enius was not given in the book at all, but his humour
was indicated and a malevolent doubt of his morality insisted upon
again and again. Rumour had it that the book was true in every
particular, that Mr. Hichens had taken down Oscar's talks evening
after evening and simply reproduced them. I asked Oscar if this was
true.

"True enough, Frank," he replied with a certain contempt which was
foreign to him. "Hichens got to know Bosie Douglas in Egypt. They went
up the Nile together, I believe with 'Dodo' Benson. Naturally Bosie
talked a great deal about me and Hichens wanted to know me. When they
returned to town, I thought him rather pleasant, and saw a good deal
of him. I had no idea that he was going to play reporter; it seems to
me a breach of confidence--ignoble."

"It is not a picture of you," I said, "but there is a certain
likeness."

"A photograph is always like and unlike, Frank," he replied; "the sun
too, when used mechanically, is merely a reporter, and traduces
instead of reproducing you."

"The Green Carnation" ruined Oscar Wilde's character with the general
public. On all sides the book was referred to as confirming the worst
suspicions: the cloud which hung over him grew continually darker.

During the summer of 1894 he wrote the "Ideal Husband," which was the
outcome of a story I had told him. I had heard it from an American I
had met in Cairo, a Mr. Cope Whitehouse. He told me that Disraeli had
made money by entrusting the Rothschilds with the purchase of the Suez
Canal shares. It seemed to me strange that this statement, if true,
had never been set forth authoritatively; but the story was peculiarly
modern, and had possibilities in it. Oscar admitted afterwards that he
had taken the idea and used it in "An Ideal Husband."

It was in this summer also that he wrote "The Importance of Being
Earnest," his finest play. He went to the seaside and completed it, he
said, in three weeks, and, when I spoke of the delight he must feel at
having two plays performed in London at the same time, he said:

"Next year, Frank, I may have four or five; I could write one every
two months with the greatest ease. It all depends on money. If I need
money I shall write half a dozen plays next year."

His words reminded me of what Goethe had said about himself: in each
of the ten years he spent on his "Theory of Light" he could have
written a couple of plays as good as his best. The land of
Might-have-been is peopled