Douglas at Winchester, who brought him to tea at Oscar's house in Tite
Street. Their mutual attraction had countless hooks. Oscar was drawn
by the lad's personal beauty, and enormously affected besides by Lord
Alfred Douglas' name and position: he was a snob as only an English
artist can be a snob; he loved titular distinctions, and Douglas is
one of the few great names in British history with the gilding of
romance about it. No doubt Oscar talked better than his best because
he was talking to Lord Alfred Douglas. To the last the mere name
rolled on his tongue gave him extraordinary pleasure. Besides, the boy
admired him, hung upon his lips with his soul in his eyes; showed,
too, rare intelligence in his appreciation, confessed that he himself
wrote verses and loved letters passionately. Could more be desired
than perfection perfected?

And Alfred Douglas on his side was almost as powerfully attracted; he
had inherited from his mother all her literary tastes--and more: he
was already a master-poet with a singing faculty worthy to be compared
with the greatest. What wonder if he took this magical talker, with
the luminous eyes and charming voice, and a range and play of thought
beyond his imagining, for a world's miracle, one of the Immortals.
Before he had listened long, I have been told, the youth declared his
admiration passionately. They were an extraordinary pair and were
complementary in a hundred ways, not only in mind, but in character.
Oscar had reached originality of thought and possessed the culture of
scholarship, while Alfred Douglas had youth and rank and beauty,
besides being as articulate as a woman with an unsurpassable gift of
expression. Curiously enough, Oscar was as yielding and amiable in
character as the boy was self-willed, reckless, obstinate and
imperious.

Years later Oscar told me that from the first he dreaded Alfred
Douglas' aristocratic, insolent boldness:

"He frightened me, Frank, as much as he attracted me, and I held away
from him. But he wouldn't have it; he sought me out again and again
and I couldn't resist him. That is my only fault. That's what ruined
me. He increased my expenses so that I could not meet them; over and
over again I tried to free myself from him; but he came back and I
yielded--alas!"

Though this is Oscar's later gloss on what actually happened, it is
fairly accurate. He was never able to realise how his meeting with
Lord Alfred Douglas had changed the world