written.' 'But,' said the dull man, 'would you not have given us
time to read it?' 'Oh no,' was the retort, 'there would have been
plenty of time afterwards--in either world.' I think he seemed to
us, baffled as we were by youth, or by infirmity, a triumphant
figure, and to some of us a figure from another age, an audacious
Italian fifteenth century figure. A few weeks before I had heard
one of my father's friends, an official in a publishing firm that
had employed both Wilde and Henley as editors, blaming Henley who
was 'no use except under control' and praising Wilde, 'so indolent
but such a genius;' and now the firm became the topic of our talk.
'How often do you go to the office?' said Henley. 'I used to go
three times a week,' said Wilde, 'for an hour a day but I have
since struck off one of the days.' 'My God,' said Henley, 'I went
five times a week for five hours a day and when I wanted to strike
off a day they had a special committee meeting.' 'Furthermore,'
was Wilde's answer, 'I never answered their letters. I have known
men come to London full of bright prospects and seen them complete
wrecks in a few months through a habit of answering letters.' He
too knew how to keep our elders in their place, and his method was
plainly the more successful for Henley had been dismissed. 'No he
is not an aesthete,' Henley commented later, being somewhat
embarrassed by Wilde's Pre-Raphaelite entanglement. 'One soon
finds that he is a scholar and a gentleman.' And when I dined with
Wilde a few days afterwards he began at once, 'I had to strain
every nerve to equal that man at all;' and I was too loyal to
speak my thought: 'You & not he' said all the brilliant things. He
like the rest of us had felt the strain of an intensity that
seemed to hold life at the point of drama. He had said, on that
first meeting, 'The basis of literary friendship is mixing the
poisoned bowl;' and for a few weeks Henley and he became close