VIII


Of late years I have often explained Wilde to myself by his family
history. His father, was a friend or acquaintance of my father's
father and among my family traditions there is an old Dublin
riddle: 'Why are Sir William Wilde's nails so black?' Answer,
'Because he has scratched himself.' And there is an old story
still current in Dublin of Lady Wilde saying to a servant. 'Why do
you put the plates on the coal-scuttle? What are the chairs meant
for?' They were famous people and there are many like stories, and
even a horrible folk story, the invention of some Connaught
peasant, that tells how Sir William Wilde took out the eyes of
some men, who had come to consult him as an oculist, and laid them
upon a plate, intending to replace them in a moment, and how the
eyes were eaten by a cat. As a certain friend of mine, who has
made a prolonged study of the nature of cats, said when he first
heard the tale, 'Catslove eyes.' The Wilde family was clearly of
the sort that fed the imagination of Charles Lever, dirty, untidy,
daring, and what Charles Lever, who loved more normal activities,
might not have valued so highly, very imaginative and learned.
Lady Wilde, who when I knew her received her friends with blinds
drawn and shutters closed that none might see her withered face,
longed always perhaps, though certainly amid much self mockery,
for some impossible splendour of character and circumstance. She
lived near her son in level Chelsea, but I have heard her say, 'I
want to live on some high place, Primrose Hill or Highgate,
because I was an eagle in my youth.' I think her son lived with no