insulted a man whom I liked
immensely. Haseltine was a stockbroker, I think, a big, fair, handsome
fellow who took Queensberry's insults for some time with cheerful
contempt. Again and again he turned Queensberry's wrath aside with a
fair word, but Queensberry went on working himself into a passion, and
at last made a rush at him. Haseltine watched him coming and hit out
in the nick of time; he caught Queensberry full in the face and
literally knocked him heels over head. Queensberry got up in a sad
mess: he had a swollen nose and black eye and his shirt was all
stained with blood spread about by hasty wiping. Any other man would
have continued the fight or else have left the club on the spot;
Queensberry took a seat at a table, and there sat for hours silent. I
could only explain it to myself by saying that his impulse to fly at
once from the scene of his disgrace was very acute, and therefore he
resisted it, made up his mind not to budge, and so he sat there the
butt of the derisive glances and whispered talk of everyone who came
into the club in the next two or three hours. He was just the sort of
person a wise man would avoid and a clever one would use--a dangerous,
sharp, ill-handled tool.

Disliking his father, I did not care to meet Lord Alfred Douglas,
Oscar's newest friend.

I saw Oscar less frequently after the success of his first play; he no
longer needed my editorial services, and was, besides, busily engaged;
but I have one good trait to record of him. Some time before I had
lent him L50; so long as he was hard up I said nothing about it; but
after the success of his second play, I wrote to him saying that the
L50 would be useful to me if he could spare it. He sent me a cheque at
once with a charming letter.

He was now continually about again with Lord Alfred Douglas who, it
appeared, had had a disagreement with Lord Cromer and returned to
London. Almost immediately scandalous stories came into circulation
concerning them: "Have you heard the latest about Lord Alfred and
Oscar? I'm told they're being watched by the police," and so forth and
so on interminably. One day a story came to me with such wealth of
weird detail that it was manifestly at least founded on fact. Oscar
was said to have written extraordinary letters to Lord Alfred Douglas:
a youth called Alfred Wood had stolen the letters from Lord Alfred
Douglas' rooms in Oxford and had tried to blackmail Oscar with them.
The facts were so peculia