To Ada Leverson [Late September 1894]
19 Hyde Park Place, W.
Dearest Mrs. Leverson, I am not surprised that our Worthing* friends think anything so witty as The Green Carnation must have been written by you. Probably too they are anxious to believe it comes from one of the rival sex. I hope you won't be able to make them believe you just yet. The whole thing is very piquant. Of course they are not offended.
It is sweet of you to ask me to come and see you tomorrow. If they have arrived I will bring you the proofs of my literary guilt which have strayed from the Bodley Head to Broadstairs and are I believe on their hither way. What agitated discussions Bosie and Osie must have had over the authorship of that book. I wonder if they thought of Hichens at all?
Till tomorrow.
Yours ever,
Max Beerbohm.
I hope this will catch the post.
*Oscar Wilde spent August and September 1894 at 5 Esplanade, Worthing, where he wrote the greater part of The Importance of Being Earnest.
-from Letters of Max Beerbohm 1892-1956 edited by Rupert Hart-Davis (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988) p. 5.
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