Life the Plagiarist by Oscar Wilde — Read

I once asked a lady, who knew Thackeray intimately, whether he had had / any model for Becky Sharp. She told me that Becky was an invention, but / that the idea of the character had been partly suggested by a governess / who lived in the neighbourhood of Kensington Square, and was the / companion of a very selfish and rich old woman. I inquired what became / of the governess, and she replied that, oddly enough, some years after / the appearance of _Vanity Fair_, she ran away with the nephew of the lady / with whom she was living, and for a short time made a great splash in / society, quite in Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's style, and entirely by Mrs. / Rawdon Crawley's methods. Ultimately she came to grief, disappeared to / the Continent, and used to be occasionally seen at Monte Carlo and other / gambling places. The noble gentleman from whom the same great / sentimentalist drew Colonel Newcome died, a few months after _The / Newcomer_ had reached a fourth edition, with the word 'Adsum' on his / lips. Shortly after Mr. Stevenson published his curious psychological / story of transformation, a friend of mine, called Mr. Hyde, was in the / north of London, and being anxious to get to a railway station, took what / he thought would be a short cut, lost his way, and found himself in a / network of mean, evil-looking streets. Feeling rather nervous he began / to walk extremely fast, when suddenly out of an archway ran a child right / between his legs. It fell on the pavement, he tripped over it, and / trampled upon it. Being of course very much frightened and a little / hurt, it began to scream, and in a few seconds the whole street was full / of rough people who came pouring out of the houses like ants. They / surrounded him, and asked him his name. He was just about to give it / when he suddenly remembered the opening incident in Mr. Stevenson's / story.

He was so filled with horror at having realised in his own person / that terrible and well-written scene, and at having done accidentally, / though in fact, what the Mr. Hyde of fiction had done with deliberate / intent, that he ran away as hard as he could go. He was, however, very / closely followed, and finally he took refuge in a surgery, the door of / which happened to be open, where he explained to a young assistant, who / happened to be there, exactly what had occurred. The humanitarian crowd / were induced to go away on his giving them a small sum of money, and as / soon as the coast was clear he left. As he passed out, the name on the / brass door-plate of the surgery caught his eye. It was 'Jekyll. ' At / least it should have been. -- _The Decay of Lying_.