Sally, as I soon realized, was a born Bohemian and not troubled with any socalled moral scruples, though she was always gay and carefree. She assured me that Miles only liked her face and 'Mr. Wilde says nice things to me and is a perfect gentleman and that's all.'
Miles was the son of a canon and a country rector who made him a good allowance and at first encouraged his intimacy with Oscar, but later rumours of Oscar's proclivities reached him, and his first book of poems confirming the canon's doubts, he insisted that the two friends should part. 'My son must not be contaminated!' Much against his will, as Miles told me, he had to tell Oscar his father's decision.
Wilde went almost crazy with rage. 'D'ye mean that we must part after years together because your father's a fool?' Miles could only say that he had no alternative and at once Oscar retorted, 'All right, I'll leave the house at once and never speak to you again,' and upstairs he went, packed his things and left: he was proud to a fault. Sally told me he never returned; and almost immediately Miles's vogue appeared to pass. I saw him from time to time in London but he quickly dropped out of social life and I was horrified to hear some years later that he had lost his wits and ended his days in a mad-house.
When I told Oscar he still cherished his anger. 'He had no wits to lose, Frank,' he said. 'He was an early creation of mine, like Lily Langtry, and they pass out of one's life as soon as they are realized.' But I always had a soft spot in my heart for Sally, though I could not but believe that Miles was something more than a mere friend to her, which shielded her from me.
It was his faculty of enthusiastic praise which distinguished Oscar Wilde in those first years and made his reputation, as I have said in my Life of him. Mrs.
Langtry I had met in Brighton and taught to skate at the West Street rink, never dreaming that she would reign in London a year or so later as a peerless beauty. Oscar and Miles discovered her, but it was the Prince of Wales's admiration that gave her position and vogue. Oscar told everyone she was 'the loveliest thing that had ever come out of Greece,' and when one corrected him with 'out of Jersey,' he passed it off with 'a Jersey Lily, if you please, the perfect type of flower.'
Oscar's humour, however, was his extraordinary gift and sprang to show on every occasion. Whenever I meet anyone who knew Oscar Wilde at any period of his life, I am sure to hear a new story of him-some humorous or witty thing he had said.
The other day I saw a man who had met Wilde in New York after his first lecture tour. He told him he hoped it had been a success, and Oscar answered him gravely, but with dancing eyes.
'A great success! My dear man, I had two secretaries, one to answer my letters, the other to send locks of hair to my admirers. I have had to let them both go, poor fellows: the one is in hospital with writer's cramp, and the other is quite bald.'
Oscar and I went together once to Whitechapel to hear Matthew Arnold lecture on Watts's picture, entitled Life, Death and Judgment. 'What Puritans Englishmen all are,' said Oscar as we came away. 'The burden of Arnold's song:
I slept and dreamed that life was beauty I woke and found that life was duty:
Yet he's a real poet, Frank, an English saint in side-whiskers!' It was irresistibly comic.
Another time we went to hear Walter Pater lecture; he talked wonderfully but continually fell into a low conversational tone as he read his address.
'Speak up. Speak up, please. Louder! We can hear nothing!' resounded through the house time and again.
At length he had finished and came down to join us. Of course we both praised his essay to the skies, and indeed it was exceedingly good from beginning to end, thoughtful and wonderfully phrased; but Pater had been alarmed by the frequent admonitions. 'I'm afraid I was not heard perfectly,' he said, trying to excuse himself. We reassured him, but he came again to the point. 'Was I heard?'
'Overheard now and then,' replied Oscar, laughing, 'but it was stupendously interesting.' 'Overheard now and then' was surely the wittiest and most charming description possible.
I have often been asked since to compare Oscar's humour with Shaw's. I have never thought Shaw humorous in conversation. It was on the spur of the moment that Oscar's humour was so extraordinary, and it was this spontaneity that made him so wonderful a companion. Shaw's humour comes from thought and the intellectual angle from which he sees things, a dry light thrown on our human frailties.
If you praised anyone enthusiastically or over praised him, Oscar's humour took on a keener edge. I remember later praising something Shaw had written about this time, and I added, 'The curious thing is, he seems to have no enemies.'
'Not prominent enough yet for that, Frank,' said Oscar, 'Enemies come with success; but then you must admit that none of Shaw's friends like him,' and he laughed delightfully. Ah, the dear London days when meeting Wilde had always an effect of sunshine in the mist!
Success came to me in my work and it came, I must confess, through the gambling spirit so powerful in England. I had learned quickly on the Evening News that the London public, which wanted to know the results of this or that great horse race, was more easily won than any other public. So I was forced to study the sport which had little attraction for one so dreadfully shortsighted as I was. While interesting myself in it, I came to see that the 'starting prices' were the chief factor in the gambling. One day, I think it was in 1885 or 1886, I heard that there was a great dispute about the starting prices. One morning paper, the Sporting Life, gave one set of prices and the other, the Sportsman, gave a different set. At once I called on one editor and offered to publish his 'starting prices' in a special edition of the Evening News at eleven or twelve o'clock each morning, giving his paper full credit; indeed, publishing his paper's name above the prices. Of course he was to supply me with 'copy' fairly early. He consented at once and gladly, even went out of his way to praise the Evening News. On leaving him, I hastened hot-foot to the rival sheet and got that editor, too, to pledge himself to give me the day's 'starting prices' as early as possible, if I gave his paper credit for the news.
With both editors I signed a contract for, I think, two or three years.
Next morning, when the early edition of the Evening News appeared with both starting prices, I was not left long in doubt as to the value of my news.
Instead of selling three or four thousand copies, we sold twenty thousand; and in a week this early edition sold more than all the other editions put together; and our advertisement revenue more than doubled itself in a month. I saw that with good machines I could make the paper pay immediately and pay enormously. How was I to get the 15,000, or 20,000 necessary to equip the paper with proper up-to-date machines?
About this time or a little later I had a great experience. A young fellow came from Birmingham with the idea of founding a halfpenny morning paper. He had only?. 5,000 but he thought it should be enough, and he came to me to make terms for printing and publishing his offspring. My estimate was by far the cheapest he had had. He was very anxious to know that I would not put the price up on him later. I was greatly interested and said I had thought of starting a morning edition of the Evening News and would talk the matter over with him. He took fire at my idea of making each item of news a sort of story in the American fashion, and finally asked me would I help him with the editing. I said I'd be delighted to go in with him, but I did not think 5,000 would go far. He said it ought to go a couple of months and by that time he ought to have a circulation of 50,000; and with a circulation of 50,000, he could get 50,000 more for the venture in Birmingham. 'All right,' I said, 'if you can get the further money, we can get the 50,000 circulation in three months.' And so the Morning Mail was started; within two months we had 50,000 circulation.
We had already received notice from The Times that they had a weekly paper called The Mail and that our Morning Mail infringed their copyright; and they began an action claiming 20,000 damages. I sent my friend off to Birmingham and went myself to see Arthur Walter of The Times. I told him the action was ridiculous-a morning paper, a halfpenny paper in London had neither the shape nor look of the weekly edition of The Times, which they called The Mail. Arthur Walter told me that he agreed with me, but
that his father was very angry over the matter and that he could do nothing.
A week later my friend came back from Birmingham and told me that The Times action had prevented him getting any money and he would have to close the paper up unless I could finance it.
I spoke to Lord Folkestone about it and soon convinced him that a halfpenny morning paper must beat all the penny papers out of the field. Success and a great fortune were before us, offering themselves, so to speak. He caught fire at the idea of a Conservative morning halfpenny paper that might have a sale of a million and be as influential as The Times. He declared he would speak to Lord Salisbury about it; but first, with his inborn loyalty, he
