“‘I was not naughty,’ he pouted, ‘it was Vyvyan; he was naughty.’

“I explained to him that his temper was naughty, and that he must do as he was told.  With a little sigh he slipped off my knee, and knelt down and put his little hands together, as he had been taught, and began ‘Our Father.’  When he had finished the ‘Lord’s Prayer,’ he looked up at me and said gravely, ‘Now I’ll pray to myself.’

“He closed his eyes and his lips moved.  When he had finished I took him in my arms again and kissed him.  ‘That’s right,’ I said.

“‘You said you were sorry,’ questioned his mother, leaning over him, ‘and asked God to make you a good boy?’

“‘Yes, mother,’ he nodded, ’I said I was sorry and asked God to make Vyvyan a good boy.’

“I had to leave the room, Frank, or he would have seen me smiling.  Wasn’t it delightful of him!  We are all willing to ask God to make others good.”

This story shows the lovable side of him.  There was another side not so amiable.  In April, 1893, “A Woman of No Importance” was produced by Herbert Beerbohm Tree at The Haymarket and ran till the end of the season, August 16th, surviving even the festival of St. Grouse.  The astonishing success of this second play confirmed Oscar Wilde’s popularity, gave him money to spend and increased his self-confidence.  In the summer he took a house up the river at Goring, and went there to live with Lord Alfred Douglas.  Weird stories came to us in London about their life together.  Some time in September, I think it was, I asked him what was the truth underlying these reports.

“Scandals and slanders, Frank, have no relation to truth,” he replied.

“I wonder if that’s true,” I said, “slander often has some substratum of truth; it resembles the truth like a gigantic shadow; there is a likeness at least in outline.”

“That would be true,” he retorted, “if the canvas, so to speak, on which the shadows fall were even and true; but it is not.  Scandals and slander are related to the hatred of the people who invent them and are not in any shadowy sense even, effigies or images of the person attacked.”

“Much smoke, then,” I queried, “and no fire?”

“Only little fires,” he rejoined, “show much smoke.  The foundation for what you heard is both small and harmless.  The summer was very warm and beautiful, as you know, and I was up at Goring with Bosie.  Often in the middle of the day we were too hot to go on the river.  One afternoon it was sultry-close, and Bosie proposed that I should turn the hose pipe on him.  He went in and threw his things off and so did I. A few minutes later I was seated in a chair with a bath towel round me and Bosie was lying on the grass about ten yards away, when the vicar came to pay us a call.  The servant told him that we were in the garden, and he came and found us there.  Frank, you have no idea the sort of face he pulled.  What could I say?”