I want to know if you will allow me to dedicate to you my next play, “The Ideal Husband”—­which Smithers is bringing out for me in the same form as the others, of which I hope you received your copy.  I should so much like to write your name and a few words on the dedicatory page.

I look back with joy and regret to the lovely sunlight of the Riviera, and the charming winter you so generously and kindly gave me:  it was most good of you:  how can it ever be forgotten by me.

Next week a petroleum launch is to arrive here, so that will console me a little, as I love to be on the water:  and the Savoy side is starred with pretty villages and green valleys.

Of course we won our bet—­the phrase on Shelley is in Arnold’s preface to Byron:  but M——­ won’t pay me!  He suffers agony over a franc.  It is very annoying as I have had no money since my arrival here.  However I regard the place as a Swiss Pension—­where there is no weekly bill....

Ever yours,

OSCAR.

I believe I answered; but am not sure.  I was naturally delighted to have just “An Ideal Husband” dedicated to me, because I had suggested the plot of it to Oscar—­not that the plot was in any true sense mine.  An interesting and clever American in Cairo, a Mr. Cope Whitehouse, had given it to me as I tell in this book.  The story Whitehouse told may not be true; but my mind jumped at once to the thought of a story where an English Minister would be confronted with some early sin of that sort.  I had hardly bettered the story given to me when I related it to Oscar who used it almost immediately with great effect.  Dedicatory words are usually as flattering as epitaphs; those of “An Ideal Husband” run: 

     TO

     FRANK HARRIS

     A SLIGHT TRIBUTE TO

     HIS POWER AND DISTINCTION

     AS AN ARTIST

     HIS CHIVALRY AND NOBILITY

     AS A FRIEND

MRS. WILDE’S EPITAPH

(See page 447)

An evil fate seems to have pursued even Oscar’s wife.  She died in Genoa and was buried in the corner of the Campo Santo set apart for Protestants.  This is what one reads on her tombstone: 

     CONSTANCE

     DAUGHTER OF THE LATE

     HORATIO LLOYD, Q.C.

     BORN ——­ DIED ——­

No reference to her marriage or to the famous man who was the father of her two sons.

The irony of chance wills it that the late Horatio Lloyd, Q.C., had been more than suspected of sexual viciousness:  cfr.  “Criticisms by Robert Ross” at end of Appendix.

SONNET

(See page 517)

TO OSCAR WILDE