Oscar Wilde: A Life in Letters
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Oscar Wilde: A Life in Letters
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When both her sons moved to London in 1879, Lady Wilde came to join them and was living in somewhat reduced circumstances, her London tea parties being a pale imitation of her famous Saturday conversazioni in Dublin. Although not yet able to help her financially, Oscar seemed to realise that his mother’s mantle had fallen on his shoulders and attempted to puff her to the editor of the Nineteenth Century.
To James Knowles
[October 1881] Keats House, Tite Street
Dear Mr Knowles, I send you a – rather soiled – copy of my mother’s pamphlet on the reflux wave of practical republicanism which the return of the Irish emigrants has brought on Ireland. It was written three years ago nearly, and is extremely interesting as a political prophecy. You probably know my mother’s name as the ‘Speranza’ of the Nation newspaper in 1848. I don’t think that age has dimmed the fire and enthusiasm of that pen which set the young Irelanders in a blaze.
I should like so much to have the privilege of introducing you to my mother – all brilliant people should cross each other’s cycles, like some of the nicest planets. In any case I am glad to be able to send you the article. It is part of the thought of the nineteenth century, and will I hope interest you. Believe me, truly yours
OSCAR WILDE
To the Hon. George Curzon
[November 1881] 9 Charles Street, Grosvenor Square, London
My dear Curzon, You are a brick! and I thank you very much for your chivalrous defence of me in the Union. So much of what is best in England passes through Oxford that I should have been sorry to think that discourtesy so gross and narrow-mindedness so evil could have been suffered to exist without some voice of scorn being raised against them.
Our sweet city with its dreaming towers must not be given entirely over to the Philistines. They have Gath and Ekron and Ashdod and many other cities of dirt and dread and despair, and we must not yield them the quiet cloister of Magdalen to brawl in, or the windows of Merton to peer from.
I hope you will come and see me in town. I have left my house at Chelsea but will be always delighted to see you, for, in spite of the story of Aristides, I have not got tired yet of hearing Rennell Rodd call you perfect.
I send you a bill of my first attack on Tyranny. I wish you could get it posted in the ‘High’, but perhaps I bother you? Very truly yours
OSCAR WILDE
Discovering America (#ulink_d8e4ee65-0db3-5104-9737-666f09a753ef)
‘Great success here; nothing like it since Dickens, they tell me. I am torn in bits by Society. Immense receptions, wonderful dinners, crowds wait for my carriage. I wave a gloved hand and an ivory cane and they cheer.’
The great break for which Wilde had been waiting came in about October 1881. Earlier that year, in April, Richard D’Oyly Carte had produced Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience at the Opera Comique, London. The opera satirised the contemporary ‘aesthetic’ movement, and the character of Bunthorne, the Fleshly Poet, though perhaps intended for Rossetti, was generally taken as a caricature of Wilde. Patience opened in New York on 22 September and Colonel W. F. Morse, Carte’s American representative, thought that a tour by Wilde himself lecturing on aesthetics, might provide useful publicity, since the American public had not experienced the butt of the satire first-hand. After some last-minute negotiations in London it was agreed that he would receive one-third of the net receipts from the tour once expenses had been deducted. He was accordingly booked to give a series of lectures, sailed on the Arizona on 24 December 1881 and landed at New York on 2 January 1882, where he was reported to have said to the examining customs official (though there is sadly no hard evidence for the anecdote), ‘I have nothing to declare but my genius.’
His first lecture, at the Chickering Hall, New York on 9 January, was on ‘The English Renaissance’ but it was too lengthy and theoretical for many in his audience and the press was critical of his lacklustre delivery. He immediately set about shortening it and within a month it had become ‘The Decorative Arts’ with a much wider popular appeal. He added a second lecture to his repertoire, “The House Beautiful’, for cities in which he had more than one engagement. He also prepared a lecture on ‘Irish Poets and Poetry of the Nineteenth Century’, which he gave in April in San Francisco, accepting with good grace the introductory label of ‘Speranza’s Boy’, bestowed on him by the expatriate Irish, whose memories of Jane’s role in the famine years were still warm.
To Norman Forbes-Robertson
[15 January 1882] New York
My dear Norman, I have been to call on Ian and his wife. She is so pretty and sweet and simple, like a little fair-haired Madonna, with a baby who already shows a great dramatic power and behaved during my visit (I stayed about an hour, breaking fifty-four engagements) like Macbeth, Hamlet, King John, and all the remarkable characters in Shakespeare. They seem very happy, and she is very loving to Ian, and unaffected.
I go to Philadelphia tomorrow. Great success here; nothing like it since Dickens, they tell me. I am torn in bits by Society. 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’ at intervals, also 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 that he knows no riddles. Also a carriage and a black tiger who is like a little monkey. I give sittings to artists, and generally behave as I always have behaved – ‘dreadfully’. Love to your mother and Forby and all of them. Ever your affectionate friend.
OSCAR
Initially Wilde’s tour was not without its incidents. Another lecturer, Archibald Forbes, a war correspondent whose tour was also managed by D’Oyly Carte, crossed swords with Wilde in a train while they were both travelling to lecture in Baltimore. Forbes’s disparaging remarks about aestheticism apparently needled Wilde who responded by staying on the train and going straight on to Washington. The dispute became public in the newspapers and threatened to jeopardise Wilde’s entire tour.
To Archibald Forbes
[20 January 1882] Arlington Hotel, Washington
Dear Mr Forbes, I felt quite sure that your remarks on me had been misrepresented. I must however say that your remarks about me in your lecture may be regarded as giving some natural ground for the report. I feel bound to say quite frankly to you that I do not consider them to be either in good taste or appropriate to your subject.
I have something to say to the American people, something that I know will be the beginning of a great movement here, and all foolish ridicule does a great deal of harm to the cause of art and refinement and civilisation here.
I do not think that your lecture will lose in brilliancy or interest by expunging the passage, which is, as you say yourself, poor fooling enough.
You have to speak of the life of action, I of the life of art. Our subjects are quite distinct and should be kept so. Believe me, yours truly
OSCAR WILDE
To Richard D’Oyly Carte
[?24 or 25 January 1882] Washington
My dear Carte, Another such fiasco as the Baltimore business and I think I would stop lecturing. The little wretched clerk or office boy you sent to me in Col. Morse’s place is a fool and an idiot. Do let us be quite frank with one another. I must have, according to our agreement, Morse or some responsible experienced man always with me. This is for your advantage as well as for mine. I will not go about with a young office boy, who has not even the civility to come and see what I want. He was here for five minutes yesterday, went away promising to return at eleven o’clock a.m. and I have not seen him since. I had nine reporters, seven or eight telegrams, eighteen letters to answer, and this young scoundrel amusing himself about the town. I must never be left again, and please do not expose me to the really brutal attacks of the papers. The whole tide of feeling is turnedby Morse’s stupidity.
I know you have been ill, and that it has not been your doing but we must be very careful for the future. Very sincerely yours
OSCAR WILDE
To Archibald Forbes
[Circa 29 January 1882] Boston
Dear Mr Forbes, I cannot tell you how surprised and grieved I am to think that there should have been anything in my first letter to you which seemed to you discourteous or wrong.
Believe me, I had intended to answer you in the same frank spirit in which you had written to me. Any such expressions however unintentional I most willingly retract.
As regards my motive for coming to America, I should be very disappointed if when I left for Europe I had not influenced in however slight a way the growing spirit of art in this country, very disappointed if I had not out of the many who listen to me made one person love beautiful things a little more, and very disappointed if in return for the dreadfully hard work of lecturing – hard to me who am inexperienced – I did not earn enough money to give myself an autumn at Venice, a winter at Rome, and a spring at Athens; but all these things are perhaps dreams.
Letter-writing seems to lead to grave misunderstandings. I wish I could have seen you personally: standing face to face, and man to man, I might have said what I wished to say more clearly and more simply. I remain yours truly o.
WILDE
Forbes was not alone in his mockery of what he saw as Wilde’s namby-pamby aesthetics. The students at Harvard and Rochester, where he went in early February, attempted to disrupt his lectures and newspaper columnists questioned his sincerity of purpose, hinting that his motives were purely financial. The poet Joaquin Miller and the anti-slavery campaigner Julia Ward Howe both came to his defence in print, and Wilde consoled himself with recounting his American adventures to friends back home, among them the solicitor George Lewis and his wife.
To George Lewis
[9 February 1882] Prospect House, Niagara Falls, Canada Side
My dear Mr Lewis, Things are going on very well, and you were very kind about answering my telegrams. Carte blundered in leaving me without a manager, and Forbes through the most foolish and mad jealousy tried to lure me into a newspaper correspondence. His attack on me, entirely unprovoked, was one of the most filthy and scurrilous things I ever read – so much so that Boucicault and Hurlbert of the World both entreated me to publish it, as it would have brought people over to my side, but I thought it wiser to avoid the garbage of a dirty-water-throwing in public. It was merely on Forbes’s part that the whole thing began, I really declining always to enter into any disquisition. I will show you his letter – it was infamous. He has been a dreadful failure this year and thought he would lure me on to a public quarrel.
I am hard at work, and I think making money, but the expenses seem very heavy. I hope to go back with £1000: if I do it will be delightful.
Your friend Whitelaw Reid, to whom I brought two letters of introduction, has not been very civil – in fact has not helped me in any way at all. I am sorry I brought him any letters, and the New York Herald is most bitter. I wonder could you do anything for it? Pray remember me to Mrs Lewis, and with many thanks, yours most affectionately
OSCAR WILDE
To the Hon. George Curzon