The one exception was an evil-looking and elderly monkey which sat humped and brooding in a corner, absolutely motionless except for the twitching of his nostrils and the angry way in which he switched his eyes first upon what he apparently thought to be the staring human idiots outside, and then at the capering and noisy monkey imbeciles within. “What’s the matter with that monkey?” Colonel Spencer inquired of a keeper. “Is he ill? He seems too bored even to scratch.” The keeper shook his head. “No, he isn’t ill, sir,” he answered. “Wot’s the matter with ’im, sir? Why, wanity.” Then stirring up the sulking monkey with his cane, he added, “’Ere, get up—Hoscar Wilde!”
One day it was Wilde’s caprice to amuse himself by talking the most blatantly insincere nonsense, directed against my own political views, and deliberately intended to “draw” me. He was in his most exasperating mood, exuding, or affecting to exude, egotism at every pore, and fondling, or making pretence to fondle, his vanity as some spinsters fondle a favourite cat. At last I could stand it no longer, and wickedly told him the story of Colonel Spencer’s visit to the Monkey House at the Zoo and the keeper’s comment about the sulky monkey. “Wot’s the matter with ’im, sir? Why, wanity. ’Ere, get up—Hoscar Wilde.”
So far from being annoyed, Wilde simply rocked, or affected to rock with delight.
“I hoped once,” he said, “to live to see a new shape in chrysanthemums or sunflowers, or possibly a new colour in roses, blue for choice, called after me. But that one’s name should percolate even to the Zoological Gardens, that it should come naturally to the lips of a keeper in the Monkey House, is fame indeed. Do remind me to tell George Alexander the story. It will make him so dreadfully jealous.”
And I answered grimly:
“Your game, Wilde!”
II
My friendship with Wilde was literary in its beginnings. Flattered vanity on my part possibly contributed not a little to it, for when I was a young and—if that be possible—a more obscure man even than I am now, Wilde, already famous, was one of the very first to speak an encouraging word. Here is the first letter I received from him:
16 Tite Street, Chelsea.
Dear Mr. Kernahan,
If you have nothing to do on Wednesday, will you come and dine at the Hotel de Florence, Rupert Street, at 7.45—morning dress, and chianti yellow or red!
I am charmed to see your book is having so great a success. It is strong and fine and true. Your next book will be a great book.
Truly yours,
Oscar Wilde.
This letter, it will be observed, is undated. Apparently Wilde never dated his letters, for of all the letters of his which I have preserved not a solitary one bears a date, other perhaps than the name of the day of the week on which it was written, and that only rarely. He had the impudence once at a dinner-party, when taken to task by a great lady for not having answered a letter, to reply: