It seems a curious effect of the great compensatory balance of things that a masculine rude people like the English, who love nothing so much as adventures and warlike achievements, should allow themselves to be steered in ordinary times by epicene aesthetes.  But no one who knows the facts will deny that these men are prodigiously influential in London in all artistic and literary matters, and it was their constant passionate support which lifted Oscar Wilde so quickly to eminence.

From the beginning they fought for him.  He was regarded as a leader among them when still at Oxford.  Yet his early writings show no trace of such a prepossession; they are wholly void of offence, without even a suggestion of coarseness, as pure indeed as his talk.  Nevertheless, as soon as his name came up among men in town, the accusation of abnormal viciousness was either made or hinted.  Everyone spoke as if there were no doubt about his tastes, and this in spite of the habitual reticence of Englishmen.  I could not understand how the imputation came to be so bold and universal; how so shameful a calumny, as I regarded it, was so firmly established in men’s minds.  Again and again I protested against the injustice, demanded proofs; but was met only by shrugs and pitying glances as if my prejudice must indeed be invincible if I needed evidence of the obvious.

I have since been assured, on what should be excellent authority, that the evil reputation which attached to Oscar Wilde in those early years in London was completely undeserved.  I, too, must say that in the first period of our friendship, I never noticed anything that could give colour even to suspicion of him; but the belief in his abnormal tastes was widespread and dated from his life in Oxford.

From about 1886-7 on, however, there was a notable change in Oscar Wilde’s manners and mode of life.  He had been married a couple of years, two children had been born to him; yet instead of settling down he appeared suddenly to have become wilder.  In 1887 he accepted the editorship of a lady’s paper, The Woman’s World, and was always mocking at the selection of himself as the “fittest” for such a post:  he had grown noticeably bolder.  I told myself that an assured income and position give confidence; but at bottom a doubt began to form in me.  It can’t be denied that from 1887-8 on, incidents occurred from time to time which kept the suspicion of him alive, and indeed pointed and strengthened it.  I shall have to deal now with some of the more important of these occurrences.

CHAPTER VIII

The period of growth of any organism is the most interesting and most instructive.  And there is no moment of growth in the individual life which can be compared in importance with the moment when a man begins to outtop his age, and to suggest the future evolution of humanity by his own genius.  Usually this final stage is passed in solitude: