San Francisco Chronicle - Monday, May 13, 1895
This report was originally published in English. Machine translations may be available in other languages.
DR. MOMERIE DEPARTS. Oscar Wilde's
Downfall.
Oscar Wilde was mentioned, and Dr. Momerie said he had met the fallen apostle of estheticism at dinners, and had also seen his wife.
"He courted his downfall," Dr. Momerie added. "He is a man of immense ability, but he deliberately set himself to ridicule what the best people have always admired. I should think, taking everything into account, that he is the wickedest man who ever lived. I do not say that merely on account of the practices of which he has been accused, but because of what he has sought to teach in his books and plays. He scoffed at truth, honor and love. Everything which is deepest and best in life he treated farcically. He seemed quite incapable of comprehending that there could be any radical, eternel distinction between right and wrong. He was getting to look coarse lately, and he reminded me of his own description of Dorian Grey. For the last few years I have not seen him without thinking of that creation of his whose picture gradually turned from that of a beautiful being to the portrait of a brutal, coarsse and vulgar man. His depravity of mind was revealed in the bodily changes which came over Oscar Wilde."