Читать книгу Oscar Wilde: A Life in Letters - Оскар Уайльд, Merlin Holland, F. H. Cornish - Страница 99

[Postmark 12 June 1885] [16 Tite Street]

My dear E. H. A., Thank you for your letter. Will you cast the child’s horoscope for us? It was born at a quarter to eleven last Friday morning. My wife is very anxious to know its fate, and has begged me to ask you to search the stars. Ever yours

OSCAR WILDE

Heron-Allen was a writer, polymath and eccentric with interests as varied as violin-making, zoology, Persian literature, asparagus culture and cheiromancy (palm-reading), and he may well have suggested to Wilde the idea for ‘Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime’. He did indeed cast Cyril’s horoscope and delivered it to the Wildes later in the year, noting in his diary, ‘It grieved them very much.’ Cyril was killed in action in 1915.