Oscar Wilde

Abstract

Yesterday, Monday, July 21st [1890], we¹ were suddenly summoned to Mrs. Chandler Moulton’s last ‘at home’ in Weymouth Street. The first moments were misery and humiliation. Mrs. Moulton introduced us as a poet, as Michael Field, and we stood, our wings vibrating in revolt: fashionable women lisped their enchantment at meeting with us. A moment came when this could be borne no longer. I laid a master-hand on the hostess, and told her to introduce us by our Christian names. After that, George Moore was brought to us. He had heard our names across the room; but he is a brother — one of the guild of letters. His admiration for William Rufus is unbounded… ‘By Jove, it’s fine… Ma foi, it’s good. That old fellow with one eye and the passion of the hunting. The scenes in the forest — I have only read the play five or six years ago — the moment it came out — and once — I never read a book twice — yet I see it before me now.’ He has even proposed it to the Théâtre Libre as one of the English plays to be acted. Long Ago has disappointed him. We were engaged on an impossible task. It had not the versification of Keats, still there were some fine things in it.

Works and Days from the journal of Michael Field ed. T. and D. C. Sturge Moore (London: John Murray, 1933) pp. 134–42.