That's how I get all the names of my personages, Frank. I take up a
map of the English counties, and there they are. Our English villages
have often exquisitely beautiful names. Windermere, for instance, or
Hunstanton," and he rolled the syllables over his tongue with a soft
sensual pleasure.

I had a box the first night and, thinking it might do Oscar some good,
I took with me Arthur Walter of _The Times_. The first scene of the
first act was as old as the hills, but the treatment gave charm to it
if not freshness. The delightful, unexpected humour set off the
commonplace incident; but it was only the convention that Arthur
Walter would see. The play was poor, he thought, which brought me to
wonder.

After the first act I went downstairs to the _foyer_ and found the
critics in much the same mind. There was an enormous gentleman called
Joseph Knight, who cried out:

"The humour is mechanical, unreal." Seeing that I did not respond he
challenged me:

"What do you think of it?"

"That is for you critics to answer," I replied.

"I might say," he laughed, "in Oscar's own peculiar way, 'Little
promise and less performance.' Ha! ha! ha!"

"That's the exact opposite to Oscar's way," I retorted. "It is the
listeners who laugh at his humour."

"Come now, really," cried Knight, "you cannot think much of the play?"

For the first time in my life I began to realise that nine critics out
of ten are incapable of judging original work. They seem to live in a
sort of fog, waiting for someone to give them the lead, and
accordingly they love to discuss every new play right and left.

"I have not seen the whole play," I answered. "I was not at any of the
rehearsals; but so far it is surely the best comedy in English, the
most brilliant: isn't it?"

The big man started back and stared at me; then burst out laughing.

"That's good," he cried with a loud unmirthful guffaw. "'Lady
Windermere's Fan' better than any comedy of Shakespeare! Ha! ha! ha!
'more brilliant!' ho! ho!"

"Yes," I persisted, angered by his disdain, "wittier, and more
humorous than 'As You Like It,' or 'Much Ado.' Strange to say, too, it
is on a higher intellectual level. I can only compare it to the best
of Congreve, and I think it's better." With a grunt of disapproval or
rage the great man of the daily press turned away to exchange
bleatings with one of his _confreres_.

The audience was a picked audience of the best heads in London, far
superior in