oon as this was noticed he took the bull by
the horns and pretended that his style in writing was out of date; he
wished us to believe that he hesitated to shock us with his "archaic
sympathies." Of course we laughed and challenged him to reveal
himself. Shortly afterwards I got an article from him written with
curious felicity of phrase, in modish polite eighteenth-century
English. He had reached personal expression in a new medium in a month
or so, and apparently without effort. It was Beardsley's writing that
first won Oscar to recognition of his talent, and for a while he
seemed vaguely interested in what he called his "orchid-like
personality."

They were both at lunch one day when Oscar declared that he could
drink nothing but absinthe when Beardsley was present.

"Absinthe," he said, "is to all other drinks what Aubrey's drawings
are to other pictures: it stands alone: it is like nothing else: it
shimmers like southern twilight in opalescent colouring: it has about
it the seduction of strange sins. It is stronger than any other
spirit, and brings out the sub-conscious self in man. It is just like
your drawings, Aubrey; it gets on one's nerves and is cruel.

"Baudelaire called his poems _Fleurs du Mal_, I shall call your
drawings _Fleurs du Peche_--flowers of sin.

"When I have before me one of your drawings I want to drink absinthe,
which changes colour like jade in sunlight and takes the senses
thrall, and then I can live myself back in imperial Rome, in the Rome
of the later Caesars."

"Don't forget the simple pleasures of that life, Oscar," said Aubrey;
"Nero set Christians on fire, like large tallow candles; the only
light Christians have ever been known to give," he added in a languid,
gentle voice.

This talk gave me the key. In personal intercourse Oscar Wilde was
more English than the English: he seldom expressed his opinion of
person or prejudice boldly; he preferred to hint dislike and
disapproval. His insistence on the naked expression of lust and
cruelty in Beardsley's drawings showed me that direct frankness
displeased him; for he could hardly object to the qualities which were
making his own "Salome" world-famous.

The complete history of the relations between Oscar Wilde and
Beardsley, and their mutual dislike, merely proves how difficult it is
for original artists to appreciate one another: like mountain peaks
they stand alone. Oscar showed a touch of patronage, the superiority
of the se