The astonishing success of this second play confirmed Oscar Wilde's popularity, gave him money to spend and increased his self-confidence.
In the summer he took a house up the river at Goring, and went there to live with Lord Alfred Douglas.

Weird stories came to us in London about their life together.

Some time in September, I think it was, I asked him what was the truth underlying these reports.
"Scandals and slanders, Frank, have no relation to truth," he replied.
"I wonder if that's true," I said, "slander often has some substratum of truth; it resembles the truth like a gigantic shadow; there is a likeness at least in outline." "That would be true," he retorted, "if the canvas, so to speak, on which the shadows fall were even and true; but it is not.

Scandals and slander are related to the hatred of the people who invent them and are not in any shadowy sense even, effigies or images of the person attacked." "Much smoke, then," I queried, "and no fire ?" "Only little fires," he rejoined, "show much smoke.

The foundation for what you heard is both small and harmless.