Oscar Wilde visited America in the year 1882. Interest in the Æsthetic
School, of which he was already the acknowledged master, had sometime
previously spread to the United States, and it is said that the
production of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera, “Patience,”[1] in which he
and his disciples were held up to ridicule, determined him to pay a
visit to the States to give some lectures explaining what he meant by
Æstheticism, hoping thereby to interest, and possibly to instruct and
elevate our transatlantic cousins.
He set sail on board the “Arizona” on Saturday, December 24th, 1881,
arriving in New York early in the following year. On landing he was
bombarded by journalists eager to interview the distinguished stranger.
“Punch,” in its issue of January 14th, in a happy vein, parodied these
interviewers, the most amusing passage in which referred to “His
Glorious Past,” wherein Wilde was made to say, “Precisely--I took the
Newdigate. Oh! no doubt, every year some man gets the Newdigate; but not
every year does Newdigate get an Oscar.”
At Omaha, where, under the auspices of the Social Art Club, Wilde
delivered a lecture on “Decorative Art,” he described his impressions
of many American houses as being “illy designed, decorated shabbily, and
in bad taste, filled with furniture that was not honestly made, and was
out of character.” This statement gave rise to the following verses:--
What a shame and what a pity,
In the streets of London City
Mr. Wilde is seen no more.
Far from Piccadilly banished,
He to Omaha has vanished.
Horrid place, which swells ignore.
On his back a coat he beareth,
Such as Sir John Bennet weareth,
Made of velvet--strange array!
Legs Apollo might have sighed for,
Or great Hercules have died for,
His knee breeches now display.
Waving sunflower and lily,
He calls all the houses “illy
Decorated and designed.”
For of taste they’ve not a tittle;
They may chew and they may whittle;
But they’re all born colour-blind!
His lectures dealt almost exclusively with the subjects of Art and Dress
Reform. In the course of one lecture he remarked that the most
impressive room he had yet entered in America was the one in Camden Town
where he met Walt Whitman. It contained plenty of fresh air and
sunlight. On the table was a simple cruse of water. This led to a
parody, in the style of Whitman, describing an imaginary interview
between the two poets, which appeared in “The Century” a few months
later. Wilde is called Narcissus and Whitman Paumanokides.