Though his fame as a witty and delightful talker grew from week to week, even his marriage did not stifle the undertone of dislike and disgust.  Now indignantly, now with contempt, men spoke of him as abandoned, a creature of unnatural viciousness.  There were certain houses in the best set of London society the doors of which were closed to him.

[Illustration:  Oscar Wilde]

FOOTNOTES: 

[7] By way of heaping coals of fire on the students’ heads Oscar presented a cast of the Hermes (then recently unearthed) to the University of Harvard.

[8] Cfr.  Appendix:  “Criticisms by Robert Ross.”

CHAPTER VI

From 1884 on I met Oscar Wilde continually, now at the theatre, now in some society drawing room; most often, I think, at Mrs. Jeune’s (afterwards Lady St. Helier).  His appearance was not in his favour; there was something oily and fat about him that repelled me.  Naturally being British-born and young I tried to give my repugnance a moral foundation; fleshly indulgence and laziness, I said to myself, were written all over him.  The snatches of his monologues which I caught from time to time seemed to me to consist chiefly of epigrams almost mechanically constructed of proverbs and familiar sayings turned upside down.  Two of Balzac’s characters, it will be remembered, practised this form of humour.  The desire to astonish and dazzle, the love of the uncommon for its own sake, was so evident that I shrugged my shoulders and avoided him.  One evening, however, at Mrs. Jeune’s, I got to know him better.  At the very door Mrs. Jeune came up to me: 

“Have you ever met Mr. Oscar Wilde?  You ought to know him:  he is so delightfully clever, so brilliant!”

I went with her and was formally introduced to him.  He shook hands in a limp way I disliked; his hands were flabby, greasy; his skin looked bilious and dirty.  He wore a great green scarab ring on one finger.  He was over-dressed rather than well-dressed; his clothes fitted him too tightly; he was too stout.  He had a trick which I noticed even then, which grew on him later, of pulling his jowl with his right hand as he spoke, and his jowl was already fat and pouchy.  His appearance filled me with distaste.  I lay stress on this physical repulsion, because I think most people felt it, and in itself, it is a tribute to the fascination of the man that he should have overcome the first impression so completely and so quickly.  I don’t remember what we talked about, but I noticed almost immediately that his grey eyes were finely expressive; in turn vivacious, laughing, sympathetic; always beautiful.  The carven mouth, too, with its heavy, chiselled, purple-tinged lips, had a certain attraction and significance in spite of a black front tooth which shocked one when he laughed.  He was over six feet in height and both broad and thick-set; he looked like a Roman Emperor of the decadence.