Romano’s. This restaurant is quite
different at lunch from dinner. Groups of theatrical people entering; mutually
known, a few actresses. Pretty and vapid. On the whole the most ingenuous crowd
of people to be seen in any restaurant in London. Waiting bad. Tables too close
together as usual.
F[rank] H[arris] told me more fully than
ever before the story of Oscar and Mr and
Mrs Daventry [play produced at the Royalty Theatre in October 1900]. He said he gave Oscar [Wilde] £50 for the
screen scene and £50 for the whole
scenario. He never got the scenario, though he paid for it. Oscar was to have
written the first act. Mrs Pat [the actress Mrs Patrick Campbell] insisted on
F.H.’s writing the first act. F.H. refused as it had been allotted to Oscar.
Then Oscar refused. So F.H. did it. F.H. then found out that Oscar had sold the
screen scene and the scenario to Leonard Smithers [a disreputable publisher],
and the latter showed him the whole MS of scenario signed by Oscar. F.H., after
saying to Smithers that he didn’t want the scenario and that in any case he
owed him nothing, promised £50 in any case and
£100 if play succeeded well. He said he hadn’t a cent at that time.
Smithers got the money from F.H. in tens and twenties. F.H. gradually found out
that Oscar had sold the scenario and screen scene to eleven different people.
When taxed with this by F.H, Oscar didn’t deny it. He merely said, ‘The fact
is, Frank, by writing this play and getting it produced you’re taking away one
of my sources of income!’ Later Oscar asked for another £150. He badgered F.H.
until he got it. He then said, ‘Frank, you’ve
paid me £250 for the screen scene from The School for Scandal; and you’re a very poor man of business.’
Thus F.H.’s version.
F.H. said that Oscar was most brilliant as a
talker during his last days in Paris. He had listened to him for five or six
hours together, saying nothing but, ‘Go on, Oscar. Go on.’
Arnold Bennett's Journals - October 21st 1912
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