Oscar Wilde in Chelsea

Abstract

It may have been that some rumour of this and other fantasies and stories by Eric Stenbock had reached the ears of Oscar Wilde. At any rate, whether it was that, or Stenbock’s eccentric reputation as a poet with a ‘familiar’ in the shape of a magic toad, which had inspired his curiosity, Oscar contrived, after many ineffectual attempts, to be asked one day to tea at Stenbock’s rooms in Sloane Terrace. You have heard of his upstairs sanctum with the sacred lamp burning between a bust of Shelley and a little ebony image of the Buddha. Unluckily, Oscar was an addict of the cigarette, and when he reached the room and saw the sacred red flame, his first impulse was to stalk across and light his cigarette at its ray. Stenbock, hearing of his arrival, appeared at the door just as this horrid act of desecration was committed, and with a shriek, fell to the floor in a real or histrionic swoon. Whereupon Wilde stood a moment over the prostrate figure, spurned it with his foot, took two or three more puffs of the accursed thing, and made his exit.

Extracted from Everyman Remembers (London: J. M. Dent, 1931) pp. 36–9. Editor’s title.