the banquet-scene from the Frenchman, and from the Fleming the
simplicity of language and the haunting effect produced by the
repetition of significant phrases. Yet "Salome" is original through
the mingling of lust and hatred in the heroine, and by making this
extraordinary virgin the chief and centre of the drama Oscar has
heightened the interest of the story and bettered Flaubert's design. I
feel sure he copied Maeterlinck's simplicity of style because it
served to disguise his imperfect knowledge of French and yet this very
artlessness adds to the weird effect of the drama.
The lust that inspires the tragedy was characteristic, but the cruelty
was foreign to Oscar; both qualities would have injured him in
England, had it not been for two things. First of all only a few of
the best class of English people know French at all well, and for the
most part they disdain the sex-morality of their race; while the vast
mass of the English public regard French as in itself an immoral
medium and is inclined to treat anything in that tongue with
contemptuous indifference. One can only say that "Salome" confirmed
Oscar's growing reputation for abnormal viciousness.
It was in 1892 that some of Oscar's friends struck me for the first
time as questionable, to say the best of them. I remember giving a
little dinner to some men in rooms I had in Jermyn Street. I invited
Oscar, and he brought a young friend with him. After dinner I noticed
that the youth was angry with Oscar and would scarcely speak to him,
and that Oscar was making up to him. I heard snatches of pleading from
Oscar--"I beg of you.... It is not true.... You have no cause".... All
the while Oscar was standing apart from the rest of us with an arm on
the young man's shoulder; but his coaxing was in vain, the youth
turned away with petulant, sullen ill-temper. This is a mere snap-shot
which remained in my memory, and made me ask myself afterwards how I
could have been so slow of understanding.
Looking back and taking everything into consideration--his social
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