fame as a talker was
growing among his equals, and 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.

XI

Of late years I have often explained Wilde to myself by his family
history. His father was a friend or acquaintance of my father's father and
among my family traditions there is an old Dublin riddle: "Why are Sir
William Wilde's nails so black?" Answer, "Because he has scratched
himself." And there is an old story still current in Dublin of Lady Wilde
saying to a servant, "Why do you put the plates on the coal-scuttle? What
are the chairs meant for?" They were famous people and there are many like
stories; and even a horrible folk story, the invention of some Connaught
peasant, that tells how Sir William Wilde took out the eyes of some men,
who had come to consult him as an oculist, and laid them upon a plate,
intending to replace them in a moment, and how the eyes were eaten by a
cat. As a certain friend of mine, who has made a prolonged study of the
nature of cats, said when he first heard the tale, "Cats love eyes." The
Wilde family was clearly of the sort that fed the imagination of Charles
Lever, dirty, untidy, daring, and what Charles Lever, who loved more
normal activities, might not have valued so highly, very imaginative and
learned. Lady Wilde, who when I knew her received her friends with blinds
drawn and shutters closed that none might see her withered face, longed
always perhaps, though certainly amid much self-mockery, for some
impossible splendour of character and circum