Oscar Wilde: An Ideal Husaband

The octagon room at Sir Robert Chiltern’s house in Grosvenor Square.

The room is brilliantly lighted and full of guests. At the top of the staircase stands Lady Chiltern, a woman of grave Greek beauty, about twenty-seven years of age. She receives the guests as they come up. Over the well of the staircase hangs a great chandelier with wax lights, which illumine a large eighteenth-century French tapestry — representing the Triumph of Love, from a design by Boucher¹ — that is stretched on the staircase wall. On the right is the entrance to the music-room. The sound of a string quartette is faintly heard. The entrance on the left leads to other reception-rooms. Mrs. Marchmont and Lady Basildon, two very pretty women, are seated together on a Louis Seize sofa². They are types of exquisite fragility. Their affectation of manner has a delicate charm. Watteau³ would have loved to paint them.