“In the morning we all trooped out to see the dawn, and some of the young ones, wild with youth and high spirits, Curzon of course among the number, stripped off their clothes and rushed down to the lake and began swimming and diving about like a lot of schoolboys.  There is a great deal of the schoolboy in all Englishmen, that is what makes them so lovable.  When they came out they ran over the grass to dry themselves, and then began playing lawn tennis, just as they were, stark naked, the future rulers of England.  I shall never forget the scene.  Wilfred Blunt had gone up to his wife’s apartments and had changed into some fantastic pyjamas; suddenly he opened an upper window and came out and perched himself, cross-legged, on the balcony, looking down at the mad game of lawn tennis, for all the world like a sort of pink and green Buddha, while I strolled about with someone, and ordered fresh coffee and talked till the dawn came with silent silver feet lighting up the beautiful greenery of the park....

“Now George Curzon plays king in India:  Wyndham is on the way to power, and I’m hiding in shame and poverty here in Paris, an exile and outcast.  Do you wonder that I cannot write, Frank?  The awful injustice of life maddens me.  After all, what have they done in comparison with what I have done?

“Close the eyes of all of us now and fifty years hence, or a hundred years hence, no one will know anything about Curzon or Wyndham or Blunt:  whether they lived or died will be a matter of indifference to everyone; but my comedies and my stories and ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ will be known and read by millions, and even my unhappy fate will call forth world-wide sympathy.”

It was all true enough, and good to keep in mind; but even when Oscar spoke of greater men than himself, he took the same attitude:  his self-esteem was extraordinary.  He did not compare his work with that of others; was not anxious to find his true place, as even Shakespeare was.  From the beginning, from youth on, he was convinced that he was a great man and going to do great things.  Many of us have the same belief and are just as persuaded, but the belief is not ever present with us as it was with Oscar, moulding all his actions.  For instance, I remarked once that his handwriting was unforgettable and characteristic.  “I worked at it,” he said, “as a boy; I wanted a distinctive handwriting; it had to be clear and beautiful and peculiar to me.  At length I got it but it took time and patience.  I always wanted everything about me to be distinctive,” he added, smiling.

He was proud of his physical appearance, inordinately pleased with his great height, vain of it even.  “Height gives distinction,” he declared, and once even went so far as to say, “One can’t picture Napoleon as small; one thinks only of his magnificent head and forgets the little podgy figure; it must have been a great nuisance to him:  small men have no dignity.”