fred Douglas I heard that they were being pestered on account of
some amorous letters which had been stolen from them. There was talk
of blackmail and hints of an interesting exposure.

Towards the end of the year it was announced that Lord Alfred Douglas
had gone to Egypt; but this "flight into Egypt," as it was wittily
called, was gilded by the fact that a little later he was appointed an
honorary attache to Lord Cromer. I regarded his absence as a piece of
good fortune, for when he was in London, Oscar had no time to himself,
and was seen in public with associates he would have done better to
avoid. Time and again he had praised Lord Alfred Douglas to me as a
charming person, a poet, and had grown lyrical about his violet eyes
and honey-coloured hair. I knew nothing of Lord Alfred Douglas, and
had no inkling of his poetic talent. I did not like several of Oscar's
particular friends, and I had a special dislike for the father of Lord
Alfred Douglas. I knew Queensberry rather well. I was a member of the
old Pelican Club, and I used to go there frequently for a talk with
Tom, Dick or Harry, about athletics, or for a game of chess with
George Edwards. Queensberry was there almost every night, and someone
introduced me to him. I was eager to know him because he had surprised
me. At some play,[11] I think it was "The Promise of May," by
Tennyson, produced at the Globe, in which atheists were condemned, he
had got up in his box and denounced the play, proclaiming himself an
atheist. I wanted to know the Englishman who could be so contemptuous
of convention. Had he acted out of aristocratic insolence, or was he
by any possibility high-minded? To one who knew the man the mere
question must seem ridiculous.

Queensberry was perhaps five feet nine or ten in height, with a plain,
heavy, rather sullen face, and quick, hot eyes. He was a mass of
self-conceit, all bristling with suspicion, and in regard to money,
prudent to meanness. He cared nothing for books, but liked outdoor
sports and under a rather abrupt, but not discourteous, manner hid an
irritable, violent temper. He was combative and courageous as very
nervous people sometimes are, when they happen to be
strong-willed--the sort of man who, just because he was afraid of a
bull and had pictured the dreadful wound it could give, would
therefore seize it by the horns.

The insane temper of the man got him into rows at the Pelican more
than once. I remember one evening he