It was in 1892 that some of Oscar’s friends struck me for the first time as questionable, to say the best of them.  I remember giving a little dinner to some men in rooms I had in Jermyn Street.  I invited Oscar, and he brought a young friend with him.  After dinner I noticed that the youth was angry with Oscar and would scarcely speak to him, and that Oscar was making up to him.  I heard snatches of pleading from Oscar—­“I beg of you....  It is not true....  You have no cause"....  All the while Oscar was standing apart from the rest of us with an arm on the young man’s shoulder; but his coaxing was in vain, the youth turned away with petulant, sullen ill-temper.  This is a mere snap-shot which remained in my memory, and made me ask myself afterwards how I could have been so slow of understanding.

Looking back and taking everything into consideration—­his social success, the glare of publicity in which he lived, the buzz of talk and discussion that arose about everything he did and said, the increasing interest and value of his work and, above all, the ever-growing boldness of his writing and the challenge of his conduct—­it is not surprising that the black cloud of hate and slander which attended him persistently became more and more threatening.

FOOTNOTES: 

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

CHAPTER IX

No season, it is said, is so beautiful as the brief northern summer.  Three-fourths of the year is cold and dark, and the ice-bound landscape is swept by snowstorm and blizzard.  Summer comes like a goddess; in a twinkling the snow vanishes and Nature puts on her robes of tenderest green; the birds arrive in flocks; flowers spring to life on all sides, and the sun shines by night as by day.  Such a summertide, so beautiful and so brief, was accorded to Oscar Wilde before the final desolation.

I want to give a picture of him at the topmost height of happy hours, which will afford some proof of his magical talent of speech besides my own appreciation of it, and, fortunately, the incident has been given to me.  Mr. Ernest Beckett, now Lord Grimthorpe, a lover of all superiorities, who has known the ablest men of the time, takes pleasure in telling a story which shows Oscar Wilde’s influence over men who were anything but literary in their tastes.  Mr. Beckett had a party of Yorkshire squires, chiefly fox-hunters and lovers of an outdoor life, at Kirkstall Grange when he heard that Oscar Wilde was in the neighbouring town of Leeds.  Immediately he asked him to lunch at the Grange, chuckling to himself beforehand at the sensational novelty of the experiment.  Next day “Mr. Oscar Wilde” was announced and as he came into the room the sportsmen forthwith began hiding themselves behind newspapers or moving together in groups in order to avoid seeing or being introduced to the notorious writer.  Oscar shook hands with his host as if he had noticed nothing, and began to talk.