THE WILDE SCANDAL.

Evening Star, Issue 9719, 30 May 1895, Page 4

THE WILDE SCANDAL.

Mrs \\ ilde is a good deal to be pitied, although she can hardly have been entirely blind to what was going on. She is a charming woman—a bit affected, perhaps, arid not very bright. Whatever happens she will have her own income, £6OO a year left to her by her father, Horace Lloyd, a County Court judge. That miserable young scapegrace, Lord Alfred Douglas, inherits dubious moral proclivities. His mother who divorced the Marquis of v Queensberry, was the daughter of Alfred Montgomery, a famous old beau and bon vtvanl, illegitimate son of the Marquis-Wellesley. Most of the persons concerned in the great action have odd ancestors. Nothing finer than Mr Edward Carson's cross-examination of Oscar has been seen in the courts since Coleridge's handling of the Tichborne claimant. The rapid rise and marvellous success of Carson at the Bar is like what one.reads in a novel with a barrister for hero. He got a splendid advertisement as Crown Prosecutor under the late Government in the coercion era, his name becoming very familiar to the public, while the work he had. to do was the best possible legal training. The almost simultaneous retirement from practice of Frank Lockwood, Lord Russell, and Sir "Bob" Reid was most fortunate for Carson also; he indeed has virtually stopped into Lockwood's and Rus-

sells position already,• and at forty-three years of age bids fair to be leader of the English Bar before Jong. His first great brief was in a sense a politioal or antjRadical one, on behalf of the 'Evening News' and/Post.'/suedforiibelby a lowclass demagogue—HavelookjWilspp. M.?. parson's masterly esposnre of Wilson and his Seamen and Firemen's j TJuion jflade his reputation. ( t. am told that there are, a doaen barristers at the Irish Ba& quite as capable as Mr Carson, and earning on an average £JfiO a year. Jb ha§ been so fop centuries. Oscar Wilde's eolipso and disappearance, althongn deserved, will be a loss to the amusable World, in which he had undoubt. edly madfr a name. A distinct blotch of genius-was discernible in him, There is the authentic story of his looking at his wife, nursing their eldest boy in her arms, and saying: " Now for the first time I can understand how the figure of the Madonna and the Child has kept the fiotion of Christianity alfve for two thousand years." His epigrams were a trick, but often bright enough.—'Argus' Correspondent.