Chapter 8 - Page 2

described himself as writing in
the census paper 'age 19, profession genius, infirmity talent,'
the other guest, a young journalist fresh from Oxford or Cambridge,
said 'What should I have written?' and was told that it should
have been 'profession talent, infirmity genius.' When, however,
I called, wearing shoes a little too yellow--unblackened leather
had just become fashionable--I understood their extravagence when
I saw his eyes fixed upon them; an another day Wilde asked me to
tell his little boy a fairy story, and I had but got as far as
'Once upon a time there was a giant' when the little boy screamed
and ran out of the room. Wilde looked grave and I was plunged into
the shame of clumsiness that afflicts the young. When I asked for
some literary gossip for some provincial newspaper, that paid me
a few shillings a month, he explained very explicitly that writing
literary gossip was no job for a gentleman. Though to be compared
to Homer passed the time pleasantly, I had not been greatly
perturbed had he stopped me with 'Is it a long story?' as
Henley would certainly have done. I was abashed before him as wit
and man of the world alone. I remember that he deprecated the very
general belief in his success or his efficiency, and I think with
sincerity. One form of success had gone: he was no more the lion
of the season, and he had not discovered his gift for writing
comedy, yet I think I knew him at the happiest moment of his life.
No scandal had darkened his fame, his fame as a talker was growing
among his equals, & he seemed to live in the enjoyment of his own
spontaneity. One day he began: 'I have been inventing a Christian
heresy,' and he told a detailed story, in the style of some early
father, of how Christ recovered after the Crucifixion and,
escaping from the tomb, lived on for many years, the one man upon
earth who knew the falsehood of Christianity. Once St. Paul
visited his town and he alone in the carpenters' quarter did not
go to hear him preach. The other carpenters noticed that
henceforth, for some unknown reason, he kept his hands covered. A
few days afterwards I found Wilde, with smock frocks in various
colours spread out upon the floor in front of him, while a
missionary explained that he did not object to the heathen going
naked upon week days, but insisted upon clothes in church. He had
brought the smock frocks in a cab that the only art-critic whose
fame had reached Central Africa might select a colour; so Wilde
sat there weighing all with a conscious ecclesiastic solemnity.