I could try; but I would infinitely prefer
you to write the whole play if you would; then it would sell fast
enough."

"Oh, Frank, don't ask me."

The idea of the collaboration was a mistake; but it seemed to me at the
moment the best way to get him to do something. Suddenly he asked me to
give him L50 for the scenario at once, then I could do what I liked with
it.

After a good deal of talk I consented to give him the L50 if he would
promise to write the first act; he promised and I gave him the
money.[33]

A little later I noticed a certain tension in his relations with Lord
Alfred Douglas. One day he told me frankly that Lord Alfred Douglas had
come into a fortune of L15,000 or L20,000, "and," he added, "of course
he's always able to get money. He'll marry an American millionairess or
some rich widow" (Oscar's ideas of life were nearly all conventional,
derived from novels and plays); "and I wanted him to give me enough to
make my life comfortable, to settle enough on me to make a decent life
possible to me. It would only have cost him two or three thousand
pounds, perhaps less. I get L150 a year and I wanted him to make it up
to L300.[34] I lost that through going to him at Naples. I think he
ought to give me that at the very least, don't you? Won't you speak to
him, Frank?"

"I could not possibly interfere," I replied.

"I gave him everything," he went on, in a depressed way. "When I had
money, he never had to ask for it; all that was mine was his. And now
that he is rich, I have to beg from him, and he gives me small sums and
puts me off. It is terrible of him; it is really very, very wrong of
him."

I changed the subject as soon as I could; there was a note of bitterness
which I did not like, which indeed I had already remarked in him.

I was destined very soon to hear the other side. A day or two later Lord
Alfred Douglas told me that he had bought some racehorses and was
training them at Chantilly; would I come down and see them?

"I am not much of a judge of racehorses," I replied, "and I don't know
much about racing; but I should not mind coming down one evening. I
could spend the night at an hotel, and see the horses and your stable in
the morning. The life of the English stable lads in France must be
rather peculiar."

"It is droll," he said, "a complete English colony in France. There are
practically no French jockeys or trainers worth their salt; it is all
English, English slang, English way