brains therefore to the average journalist, and their
judgment was that it was a most brilliant and interesting play. Though
the humour was often prepared, the construction showed a rare mastery
of stage-effect. Oscar Wilde had at length come into his kingdom.

At the end the author was called for, and Oscar appeared before the
curtain. The house rose at him and cheered and cheered again. He was
smiling, with a cigarette between his fingers, wholly master of
himself and his audience.

"I am so glad, ladies and gentlemen, that you like my play.[10] I feel
sure you estimate the merits of it almost as highly as I do myself."

The house rocked with laughter. The play and its humour were a seven
days' wonder in London. People talked of nothing but "Lady
Windermere's Fan." The witty words in it ran from lip to lip like a
tidbit of scandal. Some clever Jewesses and, strange to say, one
Scotchman were the loudest in applause. Mr. Archer, the well-known
critic of _The World_, was the first and only journalist to perceive
that the play was a classic by virtue of "genuine dramatic qualities."
Mrs. Leverson turned the humorous sayings into current social coin in
_Punch_, of all places in the world, and from a favourite Oscar Wilde
rapidly became the idol of smart London.

The play was an intellectual triumph. This time Oscar had not only won
success but had won also the suffrages of the best. Nearly all the
journalist-critics were against him and made themselves ridiculous by
their brainless strictures; _Truth_ and _The Times_, for example, were
poisonously puritanic, but thinking people came over to his side in a
body. The halo of fame was about him, and the incense of it in his
nostrils made him more charming, more irresponsibly gay, more
genial-witty than ever. He was as one set upon a pinnacle with the
sunshine playing about him, lighting up his radiant eyes. All the
while, however, the foul mists from the underworld were wreathing
about him, climbing higher and higher.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] Cfr. Appendix: "Criticisms by Robert Ross."

CHAPTER X

Thou hast led me like an heathen sacrifice,
With music and with fatal pomp of flowers,
To my eternal ruin.--Webster's _The White Devil_.

"Lady Windermere's Fan" was a success in every sense of the word, and
during its run London was at Oscar's feet. There were always a few
doors closed to him; but he could afford now to treat his critics with
laughter, ca