Willie
cordially agreed, and added, with maudlin pathos and an inconceivable
want of tact: 'Oscar was NOT a man of bad character: you
could have trusted him with a woman anywhere.' He convinced me, as you
discovered later, that signatures would not be obtainable; so the
petition project dropped; and I don't know what became of my draft.

"When Wilde was in Paris during his last phase I made a point of
sending him inscribed copies of all my books as they came out; and he
did the same to me.

"In writing about Wilde and Whistler, in the days when they were
treated as witty triflers, and called Oscar and Jimmy in print, I
always made a point of taking them seriously and with scrupulous good
manners. Wilde on his part also made a point of recognizing me as a
man of distinction by his manner, and repudiating the current estimate
of me as a mere jester. This was not the usual reciprocal-admiration
trick: I believe he was sincere, and felt indignant at what he thought
was a vulgar underestimate of me; and I had the same feeling about
him. My impulse to rally to him in his misfortune, and my disgust at
'the man Wilde' scurrilities of the newspapers, was irresistible: I
don't quite know why; for my charity to his perversion, and my
recognition of the fact that it does not imply any general depravity
or coarseness of character, came to me through reading and
observation, not through sympathy.

"I have all the normal violent repugnance to homosexuality--if it is
really normal, which nowadays one is sometimes provoked to doubt.

"Also, I was in no way predisposed to like him: he was my
fellow-townsman, and a very prime specimen of the sort of
fellow-townsman I most loathed: to wit, the Dublin snob. His Irish
charm, potent with Englishmen, did not exist for me; and on the whole
it may be claimed for him that he got no regard from me that he did
not earn.

"What first established a friendly feeling in me was, unexpectedly
enough, the affair of the Chicago anarchists, whose Homer you
constituted yourself by '_The Bomb_.' I tried to get some literary men
in London, all heroic rebels and skeptics on paper, to sign a memorial
asking for the reprieve of these unfortunate men. The only signature I
got was Oscar's. It was a completely disinterested act on his part;
and it secured my distinguished consideration for him for the rest of
his life.

"To return for a moment to Lady Wilde. You know that there is a
disease called giantism