An unexpected result of his tour was that he rediscovered himself as an Irishman. Having erased his Irish accent at Oxford, he had tended also to minimize the difference between English and Irish. The first response of his compatriots was accordingly adverse. The Irish Nation in New York carried an article at the beginning of his tour, on 14 January 1882, with the disapproving headlines:
Speranza’s Son
Oscar Wilde Lecture on What He
Calls the English Renaissance
———
The Utterness of Aestheticism
———
Phrasing about Beauty while
a Hideous Tyranny Overshadows
His Native Land
———
Talent Sadly Misapplied
Speranza’s son, as he proceeded across the continent, found unexpectedly that he had potential allies among Irish Americans, who paid no attention to his aesthetics but liked his nationality. On St Patrick’s Day he was in St. Paul, Minnesota, and was introduced by a Father Shanley who called him the son ‘of one of Ireland’s noblest daughters—of a daughter who in the troublous times of 1848 by the works of her pen and her noble example did much to keep the fire of patriotism burning brightly.’ Wilde was moved to describe the Irish race as once the ‘most aristocratic in Europe,’ and Ireland as once Europe’s university. ‘Rhyme, the basis of modern poetry, is entirely of Irish invention,’ he boasted. ‘But with the coming of the English,’ he told the crowd, ‘art in Ireland came to an end, and it has had no existence for over seven hundred years. I am glad it has not, for art could not live and flourish under a tyrant.’ Yet the artistic impulse in Ireland was not dead; it persists ‘in every running brook’ and in the pervasive esteem for great Irishmen of the past. When Ireland, which he liked to call ‘the Niobe of nations,’ as Byron had called Rome, regains her independence, her schools of art will revive also.36
He responded quickly to the 6 May murder in Dublin of Lord Frederick Cavendish by the Irish nationalist Invincibles in the Phoenix Park. Cavendish had once dined with the Wildes at Merrion Square. To a reporter who asked his attitude, Wilde replied, ‘When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her.’ Then he added, ‘We forget how much England is to blame. She is reaping the fruit of seven centuries of injustice.’37 For these comments Wilde received unaccustomed praise from editorial writers. He generally insisted upon his republicanism, as on 21 February in Louisville: ‘Yes, I am a thorough republican. No other form of government is so favorable to the growth of art.’ Britain should be a republic too, as he had indicated in ‘Ave Imperatrix.’ ‘Of course, I couldn’t talk democratic principles to my friend the Prince of Wales. That you understand is simply a matter of social tact.’ (It was less tactful to vaunt his royal connections.) But to a reporter in San Francisco in April he said his political creed was really in his sonnet ‘Libertatis Sacra Fames,’ where he so much detested demagogues as to prefer dictators to them.38 He also vindicated the Irishry in a fourth lecture, ‘The Irish Poets of 1848,’ which he delivered first in San Francisco and then in a few other places. He could remember some of the oldest of these poets coming to his house, such as Smith O’Brien and John Mitchel and Charles Gavan Duffy. He praised these, and the poet he described as the greatest of them, Thomas Davis, as well as James Clarence Mangan, who would be the favorite of Yeats and Joyce. He mentioned the poets of the present day, Ferguson, Waller, de Vere, ‘Eve,’ and finally came to his mother, whose photograph he carried with him. ‘Of the quality of Speranza’s poems I perhaps should not speak—for criticism is disarmed before love—but I am content to abide by the verdict of the nation.’39 When he went south to stay a night with Jefferson Davis,c he made out an analogy between the Southern Confederacy and the Irish; both had gone forth to the battle and fallen, and their pursuit of self-rule made them akin. He was quoted as saying, ‘The principles for which Jefferson Davis and the South went to war cannot suffer defeat.’ To Mrs Howe he wrote with more candor, ‘how fascinating all failures are!’41 But he had found admirable qualities in the North too, when talking with General Grant, who had had the misfortune to succeed.
At moments Wilde had opportunities to further the cause of art directly. In Chicago a young sculptor named John Donoghue sent him a little bas-relief of a seated girl which was intended to illustrate Wilde’s poem ‘Requiescat.’ Wilde went to see Donoghue and found him ‘in a bare little room at the top of a great building, and in the center was a statuette of the young Sophocles leading the dance and … song after the battle of Salamis, a piece of the highest beauty and workmanship, waiting there in the clay to be cast into bronze. It was by far the best piece of sculpture I have seen in America.’ Donoghue reminded him, he said, ‘of the old Italian stories of the struggles of genius. Born of poor people, he felt a desire to create beauty. Seeing some workmen modeling a cornice one day, he begged some clay of them and went home and began to model. A man who saw what was in him gave him money for a year in Paris.’ But now he was starving upon ‘a radish and a crust, the stoic’s fare.’42 Wilde talked about Donoghue in this style to such purpose that commissions poured in to the artist, and Donoghue was able to move to Paris and set up a studio there. When his benefactor needed help later, however, Donoghue did not offer any.
Wilde lent his efforts to further other careers. He had an etching done in New York by James Edward Kelly, which showed him holding the hand of a young boy, possibly Kelly’s son. He wisely used the head alone in publicity notices. In April he sat for a portrait by Theodore Wores in San Francisco.43 On 2 May he praised Frank Duveneck as America’s finest painter. He bought a water color of the seashore from John C. Miles in St. John, New Brunswick. On 2 June he praised the landscape painting of Homer Watson and called him the ‘Canadian Constable,’ a label which, though not altogether appropriate, usefully stuck to Watson. Wilde would secure commissions for Watson and also order a painting for himself later. In Toronto, Wilde sat for a bust, now lost, by F. A. T. Dunbar. He said Louis Fréchette was Canada’s best poet. In New Orleans he admired the novels of George Washington Cable and the poems of Father Ryan.44 He gave the Canadian artist Frances Richards a letter to Whistler, and sat some time afterwards for a portrait by her. He paid several visits to a New York painter named Robert Blum whose portraits he admired. To one female model he suggested she wear his favorite colors, café au lait and sage green, with a yellow tea rose; to another he remarked that Blum’s delicious tints gave him a sensation similar to eating a yellow satin dress.45 Wilde made no attempt to parade his benefactions. Some of his most important effects on people he would never know. For instance, Mrs Joseph Pennell, later to become a most faithful disciple and friend of Whistler, first heard of the painter from Wilde during his tour. Natalie Clifford Barney, then six years old, was placed on Wilde’s lap and attributed her decision to become a writer to this formative experience.
Unlike Whistler, Wilde sought no enemies, and managed to be kind even to the incompetent. When people sent him manuscripts he always read and commented on them. On receiving from Anna Morrison Reed a book of poems entitled Gethsemane, he wrote to the author on 31 March,
Dear Madam, I have read with much pleasure your charming little volume with all its sweet and simple joy in field and flower, its sympathetic touching of those chords of life which Death and Love make immortal for us. Pray accept my thanks for your courtesy, and believe me yours truly,
OSCAR WILDE
He urged his hostess in Cincinnati, on hearing that she sometimes wrote verses, to publish them. ‘Perhaps,’ she answered, ‘in heaven, instead of holding receptions, I may get out a book.’ ‘No, no,’ said Wilde, ‘there’ll be no publishers there.’ But his sense of propriety sometimes got in the way of kindness, and it was in America that he annoyed the English actor Charles Brookfield by remarking on his keeping his gloves on at a tea party. Brookfield never forgave him.46
His chief effort was in behalf of his friend Rennell Rodd.
The volume Rose Leaf and Apple Leaf was in Wilde’s hands by late July, and he arranged for a small advance to be paid to the author. Wilde was pleased with the way that Stoddart had carried out his suggestions, and said the book was ‘a chef d’oeuvre of typography.’ The edition of 175 copies had parchment covers, like his own Poems, with the title printed in red and black. The verses were printed on one side of the paper only, with blank apple-green pages interleaved. (The paper, found in a Philadelphia warehouse, had originally been intended for printing currency.) On the title page Wilde’s artist friend Kelly had sketched the seal of a ring given Wilde by his mother. The preface, entitled ‘Envoi,’ was written in Wilde’s florid manner, praising Rodd but also setting forth the program of what he called ‘the modern romantic school.’ He differentiated this from Ruskin’s search for noble moral ideas, and by implication from the Pre-Raphaelites, with their reminiscence and anecdotalism. Wilde’s school modeled itself, rather, on Whistler and Albert Moore, whose works were meaningless except as design and color. Formal perfection was the goal, along with the expression of personality. Beyond faith and skepticism, the new poets tested forms of belief and tinged their nature ‘with the sentiment that still lingered about some beautiful creeds.’ They subscribed to no intellectual or metaphysical or didactic purpose, subordinating everything to ‘the vital informing poetic principle.’ They preferred impressions to ideas, brief flights to sustained ones, exceptions to types, situations to subjects. Sincerity did not enter in, for it was ‘merely that plastic perfection of execution without which a poem or a painting … is but wasted and unreal work.’d
Rodd received a copy of his book at the beginning of October. At first glance he liked its sumptuousness and wrote to compliment Stoddart. Then he looked again. Though he had wanted to dedicate the book to Wilde, he did not anticipate that his friend would take over an inscription Rodd had written in Wilde’s copy of the English edition:
TO
OSCAR WILDE—
‘HEART’S BROTHER’—
THESE FEW SONGS AND MANY SONGS TO COME.
It was much more ‘effusive’ than he intended. Nor did he like the program in the preface, for it claimed him as ‘a sort of disciple’ and identified him ‘with so much for which I had no sympathy.’ Wilde had also revealed their secret travels together on the Continent. What he could not realize, as he flouted conventions of dress and thought himself, was that Rodd, then just beginning a promising career in the Foreign Office, could not afford to be thus paraded. Rodd wrote trying to withdraw the dedication, but it was too late. Copies had got out, and a mocking notice in The Saturday Review on 4 November 1882 was as embarrassing as Rodd had feared. The anonymous reviewer described the book’s format with thoroughgoing sarcasm, made sport of the supposed great departure from Ruskin’s didacticism, and quoted derisively from Wilde’s ‘Envoi’: ‘Among the “many young men” who follow Mr Wilde, “none is dearer to myself” than the beloved of Mr Wilde and of the Muses, Mr Rodd.’ This notice led Swinburne to write to a friend the same day, ‘Have you read the Saturday on Oscar Wilde’s young man, the Hephaestion of the all-conquering Alexander? Really these fools are enough to make one turn Wesleyan and contribute in future only to The Methodist Magazine.’47 Wilde had wanted to please Rodd, but only succeeded in frightening him.
Some of Wilde’s activities in America were perilous enough. On 19 September a broker named H. K. Burris brought him to see Wall Street, until a threat of being set upon by unaesthetic employees made them retreat hurriedly through a back exit.48 In Moncton, New Brunswick, in mid-October, Wilde came near to being arrested, and in New York, in December, he came near to being fleeced. The Moncton episode arose out of an invitation from the Young Men’s Christian Association to lecture for them on a certain day. Wilde’s agent proposed another day but, not having received a reply, closed with another offer. A sheriff’s writ was prepared against him. Fortunately, local friends went bail and brought pressure on the YMCA so that the case was dropped.49
As for the New York misadventure, Wilde was approached on the street on 14 December 1882 by a young man who claimed to be the son of Anthony J. Drexel of Morgan’s bank, whom he said Wilde had met. Wilde did not recall either father or son but invited the young man to lunch. ‘Drexel’ had just won a lottery and asked Wilde to accompany him in getting his money. The place proved to be a gambling den, and ‘Drexel’s’ prize was the right to play a turn at house expense. He courteously announced that he would play for Wilde, won, and gave Wilde his winnings. Wilde then threw the dice for himself, and after a first success began to lose heavily. He had soon written checks for over $1000, at which point he stopped play. ‘Drexel’ left with him, said he felt Wilde had been badly treated, and promised to ‘see about it.’ Wilde bethought himself, rushed to his bank, and stopped payment on the checks. He then went to the 30th Street Police Station and told the sympathetic captain that he had been ‘a damned fool.’ On being shown photographs of some notorious confidence men, he identified ‘Drexel’ as ‘Hungry Joe’ Sellick, one of the cleverest of his kind. The captain wanted Wilde to start proceedings, but he did not do so. Perhaps as a reward from Sellick, his uncashable checks were mailed in to the police station a few days later and then returned to Wilde. But he did not recover the cash he had lost. He wrote lugubriously to John Boyle O’Reilly, ‘I have fallen into a den of thieves.’50 The New York Tribune rejoiced in his plight, and took to poetry to register amusement:
And then, with the air of a guileless child,
Oh, that sweet, bright smile and those eyes aflame,
He said, ‘If you’ll let me, dear Mr. Wilde,
I’ll show you a ravishing little game.’
Another unfortunate investment of Wilde’s was buying a share in Kelly’s Perpetual Motion Company, from which he expected a fortune.51 As a counter to his sense of latent doom, he believed in his lucky star.
Wilde came twice more into close quarters with danger. On 4 July in Atlanta, he first experienced the terrors of prejudice against blacks. His agent, Vail, had bought three sleeping-car tickets to Savannah, for Wilde, himself, and the valet Traquair. The Pullman agent pointed out that company rules did not allow blacks in sleeping-car berths. Wilde said that Traquair had traveled with him all over the South, and insisted that he be allowed to stay. The agent then said that the next train stop was Jonesboro, and that if people in Jonesboro saw a black in the car they would mob him. Wilde had no choice but to give in.52
The other incident was one of those foretastes of later events which often occurred in Wilde’s life. On 23 April, he arrived in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he was to lecture the next evening. On the morning of the 24th, Wilde was introduced to a young teacher at the University of Nebraska. This was George E. Woodberry, later to achieve prominence in the field of comparative literature. Wilde had heard of Woodberry as a friend of Charles Eliot Norton, and was glad of his companionship. Together they drove out ‘through mulberry and damp air’ to the Lincoln penitentiary, where Woodberry, like Wilde, first entered prison confines. Woodberry wrote Norton of being ‘much oppressed at the horrible things I saw,’ and though he supposed that Wilde bore it better, Wilde wrote in letters to England that the bareness of the place had horrified him too. He exhibited a childlike faith in physiognomy. On being shown photographs of some of the convicts, he commented, ‘O, what a dreadful face. And what did he do?’ Warden Nobes did not hesitate to tell of the criminals in the most graphic manner. ‘Oh, here’s a beast, an animal,’ exclaimed Wilde of one picture, ‘nothing of the man left.’ He would write Helena Sickert afterwards that they were ‘all mean-looking, which consoled me, for I should hate to see a criminal with a noble face.’ He was then ushered into the whitewashed cell of a convict named Ayers of Grand Island, who was due to be hanged on 20 June. ‘Do you read, my man?’ asked Wilde. ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘And what?’ ‘Novels part of the time. I am now reading The Heir of Redclyffe [by Charlotte M. Yonge].’ Wilde left the cell with his party, and then cou
ld not resist a comment like one of Wainewright’s: ‘My heart was turned by the eyes of the doomed man, but if he reads The Heir of Redclyffe it’s perhaps as well to let the law take its course.’ To Helena Sickert he wrote more seriously that novels were ‘a bad preparation for facing either God or Nothing.’53
Farther on they came to the dark cell where refractory prisoners were placed. At Nobes’s invitation Wilde and Woodberry stepped into the cell, and heard the solid door clang noisily behind them as they stood in the punitive darkness. These disagreeable sensations were mitigated by a visit to another convict’s cell, where Wilde caught sight of two neat rows of books. He ran over the titles rapidly, until he came upon Shelley first, and then, to his surprise, Dante, in Cary’s translation. ‘Oh dear,’ he said, ‘who would have thought of finding Dante here?’ And he wrote to Helena Sickert, ‘Strange and beautiful it seemed to me that the sorrow of a single Florentine in exile should, hundreds of years afterwards, lighten the sorrow of some common prisoner in a modern gaol.’54 He would remember to read Dante when in prison himself fourteen years later.
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