myself contemptuously loose from everything of which
her at-homes--themselves desperate affairs enough, as you saw for
yourself--were part. I was at two or three of them; and I once dined
with her in company with an ex-tragedy queen named Miss Glynn, who,
having no visible external ears, reared a head like a turnip. Lady
Wilde talked about Schopenhauer; and Miss Glynn told me that Gladstone
formed his oratorical style on Charles Kean.

"I ask myself where and how I came across Lady Wilde; for we had no
social relations in the Dublin days. The explanation must be that my
sister, then a very attractive girl who sang beautifully, had met and
made some sort of innocent conquest of both Oscar and Willie. I met
Oscar once at one of the at-homes; and he came and spoke to me with an
evident intention of being specially kind to me. We put each other out
frightfully; and this odd difficulty persisted between us to the very
last, even when we were no longer mere boyish novices and had become
men of the world with plenty of skill in social intercourse. I saw him
very seldom, as I avoided literary and artistic society like the
plague, and refused the few invitations I received to go into society
with burlesque ferocity, so as to keep out of it without offending
people past their willingness to indulge me as a privileged lunatic.

"The last time I saw him was at that tragic luncheon of yours at the
Cafe Royal; and I am quite sure our total of meetings from first to
last did not exceed twelve, and may not have exceeded six.

"I definitely recollect six: (1) At the at-home aforesaid. (2) At
Macmurdo's house in Fitzroy Street in the days of the Century Guild
and its paper '_The Hobby Horse_.' (3) At a meeting somewhere in
Westminster at which I delivered an address on Socialism, and at which
Oscar turned up and spoke. Robert Ross surprised me greatly by telling
me, long after Oscar's death, that it was this address of mine that
moved Oscar to try his hand at a similar feat by writing 'The Soul of
Man Under Socialism.' (4) A chance meeting near the stage door of the
Haymarket Theatre, at which our queer shyness of one another made our
resolutely cordial and appreciative conversation so difficult that our
final laugh and shake-hands was almost a reciprocal confession. (5) A
really pleasant afternoon we spent together on catching one another in
a place where our presence was an absurdity. It was some exhibition in
Chelsea: a naval commem