The room and its occupants made an indelible grotesque impression on me.  It seemed smaller than it was because overcrowded with a score of women and half a dozen men.  It was very dark and there were empty tea-cups and cigarette ends everywhere.  Lady Wilde sat enthroned behind the tea-table looking like a sort of female Buddha swathed in wraps—­a large woman with a heavy face and prominent nose; very like Oscar indeed, with the same sallow skin which always looked dirty; her eyes too were her redeeming feature—­vivacious and quick-glancing as a girl’s.  She “made up” like an actress and naturally preferred shadowed gloom to sunlight.  Her idealism came to show as soon as she spoke.  It was a necessity of her nature to be enthusiastic; unfriendly critics said hysterical, but I should prefer to say high-falutin’ about everything she enjoyed or admired.  She was at her best in misfortune; her great vanity gave her a certain proud stoicism which was admirable.

The Land League was under discussion as we entered, and Parnell’s attitude to it.  Lady Wilde regarded him as the predestined saviour of her country.  “Parnell,” she said with a strong accent on the first syllable, “is the man of destiny; he will strike off the fetters and free Ireland, and throne her as Queen among the nations.”

A murmur of applause came from a thin bird-like woman standing opposite, who floated towards us clad in a sage-green gown, which sheathed her like an umbrella case; had she had any figure the dress would have been indecent.

“How like ’Speranza’!” she cooed, “dear Lady Wilde!” I noticed that her glance went towards Willie, who was standing on the other side of his mother, talking to a tall, handsome girl.  Willie’s friend seemed amused at the lyrical outburst of the green spinster, for smiling a little she questioned him: 

“‘Speranza’ is Lady Wilde?” she asked with a slight American accent.

Lady Wilde informed the company with all the impressiveness she had at command that she did not expect Oscar that afternoon; “he is so busy with his new poems, you know; they say there has been no such sensation since Byron,” she added; “already everyone is talking of them.”

“Indeed, yes,” sighed the green lily, “do you remember, dear Speranza, what he said about ‘The Sphinx,’ that he read to us.  He told us the written verse was quite different from what the printed poem would be just as the sculptor’s clay model differs from the marble.  Subtle, wasn’t it?”

“Perfectly true, too!” cried a man, with a falsetto voice, moving into the circle; “Leonardo himself might have said that.”

The whole scene seemed to me affected and middle-class, untidy, too, with an un-English note about it of shiftlessness; the aesthetic dresses were extravagant, the enthusiasms pumped up and exaggerated.  I was glad to leave quietly.