Los Angeles herald., 1910-08-21

NSSACAA
in the instance of the recent rehabili
tation of Oscar Wilde.
Oscar Fingal OF'lahertie Wills Wilde
was so christened at prescribed date
not long after his birth on october 16,
1854. Nearly half a century afterward,
exact date being November 80, 1900,
holy JUNCTION was administered. BY
some of his friends it is claimed that
the administering of a sacrament was
a mistake, in so much as it was given
when the subject was unconscious.
Possibly the most gorgeous beauty of
the eternal church is that as valiant
mother it stands ready to assume the
guardianship of a life, and in death
to lay it's mantle of compassion on the
corpse of broken dreams.
Could a tacit compact of a little
gentility in England have lasted, Os
car Wilde would have been exiled from
his immortality. But the imperial
kingdom of fate will not be cheated OF
her citizens; the inexorable law of
compensation cannot be transgressed
even by the stupid without the final
punishment of their own chagrin. For
of what is the intelligent denizen of
our pseudo civilization more ashamed
after a reconsideration of less than
twenty years-the pitiful crime of the
neurotic Wilde, or the crime of our
stolid society against that perverse
unfortunate? Shall we refuse a monu-
ment of memory to the genius and
mental product of Poe because pos
sibly his idiosyncrasy was dipsomania
and that he happened to have the bad
taste to choose to de of delirium
tremens? Shall we ignore the fact of
the existence of the philosophy or
Nietzsche because it became the ca
price of his intellect to ''be sent to an
asylum"? Surely that is hardly a
sufficient distinction for ones fame to
rest upon since there are so many
brilliant men who have not compelled
their contemporaries to convey them
to some rendezvous of the eccentric.
Sail we belittle the victories of Grant
because too many a coil of smoke
caused him to die of cancer in the
mouth? If the product of the brain
is to be forever associated with the
function of the physique, shall we not
reject "Don Juan" because of the con-
genital lameness of Byron, or snail we
deny the dignity of Pope's Essay on
May" because he was physically de-
formed, or can we contend that Tam
O'Shanter'' will not remain permanent
in its worth because Burns was tickle
of heart?
Wilde had a., aversion to all forms
of activity" so one of his expert critics
has contended, holding that as proof
of his abnormality. At least it cannot
he said of him that he was indolent
intellectually AS youth he won the
Rerkelev gold medal at Trinity, and at
oxford he received the NeWdlgate
prize for English verse. No author
was ever more exquisitely prepared to
write. No master of his art ever more
pcrfectly expressed what he was not
exnected to say. At Oxford he came
under the benign influence of John
Ruskin. That is one of the charming
novelte es of any great intellect, It's
effect is so uncertain. oscar Wide
was a man of distinct education That
is one of the certain things about an
education. it so seldom leads us where
we expect it to. 1t led Wilde by his
own effigial fires to enlighten the
world. but in his effort to illuminate
he engloomed himself. The tragic cry
which shrieks through the pages OF
"De Profundis" is heard in the prf-
mary plaintiff of the Aesthetic:
30, would that I could live up to my
blue china!" -,
At an early age Wilde was carl
catured by DuMaurier in his pen
sketches and by w. S. Gilbert in his
opera "Patience." The subject of their
ridicule wore knee breeches velvet
coat and a flowing tie. But is 1t not
of record that Balzac assumed the
monks cowl, that Joaquin Miller as
sumed the costume of the vaquero and
that Mark Twain assumed the Whlte
full dress suit? Wilde's joke on CIVIL
ization got it's laugh. London l1onlzed
him and America sent for him, not
because he had written book OF
,Y,orthv verse hut that he for period