it condemns one Briton in every four to a pauper's grave. The result
will convince the most hardened that such selfishness is not a creed by
which human beings can live in society.
* * * * *
This summer of 1897 was the harvest time in Oscar Wilde's Life; and his
golden Indian summer. We owe it "De Profundis," the best pages of prose
he ever wrote, and "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," his only original poem;
yet one that will live as long as the language: we owe it also that
sweet and charming letter to Bobbie Ross which shows him in his habit as
he lived. I must still say a word or two about him in this summer in
order to show the ordinary working of his mind.
On his release, and, indeed, for a year or two later, he called himself
Sebastian Melmoth. But one had hardly spoken a half a dozen words to
him, when he used to beg to be called Oscar Wilde. I remember how he
pulled up someone who had just been introduced to him, who persisted in
addressing him as Mr. Melmoth.
"Call me Oscar Wilde," he pleaded, "Mr. Melmoth is unknown, you see."
"I thought you preferred it," said the stranger excusing himself.
"Oh, dear, no," interrupted Oscar smiling, "I only use the name Melmoth
to spare the blushes of the postman, to preserve his modesty," and he
laughed in the old delightful way.
It was always significant to me the eager delight with which he shuffled
off the new name and took up the old one which he had made famous.
An anecdote from his life in the Chalet at this time showed that the old
witty pagan in Oscar was not yet extinct.
An English lady who had written a great many novels and happened to be
staying in Dieppe heard of him, and out of kindness or curiosity, or
perhaps a mixture of both motives, wrote and invited him to luncheon. He
accepted the invitation. The good lady did not know how to talk to Mr.
Sebastian Melmoth, and time went heavily. At length she began to
expatiate on the cheapness of things in France; did Mr. Melmoth know how
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