"Oh, no, Frank," he chided, "everyone sat at my feet even then. But Pater was a
very great man. Dear Pater! I remember once talking to him when we were seated
together on a bench under some trees in Oxford. I had been watching the
students bathing in the river: the beautiful white figures all grace and ease
and virile strength. I had been pointing out how Christianity had flowered into
romance, and how the crude Hebraic materialism and all the later formalities of
an established creed had fallen away from the tree of life and left us the
exquisite ideals of the new paganism. . . .
"The pale Christ had been outlived: his renunciations and his sympathies were
mere weaknesses: we were moving to a synthesis of art where the enchanting
perfume of romance should be wedded to the severe beauty of classic form.
I really talked as if inspired, and when I paused, Pater--the stiff, quiet,
silent Pater--suddenly slipped from his seat and knelt down by me and kissed
my hand. I cried:
"'You must not, you really must not. What would people think if they saw you?'
"He got up with a white strained face.
"'I had to,' he muttered, glancing about him fearfully, 'I had to--once. . . .'"
I must warn my readers that this whole incident is ripened and set in a higher
key of thought by the fact that Oscar told it more than ten years after it
happened.
CHAPTER IV--FORMATIVE INFLUENCES: OSCAR'S POEMS
The most important event in Oscar's early life happened while he was still
an undergraduate at Oxford: his father, Sir William Wilde, died in 1876, leaving
to his wife, Lady Wilde, nearly all he possessed, some L7,000, the interest
of which was barely enough to keep her in genteel poverty. The sum is so small
that one is constrained to believe the report that Sir William Wilde in his
later years kept practically open house--"lashins of whisky and a good larder,"
and was besides notorious for his gallantries. Oscar's small portion, a little
money and a small house with some land, came to him in the nick of time: he used
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