ABSTRACT
A Man’s true character is not easily or quickly disengaged from the memorials raised to him by his friends who, being drawn to him by his weaknesses as well as by his merits, are tempted to celebrate his pretensions, which usually are also theirs, rather than his virtues, which are more peculiar to himself. Oscar Wilde, whose chief weakness was a mania for dramatizing himself and watching the effect on others, inevitably attracted excessively vain people, and was therefore bound to provoke some very peculiar feats of the commemorative kind. The attraction of Sherard for Wilde was slight and transient. Hesketh Pearson suppresses none of the weak elements in Wilde’s curiously divided nature. Homosexuality, which aims at duplicating the self instead of complementing it, is the natural outlet of exaggerated self-love, and an intense self-preoccupation, with its accompanying passion for the applause of others, was the limiting and in the end the destroying element in the character of Wilde.
