[Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) by Frank Harris]@TWC D-Link bookOscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) CHAPTER XXV 8/31
I asked him about his health. "I'm all right, Frank, but the rash continually comes back, a ghostly visitant, Frank: I'm afraid the doctors are in league with the devil.
It generally returns after a good dinner, a sort of aftermath of champagne. The doctors say I must not drink champagne, and must stop smoking, the silly people, who regard pleasure as their natural enemies; whereas it is our pleasures which provide them with a living!" He looked fairly well, I thought; he was a little fatter, his skin a little dingier than of old, and he had grown very deaf, but in every other way he seemed at his best, though he was certainly drinking too freely--spirits between times as well as wine at meals. I had heard on the Riviera during the winter that Smithers had tried to buy a play from him, so one day I brought up the subject. "By the way, Smithers says that you have been working on your play; you know the one I mean, the one with the great screen scene in it." "Oh, yes, Frank," he remarked indifferently. "Won't you tell me what you've done ?" I asked.
"Have you written any of it ?" "No, Frank," he replied casually, "it's the scenario Smithers talked about." A little while afterwards he asked me for money.
I told him I could not afford any at the moment, and pressed him to write his play. "I shall never write again, Frank," he said.
"I can't, I simply can't face my thoughts.
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