“Is that going in a book, Oscar?” I asked, smiling, “or in an article?  You have written nothing lately.”

“I have a play in my mind,” he replied gravely.  “To-morrow I am going to shut myself up in my room, and stay there until it is written.  George Alexander has been bothering me to write a play for some time and I’ve got an idea I rather like.  I wonder can I do it in a week, or will it take three?  It ought not to take long to beat the Pineros and the Joneses.”  It always annoyed Oscar when any other name but his came into men’s mouths:  his vanity was extraordinarily alert.

Naturally enough he minimised Mr. Alexander’s initiative.  The well-known actor had “bothered” Oscar by advancing him L100 before the scenario was even outlined.  A couple of months later he told me that Alexander had accepted his comedy, and was going to produce “Lady Windermere’s Fan.”  I thought the title excellent.

“Territorial names,” Oscar explained, gravely, “have always a cachet of distinction:  they fall on the ear full toned with secular dignity.  That’s how I get all the names of my personages, Frank.  I take up a map of the English counties, and there they are.  Our English villages have often exquisitely beautiful names.  Windermere, for instance, or Hunstanton,” and he rolled the syllables over his tongue with a soft sensual pleasure.

I had a box the first night and, thinking it might do Oscar some good, I took with me Arthur Walter of The Times.  The first scene of the first act was as old as the hills, but the treatment gave charm to it if not freshness.  The delightful, unexpected humour set off the commonplace incident; but it was only the convention that Arthur Walter would see.  The play was poor, he thought, which brought me to wonder.

After the first act I went downstairs to the foyer and found the critics in much the same mind.  There was an enormous gentleman called Joseph Knight, who cried out: 

“The humour is mechanical, unreal.”  Seeing that I did not respond he challenged me: 

“What do you think of it?”

“That is for you critics to answer,” I replied.

“I might say,” he laughed, “in Oscar’s own peculiar way, ’Little promise and less performance.’  Ha! ha! ha!”

“That’s the exact opposite to Oscar’s way,” I retorted.  “It is the listeners who laugh at his humour.”

“Come now, really,” cried Knight, “you cannot think much of the play?”

For the first time in my life I began to realise that nine critics out of ten are incapable of judging original work.  They seem to live in a sort of fog, waiting for someone to give them the lead, and accordingly they love to discuss every new play right and left.

“I have not seen the whole play,” I answered.  “I was not at any of the rehearsals; but so far it is surely the best comedy in English, the most brilliant:  isn’t it?”

The big man started back and stared at me; then burst out laughing.