To my astonishment I found him obdurate in his wrong-headedness.  When I asked him what he had sold me for the L50 I paid him, he coolly said he didn’t think I was serious, that no man would write a play on another man’s scenario; it was absurd, impossible—­“C’est ridicule!” he repeated again and again.  When I reminded him that Shakespeare had done it, he got angry:  it was altogether different then—­today:  “C’est ridicule!” Tired of going over and over the old ground I pressed him to tell me what he wanted.  For hours he wouldn’t say:  then at length he declared he ought to have half of all the play fetched, and even that wouldn’t be fair to him, as he was a dramatist and I was not, and I ought not to have touched his scenario and so on, over and over again.

I returned to my hotel wearied in heart and head by his ridiculous demands and reiterations.  After thrashing the beaten straw to dust on the following day, I agreed at length to give him another L50 down and another L50 later.  Even then he pretended to be very sorry indeed that I had taken what he called “his play,” and assured me in the same breath that “Mr. and Mrs. Daventry” would be a rank failure:  “Plays cannot be written by amateurs; plays require knowledge of the stage.  It’s quite absurd of you, Frank, who hardly ever go to the theatre, to think you can write a successful play straight off.  I always loved the theatre, always went to every first night in London, have the stage in my blood,” and so forth and so on.  I could not help recalling what he had told me years before, that when he had to write his first play for George Alexander, he shut himself up for a fortnight with the most successful modern French plays, and so learned his metier.

Next day I returned to London, understanding now something of the unreasonable persistence in begging which had aroused Lord Alfred Douglas’ rage.

As soon as my play was advertised a crowd of people confronted me with claims I had never expected.  Mrs. Brown Potter wrote to me saying that some years before she had bought a play from Oscar Wilde which he had not delivered, and as she understood that I was bringing it out, she hoped I would give it to her to stage.  I replied saying that Oscar had not written a word of my play.  She wrote again, saying that she had paid L100 for the scenario:  would I see Mr. Kyrle Bellew on the matter?  I saw them both a dozen times; but came to no decision.

While these negotiations were going on, a host of other Richmonds came into the field.  Horace Sedger had also bought the same scenario, and then in quick succession it appeared that Tree and Alexander and Ada Rehan had also paid for the same privilege.  When I wrote to Oscar about this expressing my surprise he replied coolly that he could have gone on selling the play now to French managers, and later to German managers, if I had not interfered:  “You have deprived me of a certain income:”  was his argument, “and therefore you owe me more than you will ever get from the play, which is sure to fall flat.”