LIFE-AND-DEATH DUEL

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 209, 3 September 1932, Page 3 (Supplement)

LIFE-AND-DEATH DUEL

PARIS GUTTER DRAMA. A MEMORY OF OSCAR WILDE. CLASH WITH FAMOUS COUNSEL. At counsel's table in the' Old Bailey stands Ireland's greatest criminal lawyer. Facing him in the witness-box sits Ireland's wittiest and most tragic poet. . . Edward Careon, the deadliest crossexaminer of his day, is engaged in a life-and-death duel of brains with Oscar Wilde. This is the dramatic picture presented by the late Mr. Edward Marjoribanks, the gifted young Conservative M.P., in "Tlie Life of Lord Carson," the gigantic work upon which he was engaged to the hour in which he died in tragic circumstances. The Court, the book reveals, was packed to suffocation, for the trial was one of unprecedented interest to the whole world. Wilde wae . fighting for his very life, defending himself in the libel action he brought against the Marquess of Queensberry—and the case was one that eventually was to destroy two lives, fill countless men and women with hate, and shake fashionable and intellectual London society to its foundations. Lion of the Hour. Wilde was at tho zenith of his dazzling career as a playwright, novelist, poet and essayist, when the storm broke about him. Society hostesses fawned upon him, struggling for his favours. They vied with each, other in showering invitations upon him. He was the lion of the hour. Throughout the world he was talked of, written about, caricatured, feted. But for years there had been ugly whispers about the brilliant Irishman. He had many many enemies, and each one of these was on the watch for the one little slip that would deliver him over to them.

The bare facts of the 6tory need no recounting here; how the old Marquess of Queeneberry, furious at the sinister tales which coupled the name of Wilde and that of his handsome young son, Lord Alfred Douglas, swore vengeance. How he handed in a card one day at Wilde's club, upon which was scrawled an insulting how Wilde, against the advice of hie friends, decided to fight for his good name in the courts. \ "The case," says Mr. Marjoribanks, "was heard on April 2, 1895, in the original Old Bailey, that terrible Court of Tragedies. It was crowded.with fashionable people. There was not a seat pr corner to be had. Somebody made a jest about 'The Importance of Being Early/ and there was a laugh. When the Court was already packed the tall figure of Oscar Wilde was seen equeezing his way through the crowd accompanied by Lord Alfred Douglas. "Somewhere in the court was the prisoner (the Marquess), who was on bail, but his squat little pugnacious figure could not be identified. Wilde seemed to be in high spirits; he chatted and laughed to his friends. .... "Behind him sat the counsel; for Wilde, Sir Edward Clarke, Charles

Mathews and Mr. Travers Humphreys (now a judge); for the defendant, Carson, Charlie Gill (one of the greatest of criminal advocates) and his brother, the police magistrate who recently died. Oscar turned round and smiled at Carson, who looked coldly past him." The rfeal contest began, Mr. Marjoribanks _ writes, when Carson rose to cross-examine. "It was a painful and embarrassing moment ae they faced each other. Many memories must have occurred to each of them, but Wilde smiled in a friendly way, as if inviting him to begin." -, Battle of Wits. In a brief space it ie impossible to reproduce the whole of this astonishing battle of wits. But there are points in the cross-examination, here reproduced for the first time, that will give some idea of ite epic nature. "Never," says the author, "was Wilde more entertaining in any of his comedies. Careon was like a knight in full armour attacking a dancer. Wilde never faltered in his answers; nor were these always superficial. He passed from axiom to epigram.

"Carson: Listen, eir; here is one of the 'Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young'; "Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others." You think that ie true? "Wilde: I rarely think anything I write ie true. " 'Religions die when they are proved to be true. . Is that true?— Yes, 1 hold that. . . . Carson later turned to Wilde's novel "Dorian Gray" and eaid that a decadent construction could be put on that work. "Only by brutes and illiterates," retorted Wilde. "But an illiterate person reading 'Dorian Gray' might consider it such a novel?"—" The views of illiterates on art are unaccountable." Carson went on to put to Wilde views expressed by the characters in "Dorian Gray," aind referred to one character who had adored another man "madly." Had Wilde ever entertained such an adoration ? "Wilde: I have never given adoration to anybody except myself. There was loud laughter at this, but Carson treated it with cqld scorn.

So mercilessly did Carson pursue his examination of the pitiful figure in the box that when the Court adjourned Wilde's hopes had fallen to duet. "At the end there remained only the formalities. 'Do you find the complete justification proved or not?' asked the Clerk of Arraigns. " Yes,' replied the foreman of the jury. "There was loud applause heard in court, which was taken up by a great crowd below. . . . As Carson and Sir Edward Clarke left the Old Bailey together, both exhausted and miserable, they passed through the cheering crowds and saw loose women dancing wildly in the streets. " 'What a filthy business!' said Clarke. 1 shall not feel clean for weeks.'" , The rest of the story is common knowledge. How Wilde, beaten and humbled to the dust, made the mistake of lingering in London, instead of taking his friends' advice and fleeing to the Continent; how he was arrested, placed in the dock on a criminal charge, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment with hard labour. And in closing his narrative of this, one of Carson's greatest forensic triumphs, Mr. Marjoribanks says: "There remains ouly to be recorded a circumstance as strange and terrible as the culminating scene in 'Dorian Gray.' "Some years afterwards Edward Carson was walking alone in Paris on a wet day in the early months of the year. Wilde's Last Agony. "He was about to cross the street when the driver of a fiacre, with Parisian recklessness, almost ran. him down, and splashed his clothing with mud. "He stepped back quickly on to the pavement and almost knocked someone down. Turning round to apologise, he saw a man lying in the gutter, and recognised the haggard, painted features of Oscar Wilde. . . . "The eyes of the two men met, and they recognised each other. Carson turned round and said: 'I beg your pardon.' "Wilde, under the name of Sebastian Melmoth, was living in Paris, dying of a terriblo disease, 'beyond his means,' ae he observed with the wit that never deserted him; preying on the generosity of liis friends. "In a week or two he wae dead."