The Daily Inter Ocean - Sunday, September 22, 1895

FROM LONDON TOWN
Mrs. Wilde Ostracized Cruelly by
Society
Mr. Buyard's Dilemma.

Yesterday I took tea with a most charming and interesting Irish gentlewoman, whose sympathy is as broad as her culture. She had just returned from Switzerland, where she had been traveling with the poor, heartbroken wife of Oscar Wilde, a woman famous for her beauty, to whom Robert Browning indited the famous dedication of "A Poet to a Poem," and in whose drawing-room, but one short year ago, might have been seen gathered together the genius and fashion and culture of the best London society.

Mrs. Wilde and Dr. Holmes.

As we sat chatting over our teacups my attention was attracted by the framed photograph of a beautiful young woman, holding upon her knees a child as beautiful as herself. His chubby arms were loosely twined about her neck, and his cheek was pressed against hers. It was a photograph of Mrs Wilde, taken five years ago. She sent a copy of it to Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was one of her warm and admiring friends, and he wrote back in his playful and characteristic letter of acknowledgement: "Promise me that you will never show this picture to any man under seventy."

Of the anguish which the poor, wronged creature has suffered I shall not write, for the sorrow of a broken heart is too sacred a thing to be given over to public comment. Suffice it to say that her husband's conviction, the sale of her home, the stripping and scattering of its treasures to the four winds, all came, an avalanche of ruin, within one week. To an American, accustomed to the greater justice and liberality of our courts toward women, it is evident on every side that the English law was framed by men for the advantage of men. There is no instance, except in the case of proved and actual crime, where there is not a most cruel discrimination against women. But for an error in the wording of the indictment, a technical misuse of the term "misdemeanor," the felon’s sentence would have been longer, the wife could have secured an immediate divorce, and much of the fortune seized by his creditors would have been saved for the children.

Society Is Inexorable.

They are now with their mother, to whom they are devotedly attached. She is not, as has been said, living under an assumed name, but will resume her maiden name when the decree of divorce is granted, which will be soon. Her many friends in America will rejoice to know that her ample private fortune will enable her to re-establish a home somewhere; but it will never be in London, which she has quitted forever. For, while she still has faithful friends here, still the English avoidance of those who have suffered disgrace, not only through their own evil deeds, but through the guilt of others, is much more marked, immediate, and lasting than it ever is with us. Nowhere in the so-called civilized world is the sin, not of actual offence, but of being found out, so ruthlessly punished. Whether it is a bosom friend of the Prince of Wales or of the obscure nobody, there is no gradation of penalty. The offender drops out of sight as effectually as if he were drowned in the uttermost parts of the sea, and his kith and kin hide themselves in obscurity and try to evade the censure which they must suffer for and with him. There is, apparently, no such thing in England as an ex-convict living down a crime. He comes out of prison a marked man. The broad arrow which is stamped upon his prison garb might as well be branded upon his forehead. He is henceforth an outcast, and is known and shunned.

English Law Implacable.

More than this, the English law never forgets; those who escape and so avoid arrest can never return. They are doomed to banishment, upon pain of immediate apprehension should they venture to set foot upon the shores of their native land. The continental cities, most of them, have their quota of exiled criminals, some of them titled and once honorably distinguished.

MARY H. KROUT.