Hall.' Here Oscar was at his best; although his brother Willie was
perhaps in those days even better than he was at telling a story.
"Oscar would frequently vary the entertainment by giving us extremely
quaint illustrations of holy people in stained-glass attitudes: his
power of twisting his limbs into weird contortions being very great.
(I am told that Sir William Wilde, his father, possessed the same
power.) It must not be thought, however, that there was any suggestion
of irreverence in the exhibition.
"At one of these gatherings, about the year 1870, I remember a
discussion taking place about an ecclesiastical prosecution that made
a considerable stir at the time. Oscar was present, and full of the
mysterious nature of the Court of Arches; he told us there was nothing
he would like better in after life than to be the hero of such a
_cause celebre_ and to go down to posterity as the defendant in such a
case as 'Regina versus Wilde!'
"At school he was almost always called 'Oscar'--but he had a
nick-name, 'Grey-crow,' which the boys would call him when they wished
to annoy him, and which he resented greatly. It was derived in some
mysterious way from the name of an island in the Upper Loch Erne,
within easy reach of the school by boat.
"It was some little time before he left Portora that the boys got to
know of his full name, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde. Just at
the close of his school career he won the 'Carpenter' Greek Testament
Prize,--and on presentation day was called up to the dais by Dr.
Steele, by all his names--much to Oscar's annoyance; for a great deal
of schoolboy chaff followed.
"He was always generous, kindly, good-tempered. I remember he and
myself were on one occasion mounted as opposing jockeys on the backs
of two bigger boys in what we called a 'tournament,' held in one of
the class-rooms. Oscar and his horse were thrown, and the result was a
broken arm for Wilde. Knowing that it was an accident, he did not let
it make any difference in our friendship.
"He had, I think, no very special chums while at school. I was perhaps
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