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Memoirs by Bernard Shaw and Vincent O’Sullivan, as well as Max Beerbohm’s caricatures, revealed additional facets of Wilde — notably his conversation, courtesy and increasing corpulence — while Robert Hichens’s 1895 novel, “The Green Carnation,” neatly satirized him as the witty Esme Amarinth.

Just filling in a few gaps, I’d rationalize, when settling down with George MacDonald’s mind-boggling, death-obsessed fantasy “Lilith” or Robert Hichens’s sendup of Oscar Wilde, “The Green Carnation,” or James Elroy Flecker’s apocalyptic 1908 novella, “The Last Generation.”

Hichens rowed several passengers to safety, and was among those then taken onto New York on board the Carpathia which had been sent to the Titanic's aid.

Hichens was the man who, when at the peak of his career, steered the Titanic in a bid to avoid a head-on collision with the iceberg.

Hichens eventually ended up in jail for attempted murder.