Dirty Linen Los Angeles, April 10.—(To the Editor of The Times:) Fair play is a word which should find an echo in every human heart; that it does not is obvious and likewise regrettable. A very scandalous lawsuit in London has just immersed in an unutterable mire an English author who, in his writings, has made it his pastime to taunt the Philistine. The Philistine is now tasting the sweets of revenge, and Oscar Wilde is nailed to the pillory of—what shall we call it?—righteous indignation or revolted public opinion. His crime, if he be criminal, is one which in polite circles is labeled indecent; the most lenient critic would certainly call it unaesthetic. But here the philosophical doubt asserts itself—who is the more blamable of the two, Oscar Wilde, perhaps an unconscious erotomaniac, or the Marquis of Queensberry, that prize-ring tactician who drags his son into the nauseating cesspool wherein he would fain drown the author of The Picture of Dorian Gray? Wilde may be a doomed man; but what is the future reserved, through the sottish interference of his father, to the youthful Lord Alfred Douglas? To put the question is to answer it. We have here once again the proof that inquisitorial zeal is worse than apathetic indifference. The mantle of charity covers a multitude of sins; and was it ever more necessary than in this sad case? The French are right: “Il faut laver son linge sale en famille.” No one can deny that Oscar Wilde possesses in a high degree the marks of decadentism: its love of the artificial, its aversion to nature and all forms of activity and movement, its preference for diabolism, sadism, and unnatural depravity, its megalomaniacal contempt for man, and its exaggeration of the role of art. His efforts may be classed under three headings: prose, poems, and plays. His poems are in the style of the Pre-Raphaelites, but are rather feeble imitations of Swinburne and Rossetti, and of dreary inanity. His prose works, on the contrary, are worthy of attention: Intentions, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime are very clever paradoxes; but that a paradox may become a reality Oscar Wilde seems to have once proven by taking on himself the part of Dorian Gray. The Happy Prince and others are very pretty tales. His dramatic works comprise: Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance, The Duchess of Padua, Salome, and An Ideal Husband. As a playwright, Oscar Wilde has been very successful; his pieces are the triumph of the epigram, and it must be conceded that he often uses this incisive weapon with great effect. But alongside his literary efforts, even perhaps overtowering them, Wilde’s personal eccentricities have held the public in suspense, wondering what his next move would be. He is fond of dressing in queer costumes which recall partly the fashions of the Middle Ages, partly the Rococo modes. He pretends to have given up the dress of the present time because it offends his sense of the beautiful; but this is only a pretext in which probably he himself does not believe, for when not posing I understand that he is rather inclined to be slovenly and to give the beautiful the “grand bounce,” so far as his vestments are concerned. What really determines his actions is the hysterical craving to be noticed, to occupy the attention of the world with himself, to get talked about. This craving must be more than amply satisfied just at present, in which moment he is for the first time in his life unwillingly the cynosure of all eyes. It is a well-known fact that he once walked down Pall Mall in the afternoon dressed in doublet and breeches, with a picturesque biretta on his head and a sunflower in his hand, the quasi-heraldic symbol of the Aesthetes. Oscar Wilde affects a superb disdain for nature, and says of her in his book Intentions: “Whatever actually occurs is spoiled for art. All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.” He is a “cultivator of the ego,” and feels deliciously indignant at the fact that nature dares to be indifferent to the charms of his person. He writes: “Nature is so indifferent, so unappreciative. Whenever I am walking in the park here, I always feel that I am no more to her than the cattle that browse on the slope.” With regard to himself and the human species, he says: “Ah, don’t say that you agree with me. When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong.” These citations could be multiplied ad infinitum, but I shall close these lines with a poem by Oscar Wilde. It is rather appropriate: TAEDIUM VITAE “To stab my youth with desperate knives, to wear This paltry age’s gaudy livery, To let each base hand filch my treasury, To mesh my soul within a woman’s hair, And be mere Fortune’s lackeyed groom, I swear I love it not. These things are less to me Than the thin foam that frets upon the sea, Less than the thistledown of summer air, Which hath no seed; better to stand aloft Far from these slanderous fools who mock my life, Knowing me not; better the lowliest roof Fit for the meanest hind to sojourn in, Than even go back to that hoarse cave of strife Where my white soul first kissed the mouth of sin.”