[Ed.]] "Our sixth meeting, the only other one I can remember, was the one at the Cafe Royal.

On that occasion he was not too preoccupied with his danger to be disgusted with me because I, who had praised his first plays handsomely, had turned traitor over 'The Importance of Being Earnest.' Clever as it was, it was his first really heartless play.

In the others the chivalry of the eighteenth century Irishman and the romance of the disciple of Theophile Gautier (Oscar was really old-fashioned in the Irish way, except as a critic of morals) not only gave a certain kindness and gallantry to the serious passages and to the handling of the women, but provided that proximity of emotion without which laughter, however irresistible, is destructive and sinister.

In 'The Importance of Being Earnest' this had vanished; and the play, though extremely funny, was essentially hateful.

I had no idea that Oscar was going to the dogs, and that this represented a real degeneracy produced by his debaucheries.