y I had a
nightmare that I was haunted by a sewing machine, that clicked and shone,
but the incredible thing was that the machine smiled, smiled perpetually.
Yet I delighted in Shaw the formidable man. He could hit my enemies and
the enemies of all I loved, as I could never hit, as no living author that
was dear to me could ever hit.

Florence Farr's way home was mine also for a part of the way, and it was
often of this that we talked, and sometimes, though not always, she would
share my hesitations, and for years to come I was to wonder whenever Shaw
became my topic, whether the cock crowed for my blame or for my praise.

II

Shaw and Wilde, had no catastrophe come, would have long divided the stage
between them, though they were most unlike--for Wilde believed himself to
value nothing but words in their emotional associations, and he had turned
his style to a parade as though it were his show, and he Lord Mayor.

I was at Sligo again and I saw the announcement of his action against Lord
Queensberry, when starting from my uncle's house to walk to Knocknarea to
dine with Cochrane of the Glen, as he was called, to distinguish him from
others of that name, an able old man. He had a relation, a poor mad girl,
who shared our meals, and at whom I shuddered. She would take a flower
from the vase in front of her and push it along the tablecloth towards any
male guest who sat near. The old man himself had strange opinions, born
not from any mental eccentricity, but from the solitude of his life; and a
freedom from all prejudice that was not of his own discovery. "The world
is getting more manly," he would say, "it has begun to drink port again,"
or "Ireland is going to become prosperous. Divorced couples now choose
Ireland for a retreat, just as before Scotland became prosperous they
began to go there. There are a divorced wife and her lover living at the
other side of the mountain." I remember that I spoke that night of Wilde's
kindness to myself, said I did not believe him guilty, quoted the
psychologist Bain, who has attributed to every sensualist "a voluminous
tenderness," and described Wilde's hard brilliance, his dominating
self-possession. I considered him essentially a man of action, that he was
a writer by perversity and accident, and would have been more important as
soldier or politician; and I was certain that, guilty or not guilty, he
would prove himself a man. I was probably excited, and did most of the
talki