said, with a
desire to make the law ridiculous, gravely proposed that the section
be extended, so as to apply to people of the same sex who indulged in
familiarities or indecencies. The Puritan faction had no logical
objection to the extension, and it became the law of the land. It was
by virtue of this piece of legislative wisdom, which is without a
model and without a copy in the law of any other civilised country,
that Oscar Wilde was arrested and thrown into prison.

His arrest was the signal for an orgy of Philistine rancour such as
even London had never known before. The puritan middle class, which
had always regarded Wilde with dislike as an artist and intellectual
scoffer, a mere parasite of the aristocracy, now gave free scope to
their disgust and contempt, and everyone tried to outdo his neighbour
in expressions of loathing and abhorrence. This middle class
condemnation swept the lower class away in its train. To do them
justice, the common people, too, felt a natural loathing for the
peculiar vice attributed to Wilde; most men condemn the sins they have
no mind to; but their dislike was rather contemptuous than profound,
and with customary humour they soon turned the whole case into a
bestial, obscene joke. "Oscar" took the place of their favourite word
as a term of contempt, and they shouted it at each other on all sides;
bus-drivers, cabbies and paper sellers using it in and out of season
with the keenest relish. For the moment the upper classes lay
mum-chance and let the storm blow over. Some of them of course agreed
with the condemnation of the Puritans, and many of them felt that
Oscar and his associates had been too bold, and ought to be pulled up.

The English journals, which are nothing but middle-class shops, took
the side of their patrons. Without a single exception they outdid
themselves in condemnation of the man and all his works. You might
have thought to read their bitter diatribes that they themselves lived
saintly lives, and were shocked at sensual sin. One rubbed one's eyes
in amazement. The Strand and Fleet Street, which practically belong to
this class and have been fashioned by them, are the haunt of as vile a
prostitution as can be found in Europe; the public houses which these
men frequent are low drinking dens; yet they all lashed Oscar Wilde
with every variety of insult as if they themselves had been above
reproach. The whole of London seemed to have broken loose in a rage of
contem