of a dinner which Oscar Wilde had given at a restaurant in Soho, which was said
to have degenerated into a sort of Roman orgy. I was told of a man who tried to
get money by blackmailing him in his own house. I shrugged my shoulders at all
these scandals, and asked the talebearers what had been said about Shakespeare
to make him rave as he raved again and again against "back-wounding calumny";
and when they persisted in their malicious stories I could do nothing but show
disbelief. Though I saw but little of Oscar during the first year or so of his
intimacy with Lord Alfred Douglas, one scene from this time filled me with
suspicion and an undefined dread.
I was in a corner of the Cafe Royal one night downstairs, playing chess, and,
while waiting for my opponent to move, I went out just to stretch my legs. When
I returned I found Oscar throned in the very corner, between two youths. Even
to my short-sighted eyes they appeared quite common: in fact they looked like
grooms. In spite of their vulgar appearance, however, one was nice looking in a
fresh boyish way; the other seemed merely depraved. Oscar greeted me as usual,
though he seemed slightly embarrassed. I resumed my seat, which was almost
opposite him, and pretended to be absorbed in the game. To my astonishment he
was talking as well as if he had had a picked audience; talking, if you please,
about the Olympic games, telling how the youths wrestled and were scraped with
strigulae and threw the discus and ran races and won the myrtle-wreath. His
impassioned eloquence brought the sun-bathed palaestra before one with a magic
of representment. Suddenly the younger of the boys asked:
"Did you sy they was niked?"
"Of course," Oscar replied, "nude, clothed only in sunshine and beauty."
"Oh, my," giggled the lad in his unspeakable Cockney way. I could not stand it.
"I am in an impossible position," I said to my opponent, who was the amateur
chess player, Montagu Gattie. "Come along and let us have some dinner." With a
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