with accumulating significance at every line, the terrible risks involved in certain artistic and literary phases of the day. Art, we are told, has nothing to do with morality. But, even if this doctrine were true, it has long ago been perverted, under the treatment of the decadents, into a positive preference on the part of "Art" for the immoral, the morbid, and the maniacal. It is on this narrower issue that the proceedings of the last few days have thrown so lurid and so convincing a light. We have no desire to revive here the memory of any of the degraded literature which it was Mr Carson’s painful duty to exhibit in its true tendency at the Old Bailey. Let us sincerely hope that it will forthwith be consigned to the limbo which the poet has prepared for all such—"dust and ashes—dead and done with"; and it were well if a good deal else besides—in the shape of "perfect works of art" by some other authors—were sent to keep it company. But this terrible case, apart from any subsequent proceedings, which of course we exclude from our present purview, may be the means of incalculable good if it burns in its lesson upon the literary and moral conscience of the present generation.

It pleases the practitioner of "Art for Art’s sake" to draw a hard line between thoughts and emotions, writing and conduct. "Emotions may be immoral," we have been told in the witness-box; "thought never is." "The perfect book never influences anybody," and so on through the whole gamut of sophistries and inanities—recently deduced by "The Philistine" in these columns as "reductions to absurdity," but paraded at the Old Bailey as serious excuses. Well, the "artist" now has an opportunity of reconsidering himself. No man—and still more, no community—has ever succeeded in setting "art" and thought in a vacuum and hermetically sealing it off from emotion and conduct. The theory that you may think anything without being immoral is followed in due course, if it is not even preceded, by the theory that you may do what you think. Then at length comes the discovery that the whole thing rests on a basis of rottenness and corruption. There is nothing new in this; it has been seen over and over again in the history of the world, and the end is always the same. It has not gone far in England, for the Philistine element is strong to check the excesses of the artistic temperament. But it has gone far enough, and the crushing exposure which has come in this case will, we hope, give pause to some who have followed, either in sheer thoughtlessness or in the perverted notion that they have a mission to emancipate "Art" from the discipline of civilised mankind.

A few words on the ethics of publicity which have been exercising the journalistic conscience. Would it have been in the public interest in the case against Lord Queensberry had been heard in camera? And, as it was not, would it have been in the public interest if the newspapers had not reported the proceedings? For our part, we answer these questions unhesitatingly in the negative, and we believe that most people who quietly think the matter out will agree with us. But it is important to distinguish. There are reports and reports; and some at least who believe that the balance of advantage is on the side of publicity have not on that account refrained from the duty of judicious editing. In the present case this duty has, in most papers, been freely exercised. Again, we have not, of course, a word to say against those of our contemporaries who on one day of the two or three during which the trial lasted abstained from giving any report at all. There are many readers of news and many newspapers; and there is no reason whatever why special newspapers should not be published for those readers who want to have such portions of the news of the day concealed from them as exhibit the seamy side of life. We only dissent when it is suggested that all the newspapers ought to do the same, and that, whenever a grave scandal occurs, it should be hushed up by a general conspiracy of silence on the part of the Press. We believe that such a course would be contrary to good morals and to good policy. The way to mitigate social evils is not always to hide them beneath the surface, but sometimes to expose them to light. Such evil as the exposure carries with it is balanced by at least equal good. And, lastly, publicity is essential to the ends of justice alike in securing its due administration, and in arming it with some of its most deterrent effects. The case in favour of publicity has been strongly put by Sir Francis Jeune, the President of the Divorce Court, who speaks with an experience and an authority on the subject to which no one else in the country can pretend. In conversation with a representative of the "Strand Magazine" a few months ago, the President was asked "whether he would have divorce cases suppressed in the newspapers." He replied emphatically in the negative:—

I am perfectly satisfied with the Press. Their discretion is admirable. The Press is the voice of the country. Justice is a public thing, and the administration of justice should be given all publicity. If this were not done, how would the public ever know that litigants were getting their rights?

The general principles thus laid down by Sir Francis Jeune, as well as some other points made in the course of these observations of ours, are all strongly illustrated in the present case. It is impossible to exaggerate the bad effects of the unpleasant speculations, suggestions, and suspicions which would have resulted from the trial of the case in camera, especially in view of the standing of the immediate parties to it, and of others whose names were dragged in. Of the added terrors to the evil-doers, and of the strengthening of the arm of the law which publicity involves, it would be improper to speak at this stage; but the point is obvious on the surface. And, returning in conclusion, to the main drift of this article, who can doubt that public attention called to the present case will have a most salutary effect, in many different directions, upon those who are hovering in a state of moral obfuscation caused by the decadent theory of "Art for Immorality" sake?—"Westminster Gazette."