She knew all his poems by heart, took the strass for diamonds and welcomed the chance of introducing her brilliant son to the Irish Nationalist Members and other pinchbeck celebrities who flocked about her.
It was about this time that I first saw Lady Wilde.

I was introduced to her by Willie, Oscar's elder brother, whom I had met in Fleet Street.

Willie was then a tall, well-made fellow of thirty or thereabouts with an expressive taking face, lit up with a pair of deep blue laughing eyes.

He had any amount of physical vivacity, and told a good story with immense verve, without for a moment getting above the commonplace: to him the Corinthian journalism of _The Daily Telegraph_ was literature.

Still he had the surface good nature and good humour of healthy youth and was generally liked.