A fortnight taught me a good deal about Oscar at this time; he was intensely indolent:  quite content to kill time by the hour talking to the fisher lads, or he would take a little carriage and drive to Cannes and amuse himself at some wayside cafe.

He never cared to walk and I walked for miles daily, so that we spent only one or at most two afternoons a week together, meeting so seldom that nearly all our talks were significant.  Several times contemporary names came up and I was compelled to notice for the first time that really he was contemptuous of almost everyone, and had a sharp word to say about many who were supposed to be his friends.  One day we spoke of Ricketts and Shannon; I was saying that had Ricketts lived in Paris he would have had a great reputation:  many of his designs I thought extraordinary, and his intellect was peculiarly French—­mordant even.  Oscar did not like to hear praise of anyone.

“Do you know my word for them, Frank?  I like it.  I call them ’Temper and Temperament.’”

Was his punishment making him a little spiteful or was it the temptation of the witty phrase?

“What do you think of Arthur Symons?” I asked.

“Oh, Frank, I said of him long ago that he was a sad example of an Egoist who had no Ego.”

“And what of your compatriot, George Moore?  He’s popular enough,” I continued.

“Popular, Frank, as if that counted.  George Moore has conducted his whole education in public.  He had written two or three books before he found out there was such a thing as English grammar.  He at once announced his discovery and so won the admiration of the illiterate.  A few years later he discovered that there was something architectural in style, that sentences had to be built up into a paragraph, and paragraphs into chapters and so on.  Naturally he cried this revelation, too, from the housetops, and thus won the admiration of the journalists who had been making rubble-heaps all their lives without knowing it.  I’m much afraid, Frank, in spite of all his efforts, he will die before he reaches the level from which writers start.  It’s a pity because he has certainly a little real talent.  He differs from Symons in that he has an Ego, but his Ego has five senses and no soul.”

“What about Bernard Shaw?” I probed further, “after all he’s going to count.”

“Yes, Frank, a man of real ability but with a bleak mind.  Humorous gleams as of wintry sunlight on a bare, harsh landscape.  He has no passion, no feeling, and without passionate feeling how can one be an artist?  He believes in nothing, loves nothing, not even Bernard Shaw, and really, on the whole, I don’t wonder at his indifference,” and he laughed mischievously.

“And Wells?” I asked.

“A scientific Jules Verne,” he replied with a shrug.

“Did you ever care for Hardy?” I continued.

“Not greatly.  He has just found out that women have legs underneath their dresses, and this discovery has almost wrecked his life.  He writes poetry, I believe, in his leisure moments, and I am afraid it will be very hard reading.  He knows nothing of love; passion to him is a childish illness like measles—­poor unhappy spirit!”