He alarmed me, though not
as Henley did for I never left his house thinking myself fool or
dunce. He flattered the intellect of every man he liked; he made
me tell him long Irish stories and compared my art of story-telling
to Homer's; and once when he had described himself as writing in
the census paper 'age 19, profession genius, infirmity talent,'
the other guest, a young journalist fresh from Oxford or Cambridge,
said 'What should I have written?' and was told that it should
have been 'profession talent, infirmity genius.' When, however,
I called, wearing shoes a little too yellow--unblackened leather
had just become fashionable--I understood their extravagence when
I saw his eyes fixed upon them; an another day Wilde asked me to
tell his little boy a fairy story, and I had but got as far as
'Once upon a time there was a giant' when the little boy screamed
and ran out of the room. Wilde looked grave and I was plunged into
the shame of clumsiness that afflicts the young. When I asked for
some literary gossip for some provincial newspaper, that paid me
a few shillings a month, he explained very explicitly that writing
literary gossip was no job for a gentleman.
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