shment of their meeting over, diversity of character and ambition
pushed them apart, and, with half the cavern helping, Henley began mixing
the poisoned bowl for Wilde. Yet Henley never wholly lost that first
admiration, for after Wilde's downfall he said to me: "Why did he do it? I
told my lads to attack him and yet we might have fought under his banner."

IX

It became the custom, both at Henley's and at Bedford Park, to say that R.
A. M. Stevenson, who frequented both circles, was the better talker. Wilde
had been trussed up like a turkey by undergraduates, dragged up and down a
hill, his champagne emptied into the ice tub, hooted in the streets of
various towns, and I think stoned, and no newspaper named him but in
scorn; his manner had hardened to meet opposition and at times he allowed
one to see an unpardonable insolence. His charm was acquired and
systematized, a mask which he wore only when it pleased him, while the
charm of Stevenson belonged to him like the colour of his hair. If
Stevenson's talk became monologue we did not know it, because our one
object was to show by our attention that he need never leave off. If
thought failed him we would not combat what he had said, or start some new
theme, but would encourage him with a question; and one felt that it had
been always so from childhood up. His mind was full of phantasy for
phantasy's sake and he gave as good entertainment in monologue as his
cousin Robert Louis in poem or story. He was always "supposing"; "Suppose
you had two millions what would you do with it?" and "Suppose you were in
Spain and in love how would you propose?" I recall him one afternoon at
our house at Bedford Park, surrounded by my brother and sisters and a
little group of my father's friends, describing proposals in half a dozen
countries. There your father did it, dressed in such and such a way with
such and such words, and there a friend must wait for the lady outside the
chapel door, sprinkle her with holy water and say, "My friend Jones is
dying for love of you." But when it was over those quaint descriptions, so
full of laughter and sympathy, faded or remained in the memory as
something alien from one's own life, like a dance I once saw in a great
house, where beautifully dressed children wound a long ribbon in and out
as they danced. I was not of Stevenson's party and mainly I think because
he had written a book in praise of Velasquez, praise at that time
universal wherever Pr