“He has ruined me, soul and body, and now he puts himself in the balance against me and declares he outweighs me.  Yes, Frank, he does; he told me the other day I was not a poet, not a true poet, and he was, Alfred Douglas greater than Oscar Wilde.

“I have not done much in the world,” he went on hotly, “I know it better than anyone, not a quarter of what I should have done, but there are some things I have done which the world will not forget, can hardly forget.  If all the tribe of Douglas from the beginning and all their achievements were added together and thrown into the balance, they would not weigh as dust in comparison.  Yet he reviled me, Frank, whipped me, shamed me....  He has broken me, he has broken me, the man I loved; my very heart is a cold weight in me,” ... and he got up and moved aside with the tears pouring down his cheeks.

“Don’t take it so much to heart,” I said in a minute or two, going after him, “the loss of affection I cannot help, but a hundred or so a year is not much; I will see that you get that every year.”

“Oh, Frank, it is not the money; it is his denial, his insults, his hate that kills me; the fact that I have ruined myself for someone who cares nothing; who puts a little money before me; it is as if I were choked with mud....

“Once I thought myself master of my life; lord of my fate, who could do what I pleased and would always succeed.  I was as a crowned king till I met him, and now I am an exile and outcast and despised.

“I have lost my way in life; the passers-by all scorn me and the man whom I loved whips me with foul insults and contempt.  There is no example in history of such a betrayal, no parallel.  I am finished.  It is all over with me now—­all!  I hope the end will come quickly,” and he moved away to the window, his tears falling heavily.

FOOTNOTES: 

[33] The rest of this story concerns me chiefly and I have therefore relegated it to the Appendix for those who care to read it.

[34] Oscar was already getting L300 a year from his wife and Robert Ross, to say nothing of the hundreds given to him from time to time by other friends.

[35] The truth about this I have already stated.

[36] Though I have reported this conversation as faithfully as I can and have indeed softened the impression Lord Alfred Douglas made upon me at the time; still I am conscious that I may be doing him some injustice.  I have never really been in sympathy with him and it may well be that in reporting him here faithfully I am showing him at his worst.  I am aware that the incident does not reveal him at his best.  He has proved since in his writings and notably in some superb sonnets that he had a real affection and admiration for Oscar Wilde.  If I have been in any degree unfair to him I can best correct it, I think, by reproducing here the noble sonnet he wrote on Oscar after his death:  in sheer beauty and sincerity of feeling it ranks with Shelley’s lament for Keats: