e dead, and a little later his wife, struck by paralysis during
his imprisonment, I think, was dead, too; and he himself, his constitution
ruined by prison life, followed quickly; but I have never doubted, even
for an instant, that he made the right decision, and that he owes to that
decision half of his renown.

Cultivated London, that before the action against Lord Queensberry had
mocked his pose and affected style, and refused to acknowledge his wit,
was now full of his advocates, though I did not meet a single man who
considered him innocent. One old enemy of his overtook me in the street
and began to praise his audacity, his self-possession. "He has made," he
said, "of infamy a new Thermopylae." I had written in reply to Lionel
Johnson's letter that I regretted Wilde's downfall but not that of his
imitators, but Johnson had changed with the rest. "Why do you not regret
the fall of Wilde's imitators"--I had but tried to share what I thought
his opinion--"They were worthless, but should have been left to
criticism." Wilde himself was a martyr in his eyes, and when I said that
tragedy might give his art a greater depth, he would not even grant a
martyr's enemies that poor merit, and thought Wilde would produce, when
it was all over, some comedy exactly like the others, writing from an art
where events could leave no trace. Everywhere one met writers and artists
who praised his wit and eloquence in the witness box, or repeated some
private saying. Willie Redmond told of finding him, to his astonishment,
at the conversazione of some theatrical society, standing amid an
infuriated crowd, mocking with more than all his old satirical wit the
actors and their country. He had said to a well-known painter during one
or other of the trials, "My poor brother writes to me that he is defending
me all over London; my poor, dear brother, he could compromise a steam
engine." His brother, too, had suffered a change, for, if rumour did not
wrong him, "the wounded stag" had not been at all graciously received.
"Thank God my vices were decent," had been his comment, and refusing to
sit at the same table, he had dined at some neighbouring hotel at his
brother's expense. His successful brother who had scorned him for a
drunken ne'er-do-well was now at his mercy, and besides, he probably
shared, until tragedy awoke another self, the rage and contempt that
filled the crowds in the street, and all men and women who had an
over-abundant normal