European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - August 25, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Ndon poets Corner no rhyme or reason to inhabitants of literary shrine by Nicci Gerrard London observer service so Oscar Wilde is finally to be admitted to the poets Corner in Westminster Abbey. The Date is set for feb. 14,1995 exactly 100 years after his play the importance of being Earnest was first performed and 95 years after the notorious playwright died. Of course the person whose comment one would most like to hear on this belated tribute is Wilde himself. He might have observed that poets Comer is a classic British institution it allows the British to contemplate their authors without actually having to read them. In the age of political correctness this famous location has achieved a renewed timeliness because of its traditional refusal to discriminate against writers on grounds of sex race religion or even ability. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807-82 is there though he was an american. James Macpherson 1736-96 is there though his main literary achievement was a notorious fraud he discovered Ossian a supposedly ancient gaelic poet whose work he had written himself. Richard Cumberland 1732 1811 is there even though his plays Are rubbish and he survives in literary history Only As the character sir fretful Plag iary in the critic by Richard Brinsley Sheridan who thoroughly deserves his place in Westminster Abbey. Occasionally there have been halfhearted attempts to set some conditions on admission. George Eliot who died in 1880, had expressed a wish to be buried in the Abbey but when the celebrated scientist , Huxley a famous agnostic was called upon to support her application he demurred even though he had been a Friend of hers. He protested that Westminster Abbey was a Christian Church not a pantheon. Eliof s life had been spent in notorious antagonism to Christian practice. One cannot have one s cake and eat it too Huxley complained. Those who elect to be free in thought and deed must not hanker after the rewards if they Are to be so called which the world offers to those who put up with its fetters.". Eliot was rewarded witha memorial plaque All the same. A -.y. By those similarly honoured include a poet who fled England to escape possible prosecution for incest lord Byrona Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins notorious adulterer whose works were repeatedly banned for obscenity . Lawrence and Many writers guilty of what Wilde described As the worst crime an author can commit writing badly. So Why until now not Wilde there was no talk of poets Corner when he died in exile in 1900, the most ? notorious Man in Britain whose wife and sons adopted new names in order to disguise the connection. But what was once a crime is now a lifestyle and Wilde has distinguished support most notably from the novelist Dame Iris Murdoch. Oscar Wilde awaits incumbency. Is flip or. Almost every tenth rate dramatist in British theatrical history seems to have a place too but some startling omissions remain. Jonathan Swift Henry Fielding Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson Are All absent important poets such As John Skelton and John Rochester Are perhaps considered too Bawdy. Christopher Marlowe is probably too notorious and mysterious. And is there still an unwritten Rule against suicides no Thomas Chatterton Sylvia Plath Benjamin Robert Haydon or the most _ shocking omission Virginia Woolf. No Joseph Conrad too gloomy no James Joyce too Irish and too difficult no George Bernard Shaw too awkward minor world War i poets Are included but no John Donne or Andrew Marvell. The recently dead Are a More contentious matter. Those with a Strong claim sooner or later will include Graham Greene Samuel Beckett sir William Golding Philip Larkin sir John Betjeman and Anthony Burgess. And among the living Murdoch herself surely. It s a serious decision though since once in you re there for life As it were. All except poor Thomas May. He was so outraged when he was not crowned As poet laureate in 1637 that he joined the parliamentary Side in England s civil War. He was buried in the Abbey. Then when the royalists returned to Power they put Cromwell s head on a Pike and ejected May s body from the Abbey. Who says the literary world is nastier than it used to be distributed by sort put Howard new a Rvl poets Corner top photo is the final resting place inside Westminster Abbey Bottom photo for some of literature s greatest names. Is August 25, 7994 stripes Magazine 11