MR OSCAR WILDE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XII, Issue XIII, 31 March 1894, Page 308

MR OSCAR WILDE.

The other day Mr Oscar Wilde entered a certain restaurant in the Haymarket, and was heard to ask for a watercress sandwich. In due course the watercress sandwich was brought to him ; no small diaphanous thing, such as would naturally find favour with the ‘ amateur of beautiful things, and the dilettante of things delightful,’ but a stout, wholesome form of food for the hungry. This Mr Wilde ate with assumed disgust but evident relish, and in paying the waiter addressed him thus : ‘ Tell the cook, with my compliments —the compliments of Mr Oscar Wilde—that these are the very worst sandwiches in the whole world, and that when I ask for a sandwich of watercress I do not mean a loaf with a field in the middle of it. Do you understand ?’ A friend was visiting Mr Wilde one day at the Savoy Hotel—where having, as he said, • lost his address in Titestreet,’ he is at present making a sojourn—and found him hard at work ’cutting’ superfluous dialogue from his new play. ‘lsn’t it infamous?’ he asked, looking up after a moment or two. ‘ What right have Ito do this thing ? Who am I, that I should tamper with a classic ?’ Here is another instance of the ‘ Master's ’ peculiar humour. Some good-natured friend was calling his attention to a critique, in which it was pronounced that * Salome ’ was largely plagiarised from the writings of Flaubert, Maeterlinck, and Thcophile Gauthier. *Of course it was so,’ was the reply. ‘ Plagiarism is the privilege of the appreciative man. Que voulezvous ? I never read “La Tentation de Saint Antoine,” without signing my name under it. In fact, all the best hundred books bear my signature.'