"The pale Christ had been outlived: his renunciations and his sympathies were
mere weaknesses: we were moving to a synthesis of art where the enchanting
perfume of romance should be wedded to the severe beauty of classic form.
I really talked as if inspired, and when I paused, Pater--the stiff, quiet,
silent Pater--suddenly slipped from his seat and knelt down by me and kissed
my hand. I cried:

"'You must not, you really must not. What would people think if they saw you?'

"He got up with a white strained face.

"'I had to,' he muttered, glancing about him fearfully, 'I had to--once. . . .'"

I must warn my readers that this whole incident is ripened and set in a higher
key of thought by the fact that Oscar told it more than ten years after it
happened.




CHAPTER IV--FORMATIVE INFLUENCES: OSCAR'S POEMS



The most important event in Oscar's early life happened while he was still
an undergraduate at Oxford: his father, Sir William Wilde, died in 1876, leaving
to his wife, Lady Wilde, nearly all he possessed, some L7,000, the interest
of which was barely enough to keep her in genteel poverty. The sum is so small
that one is constrained to believe the report that Sir William Wilde in his
later years kept practically open house--"lashins of whisky and a good larder,"