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
[15 February 1882] US
My dear George Curzon, Yes! You are on the black list, and, if my secretary does his work properly, every mail shall hurl at your young philosophic head the rage of the American eagle because I do not think trousers beautiful, the excitement of a sane strong people over the colour of my necktie, the fear of the eagle that I have come to cut his barbaric claws with the scissors of culture, the impotent rage of the ink-stained, the noble and glorious homage of the respectable – you shall know it all: it may serve you for marginal notes
Well, it’s really wonderful, my audiences are enormous. In Chicago I lectured last Monday to 2500 people! This is of course nothing to anyone who has spoken at the Union, but to me it was delightful – a great sympathetic electric people, who cheered and applauded and gave me a sense of serene power that even being abused by the Saturday Review never gave me.
I lecture four times a week, and the people are delightful and lionise one to a curious extent, but they follow me, and start schools of design when I visit their town. At Philadelphia