It became the , both at Henleys and at Bedford Park, to say that R. A. M. Stevenson, who frequented both circles, was the better talker. Wilde had been trussed up like a turkey by undergraduates, dragged up and down a hill, his champagied into the ice tub, hooted ireets of various towns and I think stoned, and no neer named him but in s; his manner had hardeo meet opposition and at times he allowed oo see an unpardonable insolence. His charm was acquired and systematised, a mask which he wore only when it pleased him, while the charm of Stevenson beloo him like the colour of his hair. If Stevensons talk became monologue we did not know it, because our one object was to show by our attention that he need never leave off. If thought failed him we would not bat what he had said, or start some heme, but would ence him with a question; and ohat it had been always so from childhood up.
His mind was full of phantasy for phantasys sake and he gave as good eai in monologue as his cousin Robert Louis in poem or story. He was always supposing: Suppose you had two millions what would you do with it? and Suppose you were in Spain and in love how would you propose? I recall him oernoon at our house at Bedford Park, surrounded by my brother and sisters and a little group of my fathers friends, describing proposals in half a dozen tries. There your father did it, dressed in sud such a way with sud such words, and there a friend must wait for the lady outside the chapel door, sprinkle her with holy water and say My friend Jones is dying for love of you. But when it was over, those quaint descriptions, so full of laughter and sympathy, faded or remained in the memory as something alien from ones own life like a dance I once saw in a great house, where beautifully dressed children wound a long ribbon in and out as they danced. I was not of Stevensons party and mainly I think because he had written a book in praise of Velasquez, praise at that time universal wherever Pre?Raphaelitism was accurst, and to my mind, that had to pick its symbols where its ignorance permitted, Velasquez seemed the first bored celebrant of boredom. I was vinced, from some obscure meditation, that Stevensons versational method had joined him to my elders and to the indifferent world, as though it were right for old men, and unambitious men and all women, to be tent with charm and humour. It was the prerogative of youth to take sides and when Wilde said: Mr. Bernard Shaw has no enemies but is intensely disliked by all his friends, I k to be a phrase I should never fet, a revenged upon a notorious hater of romance, whose generosity and ce I could not fathom.