It is a favourite word of your own.
Is it? I have no pose in this matter. In writing a play or a book I am
concerned entirely with literature, that is, with art. I aim not at
doing good or evil but in trying to make a thing that will have some
quality of beauty.
What would any body say would be the effect of “Phrases and
Philosophies for the Use of the Young” taken in connection with such
an article as “The Priest and the Acolyte”?
Undoubtedly, it was the idea that might be formed that made me object
so strongly to the story. I saw at once that maxims that were
perfectly nonsensical, paradoxical or any thing you like, might be
read in conjunction with it.
On Tuesday, April 30, which was the fourth day of the first trial of
Oscar Wilde, Sir Edward Clarke entered an emphatic protest against
Mr. Gill having read over again the cross-examination of the accused
upon his books and writings which he had given at the trial of Lord
Queensberry. It was not fair to judge of a man’s conduct by his books,
but the Prosecution had gone much further than that, and had sought to
judge Wilde by books which he did not write, and by a story which he
had repudiated as horrible and disgusting. Public opinion had been
excited and fanned by the quotation in Court of passages of literature
for which he was not responsible.
The subject then dropped, and the next reference to it was made by
Mr. Justice Charles in his summing up on the last day of Oscar Wilde’s
first trial (May 1) when the Jury disagreed and was unable to return
a verdict. His lordship said that he did not propose to deal at any
length with the incidents of the Queensberry trial, but that it must
be remembered that the evidence of Wilde at that trial was given on
oath and must not be lost sight of in considering that which he had
given the previous day or two in that Court. A very large portion of
the evidence of Wilde at the Queensberry trial was devoted to what
Sir Edward Clarke had called “the literary part of the case,” and it
had been attempted to show by cross-examination that Wilde was a man
of most unprincipled character with regard to the relation of men to
boys. In regard to a magazine called _The Chameleon_, published in the
autumn of 1894, it was alleged that Wilde had given the sanction of
his name to the most abominable doctrines, but the only connection
proved between that magazine and the defendant was that it was
prefaced by two or three pages of aphorisms by the accused, of which
it was sufficient to say that some were amusing, some cynical, some,
if his lordship might be allowed to criticize, silly; but wicked, no.
The learned Counsel who represented Lord Queensberry, the Judge
continued, had called attention to a story, a filthy narrative of a
most disgusting character, called “The Priest and the Acolyte,” of
which the author, who signed himself “X,” should be thoroughly
ashamed. With that story Wilde had had nothing whatever to do, and
to impute to him any thing in it was quite absurd. To judge him by
another man’s works which he had never seen would be highly unjust.
In the second trial of Oscar Wilde, which was heard before Mr. Justice
Willis on the following May 22 to 25, no mention was made of _The
Chameleon_ or of “The Priest and the Acolyte.”
What is stated above ought to be sufficient, once and for all, to
dissociate the name of the author of “Salomé” and “Lady Windermere’s
Fan” from the story reprinted in the following pages.