Liberty - Saturday, July 13, 1895

Liberty Run Wilde.
To the Editor of Liberty

Your editorial on "The Criminal Jailers of Oscar Wilde" denounces his imprisonment as "an outrage that shows how thoroughly the doctrine of liberty is misconstrued." Following this, you speak of his "sole offence" as a matter which concerned himself only. If so, I got a very wrong view of the case in court, and what he was tried for. As I understand it, he was not tried and convicted on any charge of committing an "unnatural crime," but on the charge of seducing others to his evil ways. One who may deprecate any interference with the liberty of a woman to dispose of her person as she chooses, for love or money, might nevertheless advocate criminal prosecution of a procuress, especially one who sought new victims among the very young.

This is the crime of Oscar Wilde, as I see it, and for which he is now serving his term of two years, unless I am much mistaken. He confesses to being greatly attracted to youth, though denying any such serious accusation as he was indicted for; but one who has any knowledge of men of his class well knows that one of their worst points is the disposition to seek out and make new victims of promising youth. This is made evident in their own confessions as quoted in Krafft Ebing’s "Psychopathia Sexualis." In it a long chapter is given to "urnings," a study of their peculiarities and how they come to be. Some almost seem to be proud of their perversity, and as anxious to make converts as the advocates of the most innocent fads or fancies. In the story of "The Picture of Dorian Grey," by Wilde himself, the same propensity forms a large element of the story, and offers a valuable moral lesson as to the danger of evil associations that corrupt good manners, while it further shows that the "hero" becomes utterly lost to all propriety and morality, and suicides at last as a complete physical and moral wreck. One who reads that story since the fall of Wilde can hardly escape the belief that it is largely autobiographical, and, so thinking, could even wish his sentence were twenty, instead of two, years

Rev. Mr. Headlam hopes Wilde may "yet recover his spirit and do good work for the world." To me this seems incredible —hopeless. If Wilde be not a victim of incurable insanity, his record must bar the Way to any reform. One can no more reasonably hope for reform and useful life in him than in Dorian Grey after he had slain his friend and victim. The story carried him along to the only possible end of such a life, —self obliteration. If the logic of equal liberty and personal freedom can sanction keeping hands off from such as Wilde and Taylor so long as they revel only in their own debasement, it can hardly justify the let-alone policy when they set up shop to increase the "cult" of this sort of aesthetic culture; for they are not at all satisfied to find each other out (among the perverts of the same taste), but they are "hell-bent" on discovering fresh, virile, healthy, vigorous, and unsophisticated young men of whom to make victims for vampires. You may say that youth should be so instructed and trained as to be safe against the wily, seductive attractions of even such glittering genius as that of Wilde, and so say I; but, if State interference is permissible anywhere, it is against this vicious invasion of the family, which lures to destruction the finest specimens of manhood; and, if the State have no function in this matter, it will also have to let alone the marquis who uses a gun against his son’s "uncle." As to this particular son, very likely you can fairly retort that he was old enough to mind his own business, including his most private affairs, but men of the Taylor-Wilde type don’t recognize any youthful age limit, and boys are their constant prey.

Those who admit any sphere for the State will also find good reason for its laying a curbing and confining hand on urnings, as upon insane of any dangerous kind. Heredity is admittedly a large factor in their production, and, contrary to what might be expected of such perverts, they are prone to marry and beget. So one of Wilde's greatest sins against his race was the fathering of some boys who look like him, paralleled only by his second crime against them of so conducting himself as to give them a public stamp of opprobrium. If such perverts would have sense and decency enough to avoid propagating their kind and abstain from attempting to drag down the children of other families to their own unfortunate level, the rest of mankind might well be content to keep hands off, let them live out their lives, and enjoy the equal liberty of the pursuit of happiness in their own way, —in short, "let the dead bury their dead." But they can’t and won’t keep to themselves, and so a few —too few —get their deserts. Our own late example is simply another evidence of what I say. "Dr." Tonner gets two and a half years, not for any vice peculiar to himself and his own individual liberty, but for being caught in the attempt to inveigle another, and to procure a fresh victim for his patrons, or patron for his bagnio. The judge who sentenced him said, if he had any friends in the medical profession, they should institute an examination as to his sanity. Whatever the decision of experts may be as to the sanity or insanity of such men, the best place for them, perhaps even for their own sake, and certainly for the rest of society, is either in prison or an insane asylum.

Should this letter draw your fire, I hope you will not stop short of instructing your class in liberty as to what would be done, under liberty, with the varied assortment of sexual perverts who make a nuisance of themselves to more decent folks, from the librarian, aged fifty-one, just caught in Prospect Park trying to seduce little girls to the ways of prostitutes, to Jack-the-Ripper, who no doubt found a similar satisfaction in his murderous acts.

E. B. Foote, Jr., M. D

This is the crime of Oscar Wilde, as I see it, and for which he is now serving his term of two years, unless I am much mistaken. He confesses to being greatly attracted to youth, though denying any such serious accusation as he was indicted for; but one who has any knowledge of men of his class well knows that one of their worst points is the disposition to seek out and make new victims of promising youth. This is made evident in their own confessions as quoted in Krafft Ebing’s "Psychopathia Sexualis." In it a long chapter is given to "urnings," a study of their peculiarities and how they come to be. Some almost seem to be proud of their perversity, and as anxious to make converts as the advocates of the most innocent fads or fancies. In the story of "The Picture of Dorian Gray," by Wilde himself, the same propensity forms a large element of the story, and offers a valuable moral lesson as to the danger of evil associations that corrupt good manners, while it further shows that the "hero" becomes utterly lost to all propriety and morality, and suicides at last as a complete physical and moral wreck. One who reads that story since the fall of Wilde can hardly escape the belief that it is largely autobiographical, and, so thinking, could even wish his sentence were twenty, instead of two, years.

Rev. Mr. Headlam hopes Wilde may "yet recover his spirit and do good work for the world." To me this seems incredible — hopeless. If Wilde be not a victim of incurable insanity, his record must bar the way to any reform. One can no more reasonably hope for reform and useful life in him than in Dorian Gray after he had slain his friend and victim. The story carried him along to the only possible end of such a life, — self obliteration. If the logic of equal liberty and personal freedom can sanction keeping hands off from such as Wilde and Taylor so long as they revel only in their own debasement, it can hardly justify the let-alone policy when they set up shop to increase the "cult" of this sort of aesthetic culture; for they are not at all satisfied to find each other out (among the perverts of the same taste), but they are "hell-bent" on discovering fresh, virile, healthy, vigorous, and unsophisticated young men of whom to make victims for vampires. You may say that youth should be so instructed and trained as to be safe against the wily, seductive attractions of even such glittering genius as that of Wilde, and so say I; but, if State interference is permissible anywhere, it is against this vicious invasion of the family, which lures to destruction the finest specimens of manhood; and, if the State have no function in this matter, it will also have to let alone the marquis who uses a gun against his son’s "uncle." As to this particular son, very likely you can fairly retort that he was old enough to mind his own business, including his most private affairs, but men of the Taylor-Wilde type don’t recognize any youthful age limit, and boys are their constant prey.

Those who admit any sphere for the State will also find good reason for its laying a curbing and confining hand on urnings, as upon insane of any dangerous kind. Heredity is admittedly a large factor in their production, and, contrary to what might be expected of such perverts, they are prone to marry and beget. So one of Wilde's greatest sins against his race was the fathering of some boys who look like him, paralleled only by his second crime against them of so conducting himself as to give them a public stamp of opprobrium. If such perverts would have sense and decency enough to avoid propagating their kind and abstain from attempting to drag down the children of other families to their own unfortunate level, the rest of mankind might well be content to keep hands off, let them live out their lives, and enjoy the equal liberty of the pursuit of happiness in their own way, —in short, "let the dead bury their dead." But they can’t and won’t keep to themselves, and so a few—too few—get their deserts. Our own late example is simply another evidence of what I say. "Dr." Tonner gets two and a half years, not for any vice peculiar to himself and his own individual liberty, but for being caught in the attempt to inveigle another, and to procure a fresh victim for his patrons, or patron for his bagnio. The judge who sentenced him said, if he had any friends in the medical profession, they should institute an examination as to his sanity. Whatever the decision of experts may be as to the sanity or insanity of such men, the best place for them, perhaps even for their own sake, and certainly for the rest of society, is either in prison or an insane asylum.

Should this letter draw your fire, I hope you will not stop short of instructing your class in liberty as to what would be done, under liberty, with the varied assortment of sexual perverts who make a nuisance of themselves to more decent folks, from the librarian, aged fifty-one, just caught in Prospect Park trying to seduce little girls to the ways of prostitutes, to Jack-the-Ripper, who no doubt found a similar satisfaction in his murderous acts.

[E. B. Foote, Jr., M. D.]