The Tuapeka Times - Wednesday, April 10, 1895

LOCAL AND GENERAL NEWS.

Oscar Wilde, who first became famous through the æsthetic craze that took such a hold of the fashionable world some years ago, has fallen very low, so very low, indeed, that the infamy of his position can be no more than hinted at. His charge of criminal libel against the Marquis of Queensberry has ended in his own arrest, and, before the end is seen, may not improbably result in putting the greatest dandy since Lord Chesterfield's time into a convict-dress for a good many years. What years of curious and not un-philosophic reflection are yet before the æsthetic Oscar! That he is a man of genius of a certain kind is undeniable. His mother, who is still alive, has written poetry, under the name of "Speranza," that will outlive her a good many years; and his father, who died a good many years ago, was an oculist whose fame extended far beyond Dublin, of which city he was a distinguished member of the medical profession. The Queen, as a special mark of distinction, conferred on him the honor of knighthood. Wilde, it will, therefore, be seen, comes from a good stock, and the ruin that has overwhelmed and destroyed him once again reminds us of the unutterable rottenness of what is known as fashionable "society" in London. The Marquis of Queensberry is a man of wild and eccentric habits. He has been in his time a patron of pugilists, and to-day ring fighting is conducted under what are known as the Queensberry rules. He has not in his time done much credit to his order, and his exposure of Wilde is about the most meritorious act of his life. Wilde was arrested immediately after the trial, and so were some of his horrible associates; and the trial which will follow will no doubt be something like a second chapter of the Boulton and Park case which some years ago, so hideously impressed the English-reading world.