use".... All
the while Oscar was standing apart from the rest of us with an arm on
the young man's shoulder; but his coaxing was in vain, the youth
turned away with petulant, sullen ill-temper. This is a mere snap-shot
which remained in my memory, and made me ask myself afterwards how I
could have been so slow of understanding.

Looking back and taking everything into consideration--his social
success, the glare of publicity in which he lived, the buzz of talk
and discussion that arose about everything he did and said, the
increasing interest and value of his work and, above all, the
ever-growing boldness of his writing and the challenge of his
conduct--it is not surprising that the black cloud of hate and slander
which attended him persistently became more and more threatening.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] Cfr. Appendix: "Criticisms by Robert Ross."

CHAPTER IX

No season, it is said, is so beautiful as the brief northern summer.
Three-fourths of the year is cold and dark, and the ice-bound
landscape is swept by snowstorm and blizzard. Summer comes like a
goddess; in a twinkling the snow vanishes and Nature puts on her robes
of tenderest green; the birds arrive in flocks; flowers spring to life
on all sides, and the sun shines by night as by day. Such a
summertide, so beautiful and so brief, was accorded to Oscar Wilde
before the final desolation.

I want to give a picture of him at the topmost height of happy hours,
which will afford some proof of his magical talent of speech besides
my own appreciation of it, and, fortunately, the incident has been
given to me. Mr. Ernest Beckett, now Lord Grimthorpe, a lover of all
superiorities, who has known the ablest men of the time, takes
pleasure in telling a story which shows Oscar Wilde's influence over
men who were anything but literary in their tastes. Mr. Beckett had a
party of Yorkshire squires, chiefly fox-hunters and lovers of an
outdoor life, at Kirkstall Grange when he heard that Oscar Wilde was
in the neighbouring town of Leeds. Immediately he asked him to lunch
at the Grange, chuckling to himself beforehand at the sensational
novelty of the experiment. Next day "Mr. Oscar Wilde" was announced
and as he came into the room the sportsmen forthwith began hiding
themselves behind newspapers or moving together in groups in order to
avoid seeing or being introduced to the notorious writer. Oscar shook
hands with his host as if he had noticed nothing, and began to ta