osphere, quiet, peace, and solitude. You admired my work when it was
finished: you enjoyed the brilliant successes of my first nights, and
the brilliant banquets that followed them: you were proud, and quite
naturally so, of being the intimate friend of an artist so
distinguished: but you could not understand the conditions requisite for
the production of artistic work. I am not speaking in phrases of
rhetorical exaggeration, but in terms of absolute truth to actual fact
when I remind you that during the whole time we were together I never
wrote one single line. Whether at Torquay, Goring, London, Florence, or
elsewhere, my life, as long as you were by my side, was entirely sterile
and uncreative. And with but few intervals, you were, I regret to say,
by my side always.

I remember, for instance, in September, '93, to select merely one
instance out of many, taking a set of chambers, purely in order to work
undisturbed, as I had broken my contract with John Hare, for whom I had
promised to write a play, and who was pressing me on the subject. During
the first week you kept away. We had, not unnaturally indeed, differed
on the question of the artistic value[42] of your translation of
_Salome_. So you contented yourself with sending me foolish letters on
the subject. In that week I wrote and completed in every detail, as it
was ultimately performed, the first act of an _An Ideal Husband_. The
second week you returned, and my work practically had to be given up. I
arrived at St. James's Place every morning at 11.30 in order to have the
opportunity of thinking and writing without the interruption inseparable
from my own household, quiet and peaceful as that household was. But the
attempt was vain. At 12 o'clock you drove up and stayed smoking
cigarettes and chattering till 1.30, when I had to take you out to
luncheon at the Cafe Royal or the Berkeley. Luncheon with its liqueurs
lasted usually till 3.30. For an hour you retired to White's. At tea
time you appeared again and stayed till it was time to dress for
dinner. You dined with me either at the Savoy or at Tite Street. We did
not separate as a rule till after midnight, as supper at Willis' had to
wind up the entrancing day. That was my life for those three months,
every single day, except during the four days when you went abroad. I
then, of course, had to go over to Calais to fetch you back. For one of
my nature and temperament it was a position at once grotesque and
tr