Oscar

by Sturgis, Matthew;

  He caught attention with his bold declaration that ‘one should never talk of a moral or an immoral poem: poems are either well written or badly written, that is all’; and he stimulated thought with the idea (borrowed, without acknowledgement, from Pater) that ‘music’ being the art in which form and subject were inseparable ‘most completely realizes the artistic ideal, and is the condition to which all the other arts are constantly aspiring’. He fairly ‘convulsed his hearers’ by asking, ‘with one of his peculiar smiles, as though letting the audience into his confidence’, that as they had ‘listened for a hundred nights to my friend Arthur Sullivan’s charming opera Patience’ they might ‘listen to me for one night’. And his appeal for them not to ‘judge Aestheticism by the satire of Mr Gilbert’ – ‘as little should you judge of the strength and splendour of sun or sea by the dust that dances in the beam, or the bubble that breaks on the wave’ – was ‘applauded to the echo’.

  The audience ‘heartily enjoyed’ his remark, ‘You have heard, I think, a few of you, of two flowers connected with the Aesthetic movement in England, and said (I assure you, erroneously) to be the food of some Aesthetic young men. Well, let me tell you that the reason we love the lily and the sunflower, in spite of what Mr. Gilbert may tell you, is not for any vegetable fashion at all.’ The lecturer enjoyed it too, laughing with his audience. Solemnity briefly returned as he explained that the reason for the flowers’ popularity with Aesthetes was their natural suitability for decorative art, ‘the gaudy leonine beauty of the one and the precious loveliness of the other giving to the artist the most entire and perfect joy’. He urged his American listeners to look to the wonders of their own distinctive flora and fauna for motifs ‘to make more precious the preciousness’ of simple ornament, to achieve the ‘treasure of [a] new beauty’. Then, drawing his themes together (rather abruptly), he ended with the declaration, ‘We spend our days, each one of us, in looking for the secret of life. Well, the secret of life is in art.’

  The close was greeted with vigorous applause. The decibels confirmed Wilde’s triumph. He began to withdraw but, such was the clapping, he turned and bowed again. As he finally left the stage, ‘he blushed like a school girl’.22 Colonel Morse was deeply impressed. As he later recalled, in his long experience of handling lecturers, he could think of ‘no instance… of so severe a trial’ in front of a potentially hostile audience, nor ‘of a more complete and convincing success’.23 From the auditorium Wilde was whisked along 5th Avenue to a grand, flower-bedecked reception given by Mrs John Mack, his arrival hailed by the band giving a patriotic rendition of ‘God Save the Queen’. The New York Herald reported that ‘scores upon scores of beautiful and elegantly dressed ladies crowded each other to grasp his hand’.24

  Wilde had achieved a real success, a success confirmed by the following day’s press. Despite some sniping and a few Bunthornian allusions – particularly from the New York Tribune – the prevailing tenor was admiring and respectful. Certainly, there was now no doubt that Wilde could lecture, and that his tour would proceed.25 Carte, who arrived in New York on 11 January, was delighted to push forward arrangements. He was delighted, too, to note that box-office returns for the New York production of Patience, which had been declining, had ‘taken a new lease of life’. The opera could now be kept on until the end of the season. He wrote to Arthur Sullivan, remarking ‘inscrutable are the ways of the American public and absurd as it may appear, it seems that Oscar Wilde’s advent here which has caused a regular “craze” ha[s] given the business a fillip up’. To the American press Carte announced that, in view of Wilde’s success at Chickering Hall, he intended taking the Aesthete ‘around the country’ – probably for ‘two or three months’.26

  As the details of forthcoming dates – in Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, Albany, Boston and Chicago – were hastily confirmed, Wilde spent a happy week basking in his New York triumph. He was, as Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper reported, ‘niched and pedestalled by Society’; together with invitations, ‘letters, verses, flowers [and] petitions’ flowed in upon him.27 He had for his social guide and arbiter the irrepressible sixty-eight-year-old ‘Uncle’ Sam Ward, political lobbyist, occasional versifier, dedicated gourmet and inveterate anglophile. Ward assured Wilde the valuable interest and support of his friend, William Henry Hurlbert, editor of New York World; and, among other attentions, he organized a glittering lily-themed dinner at his own Clinton Place apartment, at which water-lilies floated in the gigantic punch-bowl, and all the guests sported lily-of-the-valley buttonholes.28

  The largest party thrown for Wilde, though, was a great ‘crush’ hosted by Mrs Marion T. Fortescue (née Minnie O’Shea), the Dublin-born daughter of the editor of Freeman’s Journal, and the mistress of Robert B. Roosevelt. It was there that Wilde was introduced to Joaquin Miller, the splendidly hirsute ‘Poet of the Sierras’, who urged him to seek out the ‘natural greatness and beauty’ of the west. Everywhere he went Wilde was the centre of attention.29 ‘Loving virtuous obscurity as much as I do,’ he joked to Mrs Lewis, ‘you can judge how much I dislike this lionising.’30 He was assured that there had been ‘nothing like it’ in New York since the visit of Charles Dickens. ‘I stand at the top of the reception room when I go out,’ he explained, ‘and for two hours they defile past for introductions. I bow graciously and sometime honour them with a royal observation, which appears in all the newspapers the next day.’31 At the Fortescue party, his unexceptional remark ‘I like America – that is to say I like New York’, was fixed on eagerly by the New York press.32 To Norman Forbes-Robertson Wilde sketched the joys of his new life: ‘Immense receptions, wonderful dinners, crowds wait for my carriage. I wave a gloved hand and an ivory cane and they cheer. Girls very lovely, men simple and intellectual. Rooms are hung with white lilies for me everywhere. I have “Boy” [champagne] at intervals… and generally behave as I always have behaved – “dreadfully”.’33

  Wilde’s behaviour was, in fact, anything but dreadful. He may have showed off shamelessly, but he also impressed his hosts and fellow guests by his self-possession, his ‘impromptu wheezes’, his name-dropping, his intelligence, and his talk. He was soon being accounted ‘the best raconteur since Lord Houghton’s time’.34 Something of his sweeping range was caught by Punch in its parodic account of ‘the Poet’s’ New York conversation:

  He has been intimate with GLADSTONE, and considers him a meritorious politician, though he finds fault with his views on HOMER. He prattled glibly of his friend SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT, and expressed himself generally in harmony with the leaders of Continental nations… The Poet spoke in terms of general approval of Art, the Moon, Wine, and Republicanism, to which latter, it is no secret, that he has sought to convert English Royalty.35

  A few who met him seem to have been overawed, or at least bemused, by the encounter; others strove to maintain a scientific detachment. Phoebe Pember (the redoubtable nursing pioneer) found herself quite unable to stop laughing when introduced to the young Aesthete. As she confessed to her nephew: ‘I laughed all the time [he was talking].’36 When John Bigelow took Wilde to dinner at the exclusive Century Association there was ‘a great deal of interest’, especially among the ‘medical men’, who were intrigued to inspect Wilde’s distinctively ‘effeminate features’;37 while, at another gathering, the eminent oculist Dr Holcombe – a pupil of Sir William Wilde’s, and founder of the New York genealogical and biographical society – announced himself ‘particularly interested in the peculiarities of Wilde’s eyes’, and insisted that the company ‘examine them through his magnifying glass’.38

  Some New Yorkers did stand aloof. Among writers less generous spirited than Joaquin Miller, there were hints of resentment, professional anxiety and lofty distaste. The self-important poet and literary critic Edmund Clarence Stedman declined to meet Wilde, despite receiving two letters of introduction (much to his annoyance, several newspapers incorrectly listed him as having accompanied his wife to the reception given for Wilde
at the Crolys). Stedman had been set against Wilde and his Poems by a letter from his friend Edmund Gosse, dismissing the ‘atrocious book’ as ‘a malodorous parasitic growth’ bumped into a third edition by the author’s ‘aristocratic friends’. And he was not inclined to relent.39 In his estimation Wilde was a ‘humbug’ – albeit a clever one – and it was merely New York’s wealthy ‘Philistine’ element that, from a mixture of ‘snobbery and idiocy’, was ‘making a fool of itself’ over him. He considered that the ‘genuine’ writers and poets were keeping out of his way – and he did his best to encourage them.40 The high-minded Emma Lazarus (whose 1883 sonnet ‘The New Colossus’ would provide the lines inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty) held off from meeting Wilde because – despite her admiration for his ‘genuine imagination and talent’ – she so disliked his ‘bare faced courting of vulgar notoriety’.41

  Wilde certainly kept his publicity obligations in view. Morse had provided the necessary support. As Wilde explained to Norman Forbes-Robertson, he had ‘two secretaries, one to write my autograph and answer the hundreds of letters that come begging for it. Another, whose hair is brown, to send locks of his own hair to the young ladies who write asking for mine; he is rapidly becoming bald. Also a black servant, who is my slave – in a free country one cannot live without a slave – rather like a Christy minstrel, except he knows no riddles.’42

  The Sarony photographs, printed on small cards, were already proving hugely popular, spreading Wilde’s image across the States. Demand, Wilde boasted, ‘far exceeds any possible supply’.43 Morse also arranged for a young New York artist, James Edward Kelly, to make a portrait etching of Wilde, a simple line-drawn image that would be easier and cheaper to reproduce than any photograph. When Kelly called on Wilde to do the drawing, he found him at home with ‘a beautiful little boy with golden curly hair and blue eyes’. Wilde suggested the child pose in the picture, standing beside his chair. It made for a charming scene, although when Kelly came to etch the picture, he restricted the image to Wilde’s head, viewed in profile.44 The call for Wilde’s picture was matched by calls for Wilde’s book. Although his Aesthetic notions were shocked when he saw the ‘commercial and common way’ in which the American edition of his Poems was issued, Wilde was delighted that Roberts Brothers were reprinting the volume, to meet the great demand ‘sung up’ since his arrival.45

  While in New York, Wilde also learnt more about America’s engagement with Aesthetic ideas. He attended a select artistic lunch given by Kate Field at the offices of the Cooperative Dress Association – a pioneering venture dedicated to producing more healthful, better-designed and cheaper gowns for women.46 And he paid a visit to the workshop of the ‘Associated Artists’, another collaborative feminist undertaking, set up to promote the decorative arts, especially needlework and fabric design. The firm’s redecoration of President Chester Arthur’s bedroom at the White House, undertaken the previous year, had been described in the American press as being suggestive of the ‘super-aesthetical, ultra-poetical… Oscar Wilde school’.47

  There was time, too, for Wilde to push his plans for an American production of Vera. His great hope was that he would be able to persuade the thirty-three-year-old actress Clara Morris to take the title role. Having already sent her a copy of the play, he now sought to follow it up in person. Sarah Bernhardt had whetted his appetite, telling him – as he informed one reporter – that ‘there were two things in America worth seeing – one was Clara Morris’s acting, and the other was some dreadful method of killing pigs in Chicago. She advised me to go and see both.’48 He thought the hogs could wait (perhaps indefinitely), but he was eager to see Miss Morris as soon as possible, and to secure her interest in Vera.

  At Wilde’s prompting, Mrs Croly had invited the actress to her reception. She came glittering in white brocade, trimmed with pearl and crystal. Her mood, though, was less than sparkling. And, despite the empressement of Wilde’s greeting (taking her hand in both of his, telling her how greatly pleased he was to meet her, and how much he had heard about her from Sarah Bernhardt) she remained out of sorts. One witness even noted that a ‘haughty smile’ seemed to curl her lip at the mention of La Bernhardt.49 Wilde had more joy the following afternoon when they met again, at the lunch hosted by Kate Field at the Dress Association. And if he did not get to her agree to take the part (as some papers reported), he did persuade her to consider the piece. Seeking to involve her further, he asked ‘for her suggestions as to situations’. And he followed up his advantage the next day, when he went to see her act for the first time, in The New Magdalen.50 She cannot but have been flattered by his enthusiasm: ‘Miss Morris is the greatest actress I ever saw,’ he told the New York Herald, ‘if it be fair to form an opinion of her from her rendition of this one role. We have no such powerfully intense actress in England. She is a great artist, in my sense of he word, because all she does, all she says, in the manner of the doing and of the saying constantly evoke the imagination to supplement to it. That is what I mean by art… She is a veritable genius.’51

  Later that week she allowed Wilde to accompany her and her husband to see Mary Anderson in W. S. Gilbert’s Pygmalion and Galatea. It was a promising start. But, despite such interest, Morris put off making any definite commitment. This did not prevent Wilde exaggerating the situation; he boasted to Edgar Saltus over lunch at Delmonico’s that he had been offered an advance of $5,000 for the play – ‘mere starvation wages’ as he put it. He did confess that the theatrical manager wanted him to make some changes to the text, before adding, ‘But who am I to tamper with a masterpiece?’52 When Wilde left New York on 16 January, heading for Philadelphia, he was full of optimism.53

  * There is, sadly, no evidence that Wilde told the New York customs officer, ‘I have nothing to declare, except my genius.’ This line – one of the most repeated of Wilde’s sayings – was first recorded in Arthur Ransome’s 1912 book, Oscar Wilde: A Critical Study (p. 64). It is probable that Ransome was told it by Robbie Ross, and it is possible that Wilde had told it to Ross – perhaps because he really did say it at the time or because he wished that he had said it.

  2

  Go Ahead

  ‘Every thing is going brilliantly.’

  oscar wilde

  The City of Brotherly Love seemed eager to welcome him. He had, already in place, several useful connections: literary, artistic and Irish. There was his old friend Charles Leland, recently returned to Philadelphia to establish a school of art and craft; Dr Samuel Gross, distinguished surgeon and sometime visitor at Merrion Square; and Mary Rebecca Darly-Smith, a poet who had dedicated a volume of verse to Lady Wilde. There was even a (second) cousin, Father Basil Maturin, an Anglican priest, who had come over from Dublin to be rector of one of the city’s churches. And it was the Philadelphia-based publication Our Continent that had solicited the two poems from Wilde prior to his departure from England. Its co-proprietor, Robert S. Davis, had agreed to host a reception for the young lecturer. So too had both George W. Childs, proprietor of the Public Ledger, and J. M. Stoddart, another of the city’s enterprising literary entrepreneurs.1

  Public interest was huge. Wide had been interviewed by one Philadelphia paper on the train down from New York, and by another shortly after checking into the Aldine Hotel. Indeed such was the stream of cards and callers arriving at the Aldine, that Wilde had his black valet stationed outside his room, informing visitors that ‘Massa Wilde is too busy to recept today’.2 Wilde’s lecture, scheduled for the evening of 17 January at the recently re-opened Horticultural Hall, was eagerly anticipated: 1,500 tickets had been sold.3

  In the event it was something of an anti-climax. Notwithstanding the packed house – and the fact that many members of the audience carried sunflower-shaped fans distributed at the door by an ‘enterprising tradesman’ (who had also placed an advertisement on the reverse of each bloom) – neither the lecture nor the audience warmed up as they had in New York. The most vigorous applause was an ironic bu
rst when Wilde took a sip of water. As he subsequently told a reporter, ‘My hearers were so cold I several times thought of stopping and saying, “You don’t like this, and there is no use my going on.”’4

  The failure was both a shock and a disappointment, softened slightly by the kind words of supportive friends, and a lone generous review in the Public Ledger.5 It was, though, rather more effectively assuaged by a thrilling excursion that Wilde made on the following afternoon, to visit one of his great literary heroes: Walt Whitman. The sixty-two-year-old author of Leaves of Grass was living just across the river from Philadelphia in the little working-class town of Camden. Prematurely aged by a succession of small strokes, he had declined invitations to the lavish reception given by Davis on the evening of Wilde’s arrival, and to a more intimate dinner Stoddart hosted after Wilde’s lecture. But he sent word that he would be happy to meet the young poet, if he cared to call – between ‘2 and 3½’ – on the afternoon of 18 January.6

  Following a convivial breakfast hosted by Dr Gross, and a brief visit to the Philadelphia Women’s School of Design, Stoddart escorted Wilde over the Delaware, and delivered him to the modest brick-built house where Whitman lived, cared for by his brother and sister-in-law. It was a happy meeting – between the ‘old rough’ (as Whitman called himself) and the eager young Aesthete. Whitman produced a bottle of homemade elderflower wine to welcome his guests in the downstairs parlour. Stoddart recalled it as ‘vile beyond description’ and was amazed that Wilde was able to drink off several glasses ‘with evident relish’. Taxed with this later, Wilde explained that ‘if it had been vinegar’ he would have drunk it just the same, such was his admiration for Whitman. Following these libations Stoddart tactfully withdrew, leaving the two poets together for the afternoon. They retreated upstairs to the cozy informality of Whitman’s top-floor ‘den’, to talk of poetry and people.7