Poets." "Quite right to remind me" said the magistrate "I will imprison the baker."
A Rhymer had seen Dowson at some café in Dieppe with a particularly common harlot, and as he passed, Dowson who was half drunk, caught him by the sleeve and whispered "She writes poetry—it is like Browning and Mrs Browning." Then there came a wonderful tale, repeated by Dowson himself, whether by word of mouth or by letter I do not remember. Wilde has arrived in Dieppe, and Dowson presses upon him the necessity of acquiring "a more wholesome taste." They empty their pockets on to the café table, and though there is not much, there is enough if both heaps are put into one. Meanwhile the news has spread, and they set out accompanied by a cheering crowd. Arrived at their destination, Dowson and the crowd remain outside, and presently Wilde returns. He says in a low voice to Dowson "The first these ten years, and it will be the last. It was like cold mutton." Always as Henley had said, "a scholar and a gentleman" he no doubt remembers the sense in which the Elizabethan dramatists used the words "Cold mutton"—and then aloud so that the crowd may hear him "But tell it in England, for it will entirely restore my character."
XXXVII
When the first few numbers of the Savoy had been published, the contributors and the publishers gave themselves a supper, and Symons explained that certain among us were invited afterwards to the publisher's house, and if I went there that once I need never go again. I considered the publisher a scandalous person, and had refused to meet him; we were all agreed as to his character, and only differed as to the distance that should lie between him and us. I had just received two letters, one from T. W. Rolleston protesting with all the conventional moral earnestness of an article in the Spectator newspaper, against my writing for such a magazine; and one from A. E. denouncing that magazine, which he called the "Organ of the Incubi and the Succubi" with the intensity of a personal conviction. I had forgotten that Arthur Symons had borrowed the letters until, as we stood about the supper table waiting for the signal to be seated, I heard the infuriated voice of the publisher shouting, "Give me the letter, give me the letter, I will prose-
