“Poor Watts protested and protested, but the mother broke down and sobbed, and said the girl’s heart would be broken, and at length, in despair, Watts asked what he was to do, and the mother could only suggest marriage.

“Finally they were married.”

“You don’t mean that,” I cried, “I never knew that Watts had married Ellen Terry.”

“Oh, yes,” said Oscar, “they were married all right.  The mother saw to that, and to do him justice, Watts kept the whole family like a gentleman.  But like an idealist, or, as a man of the world would say, a fool, he was ashamed of his wife; he showed great reserve to her, and when he gave his usual dinners or receptions, he invited only men and so, carefully, left her out.

“One evening he had a dinner; a great many well-known people were present and a bishop was on his right hand, when, suddenly, between the cheese and the pear, as the French would say, Ellen came dancing into the room in pink tights with a basket of roses around her waist with which she began pelting the guests.  Watts was horrified, but everyone else delighted, the bishop in especial, it is said, declared he had never seen anything so romantically beautiful.  Watts nearly had a fit, but Ellen danced out of the room with all their hearts in her basket instead of her roses.

“To me that’s the true story of Ellen Terry’s life.  It may be true or false in reality, but I believe it to be true in fact as in symbol; it is not only an image of her life, but of her art.  No one knows how she met Irving or learned to act, though, as you know, she was one of the best actresses that ever graced the English stage.  A great personality.  Her children even have inherited some of her talent.”

It was only famous actresses such as Ellen Terry and Sarah Bernhardt and great ladies that Oscar ever praised.  He was a snob by nature; indeed this was the chief link between him and English society.  Besides, he had a rooted contempt for women and especially for their brains.  He said once, of some one:  “he is like a woman, sure to remember the trivial and forget the important.”

It was this disdain of the sex which led him, later, to take up our whole dispute again.

“I have been thinking over our argument in the train,” he began; “really it was preposterous of me to let you off with a drawn battle; you should have been beaten and forced to haul down your flag.  We talked of love and I let you place the girl against the boy:  it is all nonsense.  A girl is not made for love; she is not even a good instrument of love.”

“Some of us care more for the person than the pleasure,” I replied, “and others—.  You remember Browning: 

    Nearer we hold of God
    Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe.”

“Yes, yes,” he replied impatiently, “but that’s not the point.  I mean that a woman is not made for passion and love; but to be a mother.