Wilde immediately left the only copy in a cab. A few days later he
laughingly informed me of the loss, and added that a cab was a very
proper place for it. I have explained elsewhere that he looked on
his works with disdain in his last years, though he was always full
of schemes for writing others. All my attempts to recover the lost
work failed. The passages here reprinted are from some odd leaves
of a first draft. The play is, of course, not unlike Salome, though
it was written in English. It expanded Wilde's favourite theory
that when you convert some one to an idea, you lose your faith in
it; the same motive runs through Mr. W. H. Honorius the hermit, so
far as I recollect the story, falls in love with the courtesan who
has come to tempt him, and he reveals to her the secret of the love
of God. She immediately becomes a Christian, and is murdered by
robbers. Honorius the hermit goes back to Alexandria to pursue a
life of pleasure. Two other similar plays Wilde invented in prison,
AHAB AND ISABEL and PHARAOH; he would never write them down, though
often importuned to do so. Pharaoh was intensely dramatic and
perhaps more original than any of the group. None of these works
must be confused with the manuscripts stolen from 16 Tite Street in
1895--namely, the enlarged version of Mr. W. H., the second draft of
A Florentine Tragedy, and The Duchess of Padua (which, existing in a
prompt copy, was of less importance than the others); nor with The
Cardinal of Arragon, the manuscript of which I never saw. I
scarcely think it ever existed, though Wilde used to recite proposed
passages for it.


Some years after Wilde's death I was looking over the papers and
letters rescued from Tite Street when I came across loose sheets of
manuscript and typewriting, which I imagined were fragments of The