We had a certain interest in each other, an interest of curiosity, for I remember that he led the way almost at once into the inner drawing room in order to be free to talk in some seclusion.  After half an hour or so I asked him to lunch next day at The Cafe Royal, then the best restaurant in London.

At this time he was a superb talker, more brilliant than any I have ever heard in England, but nothing like what he became later.  His talk soon made me forget his repellant physical peculiarities; indeed I soon lost sight of them so completely that I have wondered since how I could have been so disagreeably affected by them at first sight.  There was an extraordinary physical vivacity and geniality in the man, an extraordinary charm in his gaiety, and lightning-quick intelligence.  His enthusiasms, too, were infectious.  Every mental question interested him, especially if it had anything to do with art or literature.  His whole face lit up as he spoke and one saw nothing but his soulful eyes, heard nothing but his musical tenor voice; he was indeed what the French call a charmeur.

In ten minutes I confessed to myself that I liked him, and his talk was intensely quickening.  He had something unexpected to say on almost every subject.  His mind was agile and powerful and he took a delight in using it.  He was well-read too, in several languages, especially in French, and his excellent memory stood him in good stead.  Even when he merely reproduced what the great writers had said perfectly, he added a new colouring.  And already his characteristic humour was beginning to illumine every topic with lambent flashes.

It was at our first lunch, I think, that he told me he had been asked by Harper’s to write a book of one hundred thousand words and offered a large sum for it—­I think some five thousand dollars—­in advance.  He wrote to them gravely that there were not one hundred thousand words in English, so he could not undertake the work, and laughed merrily like a child at the cheeky reproof.

“I have sent their letters and my reply to the press,” he added, and laughed again, while probing me with inquisitive eyes:  how far did I understand the need of self-advertisement?

About this time an impromptu of his moved the town to laughter.  At some dinner party it appeared the ladies sat a little too long; Oscar wanted to smoke.  Suddenly the hostess drew his attention to a lamp the shade of which was smouldering.

“Please put it out, Mr. Wilde,” she said, “it’s smoking.”

Oscar turned to do as he was told with the remark: 

“Happy lamp!”

The delightful impertinence had an extraordinary success.

Early in our friendship I was fain to see that the love of the uncommon, his paradoxes and epigrams were natural to him, sprang immediately from his taste and temperament.  Perhaps it would be well to define once for all his attitude towards life with more scope and particularity than I have hitherto done.