South Canterbury Times - Monday, May 27, 1895

South Canterbury Times.

MONDAY, MAY 27, 1895.

The conclusion of the Oscar Wilde prosecution has not concluded the stirring up of one of the moral sludgeholes of London, as there is at least one other offender to be prosecuted. The effect of the stirring has been unpleasant, yet that was the only way to do anything at all towards the removal, not only of this particular specimen of foulness, but of others of like kind. And yet it is not to be expected that more good will be done by stirring up the mud further. The remaining delinquent, being but a young fellow, and a member of an eccentric family, will be leniently judged as a juvenile led away by older men. It is quite a fortunate thing that the principal culprit, in the public estimation, is Oscar Wilde the artist, and not Alfred Douglas the aristocrat, because it has never been taught by anyone that title or wealth gives the owner a special license for libertinism and filthiness, whereas there are some artists who dare to claim the right, as artists, to ignore all moral laws, natural or conventional. Wilde was one of these, and asserted the right by implication at the trial of the Marquis of Queensberry for libel. As the prosecutor in that case Wilde was cross-examined at length on the moral tendencies of a certain book he had written, and of articles in a magazine to which he had been a contributor, when he denied that "works of art," including literature, are to be judged by any moral measure at all. A certain story which the examining counsel selected as immoral and blasphemous, Wilde denied to be either; it was disgusting and worse than immoral—only because it was badly written. It did not offend his moral sense at all, but it mightily offended his literary taste. "There is no such thing as morality or immorality in art. Books are well written or badly written. That expresses my view on art." This too, as numerous Press criticisms we have lately met with show, expresses the view of numerous writers and publishers of fiction. Sensible and decent people have been disgusted by this end-of-the-century bias in literature, but they have hitherto been without an effective reply to the "artists' claim that their right and their duty is to work "For Art's sake," without any reference to morality at all. This unsavoury Wilde case, however, has given them a crushing reply to any such claim, and he or she—"she" has been a large offender of late—will surely never dare to put forward that plea again, to invite the retort: "Yes—live 'for Art's sake,' and see where it lands you!"