nior, in his intercourse with Beardsley, and often praised
him ineptly, whereas Beardsley to the last spoke of Oscar as a
showman, and hoped drily that he knew more about literature than he
did about art. For a moment, they worked in concert, and it is
important to remember that it was Beardsley who influenced Oscar, and
not Oscar who influenced Beardsley. Beardsley's contempt of critics
and the public, his artistic boldness and self-assertion, had a
certain hardening influence on Oscar: as things turned out a most
unfortunate influence.

In spite of Mr. Robert Ross's opinion I regard "Salome," as a student
work, an outcome of Oscar's admiration for Flaubert and his
"Herodias," on the one hand, and "Les Sept Princesses," of Maeterlinck
on the other. He has borrowed the colour and Oriental cruelty with
the banquet-scene from the Frenchman, and from the Fleming the
simplicity of language and the haunting effect produced by the
repetition of significant phrases. Yet "Salome" is original through
the mingling of lust and hatred in the heroine, and by making this
extraordinary virgin the chief and centre of the drama Oscar has
heightened the interest of the story and bettered Flaubert's design. I
feel sure he copied Maeterlinck's simplicity of style because it
served to disguise his imperfect knowledge of French and yet this very
artlessness adds to the weird effect of the drama.

The lust that inspires the tragedy was characteristic, but the cruelty
was foreign to Oscar; both qualities would have injured him in
England, had it not been for two things. First of all only a few of
the best class of English people know French at all well, and for the
most part they disdain the sex-morality of their race; while the vast
mass of the English public regard French as in itself an immoral
medium and is inclined to treat anything in that tongue with
contemptuous indifference. One can only say that "Salome" confirmed
Oscar's growing reputation for abnormal viciousness.

It was in 1892 that some of Oscar's friends struck me for the first
time as questionable, to say the best of them. I remember giving a
little dinner to some men in rooms I had in Jermyn Street. I invited
Oscar, and he brought a young friend with him. After dinner I noticed
that the youth was angry with Oscar and would scarcely speak to him,
and that Oscar was making up to him. I heard snatches of pleading from
Oscar--"I beg of you.... It is not true.... You have no ca