“It’s unkind of you, Frank,” he said.  “The Irish were civilised and Christians when the English kept themselves warm with tattooings.”

He could not help telling one in familiar talk of Clumber or some other great house where he had been visiting; he was intoxicated with his own popularity, a little surprised, perhaps, to find that he had won fame so easily and on the primrose path, but one could forgive him everything, for he talked more delightfully than ever.

It is almost inexplicable, but nevertheless true that life tries all of us, tests every weak point to breaking, and sets off and exaggerates our powers.  Burns saw this when he wrote: 

    “Wha does the utmost that he can
    Will whyles do mair.”

And the obverse is true:  whoever yields to a weakness habitually, some day goes further than he ever intended, and comes to worse grief than he deserved.  The old prayer:  Lead us not into temptation, is perhaps a half-conscious recognition of this fact.  But we moderns are inclined to walk heedlessly, no longer believing in pitfalls or in the danger of gratified desires.  And Oscar Wilde was not only an unbeliever; but he had all the heedless confidence of the artist who has won world-wide popularity and has the halo of fame on his brow.  With high heart and smiling eyes he went to his fate unsuspecting.

It was in the autumn of 1891 that he first met Lord Alfred Douglas.  He was thirty-six and Lord Alfred Douglas a handsome, slim youth of twenty-one, with large blue eyes and golden-fair hair.  His mother, the Dowager Lady Queensberry, preserves a photograph of him taken a few years before, when he was still at Winchester, a boy of sixteen with an expression which might well be called angelic.

When I met him, he was still girlishly pretty, with the beauty of youth, coloring and fair skin; though his features were merely ordinary.  It was Lionel Johnson, the writer, a friend and intimate of Douglas at Winchester, who brought him to tea at Oscar’s house in Tite Street.  Their mutual attraction had countless hooks.  Oscar was drawn by the lad’s personal beauty, and enormously affected besides by Lord Alfred Douglas’ name and position:  he was a snob as only an English artist can be a snob; he loved titular distinctions, and Douglas is one of the few great names in British history with the gilding of romance about it.  No doubt Oscar talked better than his best because he was talking to Lord Alfred Douglas.  To the last the mere name rolled on his tongue gave him extraordinary pleasure.  Besides, the boy admired him, hung upon his lips with his soul in his eyes; showed, too, rare intelligence in his appreciation, confessed that he himself wrote verses and loved letters passionately.  Could more be desired than perfection perfected?