WILDE-TAYLOR-QUEENSBERRY SCANDAL.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 10319, 29 May 1895, Page 2

WILDE-TAYLOR-QUEENS-BERRY SCANDAL.

FURTHER PARTICULARS. [PER PRESS ASSOCIATION.] London, May 28.— Tho Marquia of Queensberry and his two sons, Lord Alfred Douglas and Lord Douglas of Hawick, were all present at the close of the trial of Wilde and Taylor. MARQUIS OF QUEENSBERRY'S THIRD SON. Lord Sholto Douglas, third and youngest son of the Marquis of Queensberry, was placed in prison at Bakersfield, Kern County, California, on April 23rd, on a charge of insanity. Ho came to the place about a month or six weeks before, on a visit to the English colony ,and presumably to look Bf fcer some property the family is said to own some miles west of the town. He received considerable attention from the English residents, and attracted much notice in the town. He became bettor known as a gentleman rider in the British Club Pony Races on Easter Monday, and it was about that time that he began to show his sporting proclivities. -He has had a most hilarious time, according to all accounts, and one of the incidents of this period is his falling in with a variety actress named Loretta Addis (nee Moone), whom he engaged to marry, and he procured a license for the purpose. To save the young man from this mesallianc* his friends had him arrested as insane. He is a slender, sallow-faced young man, below the medium height, and says he is twentytwo years of age. He seems to lack force of character, and what he may do on his release can only be surmised. To do the Addis girl justice, Bhe recognises the incongruity of the situation, and Bteadily refuses Lord Sholto s advances, advising him to tear up the marriage license and go about his business. Douglas told a friend, before procuring the license, that he was going to marry the tfirl and take a trip to Saii Francisco,and there have a high rollicking time till his money was all gone, and then take a pistol and blow his brainsout. He received remittances from England, but some of the cheques he gave at the faro tables are novr Known to be worthless. They were cashed at bars, and an attempt may be made to hold him on a charge of obtaiuing money under false pretences. Sholto is brother of Lord Alfred Douglas, the boon companion of Oscar Wilde, and a member of the Green Carnation Club. His grandfather formulated the Queensberry prize fighting rules. Young Lord Douglas was released the second day after his incarceration, as no one appeared to make a charge against him. The first use he made of his liberty was an attempt to thrash a San Francisco correspondent, whom he charged with writing a lot of lies about him to his paper. Sholto got the worst of the encounter. Tho correspondent's friends " double banked " him, as the phrase goes. Then he left in disgust, and even forgot to call on his inamorata. He turned up in San Francisco on the 2Gth, whero he kept his movements a profound secret, avoiding tho principal hotels, and evading newspaper reporters, for whom ho entertained a mortal hatred. Lord Douglas's purpose in coming to San Francisco is not explained, but his friends in Bakersfield believe that he intends to remain in tho metropolis until Miss Addis becomes of age, and then marry her. She will reach that poinu on May 29th. Everything is probable to the Queensberry eccentricity. LABOUCHERE ON WILDE. Mr Labouchore, editor of the London Truth, who has known Oscar Wildo for yoars, says he has always regarded him as somewhat wrong in tho head. "So strange and wondrous is his mind," remarks the observant editor, " when in an abnormal condition, that it would not surprise me if he were deriving keen enjoyment from a position which most people, whether innocent or guilty, would prefer to dia rather than occupy. He must have known in what a glass house ho lived when ho challenged investigation in a court of justice. After he nad done this he went abroad. Why did ho not stay abroad ? The possibilities of prison may not be i pleasant to him, but I believe that the j notoriety that has overtaken him has such a oharra for him that it outw.eighs everything else. I remember in the early days of the cult of msthoticism, hearing St. George ask him how a man of his undoubted capability could make such a fool of "himself. He gave this explanation. He bad written, he said, a book of poems in vain. He went from publisher to publisher asking them to bring them out. Not ono would eron read them, for he was unknown. In order to find a publisher he felt that he must do something to become a personality, so he hit upon ffistheticism and succeeded. People talked about him and invited him to their houses as a sort of lion. He then took His pooms to a publisher, who, still without reading them, gladly accepted tne MS."