The Lyttelton Times - Saturday, April 13, 1895

SNAPSHOTS:

The great originator and apostle of modern aestheticism, Oscar Wilde, is in a bad way. His plays, which were not without genius, are still being performed, but without acknowledgment of their authorship; his fame has fallen to the lowest notoriety, and he is in gaol. Hard lines, but surely no more than he deserves. Gilbert, the very greatest of modern satirists, depicted the apostle of aestheticism as followed about by a crowd of beautiful women, from whose attentions—it being Saturday—he was constrained to beg the favour of "the usual half-holiday." That there was far more in the point than colonial audiences ever dreamed now begins to be clear. The Marchioness of Queensberry was the mother of four sons, but disputation is confined to number three—Lord Douglas. Wilde has displayed quite a fatherly interest in number three, and number three, quite singularly, is far more affectionately attached to Wilde than to the Marquis. But all this was public property, quite familiar, before it became notorious through the recent law proceedings. The evidence that was coming, and which led Wilde’s counsel to "chuck up" his brief, must have been something which the public did not know, and something much more "powerfully smelling." Wilde was "a funny little man"—"a fellow of infinite jest, of most exquisite fancy"—and yet wrapped up in all this dirt! Here’s a moral for the moralists. He lies in gaol so poor in reputation that there is none so base as know him.

FLANEUR.