OSCAR

WILDE

1854-1900 wit and dramatist lived here

In London's Tite Street, fellow artists paid their tribute to a tarnished genius.

left in France in 1914. What a fine looking family he represents. Was it not his uncle, Lord Alfred Douglas, whose beauty of features led to his own downfall?

Attention, please! Pray silence for the Mayor of Chelsea. Hear! Hear! There is a veiled plaque beside the door of No. 34, put there by order of the London County Council. The Mayor explains this to us and calls upon Sir Compton Mackenzie to perform the unveiling ceremony. With an emotion hard to conceal, Mackenzie reads the words aloud to us:

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Wit and Dramatist

Simultaneously there are ceremonies in Dublin to mark the house where Wilde was born. In Paris, where Wilde lived, there has long been a plaque, but while we are standing in Chelsea there is a ceremony taking place at the Hotel Voltaire in Paris where Wilde stayed and wrote before tragedy overwhelmed him.

Now we have a couple of hours to put in before gathering at the Savoy Hotel for the centenary luncheon. So as we stroll along the Embankment towards the Savoy let us look back on the disgrace and tragedy of Wilde which shocked and hurt the civilized world. Was the sentence too brutal? Was it personal pique on Edward Carson's part for not having been briefed by Wilde for the defense that made him cross-examine so cruelly?

And also what we have to ask ourselves is whether or not this curse of homosexuality is a crime or a disease. One thing is certain: the publicity given to the trial must have done much to encourage the growth of the dreadful cult.

Wilde was born in Dublin of difficult but brilliant parents. He went to the university there and later on to Oxford. Then he set up as a man of letters in London and became the most dazzling conversationalist of his age. Not content with expressing his views in talk or in articles he turned to poetry and then to the theatre.

Like so many gifted Irishmen he was a rebel, although in his case it was a rebellion against the smugness, the

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decorum, the snobbery and the dullness of Victorian society." He was a sensualist of language, a poet who made music of words, a wit who stopped short of cruelty, a sentimentalist who pitied sinners. He was in love with beauty and at war with mediocrity.

It may be that in his rebellion against Victorian morality he was drawn towards unnatural vice. Nor did he attempt to hide the fact. The wonder is that the police spared him for so long, for his debaucheries were the talk of the town. Actually no police action took place until, like a fool, Wilde sued the Marquis of Queensberry for slander. Halfway through that trial the case was stopped.

The police held their hand long enough to give Wilde time to leave the country, but such was his arrogance that he stayed in London until they came to his house and arrested him.

There is no need now to recall the tremendous drama of the trial. It has been described in print and discussed interminably. He was sentenced to two years' hard labor and taken to Reading Gaol forty miles from London.

I PROPOSE that we should now put Society in the box. Let us see what the world did when the prison gates had closed upon the wretched creature. Wilde's published books were withdrawn from circulation. His plays were banned in the theatre. He was made bankrupt, and as a result unscrupulous publishers in Britain, France and America reprinted his books with a complete disregard of the law of copyright and in the process filled their coffers.

Wilde's literary estate was vested in the Official Receiver who, in his omnipotence, decided that the books were of no value and if publishers were fools enough to publish them then let them go ahead.

From the beginning of his imprisonment until the end of his days he was never allowed to see his two small sons. Nor did he ever set eyes upon, England after seeking sanctuary in France after his release from prison. The great writer of comedies had to play the tragedy as an exile to the cruel last curtain.

But Robert Ross dedicated his life to restoring Wilde's name as an author. In De Profundis Ross found a work of genus and beauty and pathos that could not be denied by a whole world of Philistines.

Immediately it was published in London the tide began to turn. Reputable publishers in every country bid for the rights. In one year Ross was able to pay off Wilde's bankruptcy and satisfy Wilde's creditors in France.

What happened to his two sons? To live some kind of private life the mother gave them the surname of Holland. Bearing that name the older boy went to his death in France in 1915. The younger brother Vyvÿan Holland lived quietly in England, eventually marrying an Australian girl, and they had a son. I met them at Francis Queensborough's house four or five years ago and we discussed then whether they should give back to the boy the name to which he was entitled. Both Queensborough and myself took the view that the genius of Wilde had outlived his crime against society and that the boy should be known not by his father's name but as Holland-Wilde.

The little chap was at Tite Street this morning-alert, intelligent and goodlooking. And there we shall end this part of the story because the Savoy has just appeared on the horizon.

WHAT TRICKS are played by the whirligig of time! France had sent an official representative to attend the luncheon. So had Germany and IreBut the darkness that had fallen on land. All around us were the leading Wilde did not really begin to lift until figures of the London theatre, as well ten years after the famous trial when as most of our outstanding dramatists his Canadian-born friend Robert Ross and novelists. At the conclusion of the succeeded in getting De Profundis pub-speeches we stood in silence to the lished.

Wilde had been dead for four years, having died in France at forty-four.

memory of Oscar Wilde who had sinned against society but had ministere the mind of man.

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