"I have had the privilege of listening also to many other masters of table-talk—Meredith James, Augustine Birrell and Arthur Balfour, Gilbert Chesterton and Desmond MacCarthy and Hilaire Belloc—all of them splendid in their own way. But assuredly Oscar in his own way was the greatest of them all—the most spontaneous and yet the most polished, the most soothing and yet the most surprising. That his talk was mostly a monologue was not his own fault. His manners were very good; he was careful to give his guests or his fellow guests many a conversational opening; but seldom did anyone respond with more than a very few words. Nobody was willing to interrupt the music of so magnificent a virtuoso. To have heard him consoled me for not having heard Dr. Johnson or Edmund Burke, Lord Brougham or Sydney Smith."