celebrated divorce case, an account of which was reported in full in
the columns of some daily paper under a large heading "Painful
Details," the details being the account the chambermaid gave the
outraged husband of--I will spare my reader.
About fifteen years ago I was asked if I would care to go over to ----
College to see the sports. We walked across the downs, and while
watching the racing I was accosted by the head master, who asked me if
I would like to see the college. The sports were more interesting than
refectories and dormitories, but it seemed a little churlish to refuse
and we went together. No doubt we visited the kitchens and the chapel,
but what I remember was a long hall wainscoted with oak and furnished
with oak tables and chairs and benches, In this hall there were some
thirty or forty boys, of ages varying from twelve to eighteen, reading
the newspapers, reading the reports of the Oscar Wilde trial; each
daily paper contained three or four columns of it. I asked the head
master if it were right to allow the boys to read such reports and he
answered that lately the newspapers contained a great deal of
objectionable matter, "But how am I to keep the daily papers out of
the college?" Now I am not easily scandalized, but I could not help
feeling that a grave scandal was being committed in allowing these
boys to read the newspapers during the week of that trial. But if you
admit the newspapers one day how can you forbid them on another
occasion? And while appreciating the head master's difficulty I walked
out into the open air unable to take any further interest in the
sports. Nor has time obliterated anything of the shame I felt that
day. I don't want to make a fuss, I don't want to pose as a moralist,
but I cannot help thinking that while newspapers continue to be
published, the Vigilance Society need not trouble lest certain books
should fall into the hands of young people. My correspondent forgot
that thousands of newspapers are published to-day when he wrote to me
saying that my book roused sensuality. I am afraid I omitted the
passage in which these words occur, fearing to burden my article with
quotation. Here it is:
"The perusal of the episodes (Doris' Orelay experiences) does
certainly not ennoble me, it rouses sensuality, it lowers woman from a
friend and helpmeet into a convenience and a minister to pleasure. I
am less able and less willing to think 'high' after your book; poetry
is distasteful, art is narrowed, I look out for the licentious, the
suggestive, the low, and the mean; and don't you? You seem in passage
after passage to be world-weary in a sense that no sane man ought to
be, sated, disgusted, tired of life--is it not so? You see I speak
from what I am sure you will regard as a narrow platform, my ideals
are certainly not yours but I am simply and frankly curious as to the
ultimates in your book and in yourself."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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