laborious days. He took a couple of furnished rooms in Salisbury Street off the
Strand, a very Grub Street for a man of fashion, and began to work at journalism
while getting together a book of poems for publication. His journalism at first
was anything but successful. It was his misfortune to appeal only to the best
heads and good heads are not numerous anywhere. His appeal, too, was still
academic and laboured. His brother Willie with his commoner sympathies appeared
to be better equipped for this work. But Oscar had from the first a certain
social success.

As soon as he reached London he stepped boldly into the limelight, going to
all "first nights" and taking the floor on all occasions. He was not only an
admirable talker but he was invariably smiling, eager, full of life and the joy
of living, and above all given to unmeasured praise of whatever and whoever
pleased him. This gift of enthusiastic admiration was not only his most
engaging characteristic, but also, perhaps, the chief proof of his extraordinary
ability. It was certainly, too, the quality which served him best all through
his life. He went about declaring that Mrs. Langtry was more beautiful than
the 'Venus of Milo,' and Lady Archie Campbell more charming than Rosalind and
Mr. Whistler an incomparable artist. Such enthusiasm in a young and brilliant
man was unexpected and delightful and doors were thrown open to him in all sets.
Those who praise passionately are generally welcome guests and if Oscar could
not praise he shrugged his shoulders and kept silent; scarcely a bitter word
ever fell from those smiling lips. No tactics could have been more successful
in England than his native gift of radiant good-humour and enthusiasm. He got
to know not only all the actors and actresses, but the chief patrons and
frequenters of the theatre: Lord Lytton, Lady Shrewsbury, Lady Dorothy Nevill,
Lady de Grey and Mrs. Jeune; and, on the other hand, Hardy, Meredith, Browning,
Swinburne, and Matthew Arnold--all Bohemia, in fact, and all that part of
Mayfair which cares for the things of the intellect.