Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 | Page 9

both at school and college, an exceedingly vivid and interesting
pen-picture of the lad, one of those astounding masterpieces of
portraiture only to be produced by the plastic sympathies of boyhood
and the intimate intercourse of years lived in common. It is love alone
which in later life can achieve such a miracle of representment. I am
very glad to be allowed to publish this realistic miniature, in the very
words of the author.
"I first met Oscar Wilde in the early part of 1868 at Portora Royal
School. He was thirteen or fourteen years of age. His long straight fair
hair was a striking feature of his appearance. He was then, as he
remained for some years after, extremely boyish in nature, very mobile,
almost restless when out of the schoolroom. Yet he took no part in the
school games at any time. Now and then he would be seen in one of the
school boats on Loch Erne: yet he was a poor hand at an oar.
"Even as a schoolboy he was an excellent talker: his descriptive power
being far above the average, and his humorous exaggerations of school
occurrences always highly amusing.
"A favourite place for the boys to sit and gossip in the late afternoon in
winter time was round a stove which stood in 'The Stone Hall.' Here
Oscar was at his best; although his brother Willie was perhaps in those
days even better than he was at telling a story.
"Oscar would frequently vary the entertainment by giving us extremely
quaint illustrations of holy people in stained-glass attitudes: his power
of twisting his limbs into weird contortions being very great. (I am told
that Sir William Wilde, his father, possessed the same power.) It must
not be thought, however, that there was any suggestion of irreverence
in the exhibition.
"At one of these gatherings, about the year 1870, I remember a
discussion taking place about an ecclesiastical prosecution that made a
considerable stir at the time. Oscar was present, and full of the

mysterious nature of the Court of Arches; he told us there was nothing
he would like better in after life than to be the hero of such a _cause
celèbre_ and to go down to posterity as the defendant in such a case as
'Regina versus Wilde!'
"At school he was almost always called 'Oscar'--but he had a nick-name,
'Grey-crow,' which the boys would call him when they wished to annoy
him, and which he resented greatly. It was derived in some mysterious
way from the name of an island in the Upper Loch Erne, within easy
reach of the school by boat.
"It was some little time before he left Portora that the boys got to know
of his full name, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde. Just at the close
of his school career he won the 'Carpenter' Greek Testament Prize,--and
on presentation day was called up to the dais by Dr. Steele, by all his
names--much to Oscar's annoyance; for a great deal of schoolboy chaff
followed.
"He was always generous, kindly, good-tempered. I remember he and
myself were on one occasion mounted as opposing jockeys on the
backs of two bigger boys in what we called a 'tournament,' held in one
of the class-rooms. Oscar and his horse were thrown, and the result was
a broken arm for Wilde. Knowing that it was an accident, he did not let
it make any difference in our friendship.
"He had, I think, no very special chums while at school. I was perhaps
as friendly with him all through as anybody, though his junior in class
by a year....
"Willie Wilde was never very familiar with him, treating him always,
in those days, as a younger brother....
"When in the head class together, we with two other boys were in the
town of Enniskillen one afternoon, and formed part of an audience who
were listening to a street orator. One of us, for the fun of the thing, got
near the speaker and with a stick knocked his hat off and then ran for
home followed by the other three. Several of the listeners, resenting the
impertinence, gave chase, and Oscar in his hurry collided with an aged

cripple and threw him down--a fact which was duly reported to the
boys when we got safely back. Oscar was afterwards heard telling how
he found his way barred by an angry giant with whom he fought
through many rounds and whom he eventually left for dead in the road
after accomplishing prodigies of valour on his redoubtable opponent.
Romantic imagination was strong in him even in those schoolboy days;
but there was always something in his telling of such a tale to suggest
that he felt his hearers were not really being taken