| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous by Oscar Wilde: laughingly informed me of the loss, and added that a cab was a very
proper place for it. I have explained elsewhere that he looked on
his works with disdain in his last years, though he was always full
of schemes for writing others. All my attempts to recover the lost
work failed. The passages here reprinted are from some odd leaves
of a first draft. The play is, of course, not unlike Salome, though
it was written in English. It expanded Wilde's favourite theory
that when you convert some one to an idea, you lose your faith in
it; the same motive runs through Mr. W. H. Honorius the hermit, so
far as I recollect the story, falls in love with the courtesan who
has come to tempt him, and he reveals to her the secret of the love
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll: `It's an invention of my own. And now help me on. I'll go with
you to the end of the wood--What's the dish for?'
`It's meant for plum-cake,' said Alice.
`We'd better take it with us,' the Knight said. `It'll come in
handy if we find any plum-cake. Help me to get it into this bag.'
This took a very long time to manage, though Alice held the
bag open very carefully, because the Knight was so VERY awkward
in putting in the dish: the first two or three times that he
tried he fell in himself instead. `It's rather a tight fit, you
see,' he said, as they got it in a last; `There are so many
candlesticks in the bag.' And he hung it to the saddle, which
Through the Looking-Glass |
