To Charles Godfrey Leland
[Circa 15 May 1882] [Montreal]
My dear Mr Leland, Your letter was very very welcome to me, and indeed I do think that as regards that part of my lecture in which I spoke of the necessity of art as the factor of a child’s education, and how all knowledge comes in doing something not in thinking about it, and how a lad who learns any simple art learns honesty, and truth-telling, and simplicity, in the most practical school of simple morals in the world, the school of art, learns too to love nature more when he sees how no flower by the wayside is too lowly, no little blade of grass too common but some great designer has seen it and loved it and made noble use of it in decoration, learns too to be kind to animals and all living things, that most difficult of all lessons to teach a child (for I feel that when he sees how lovely the little leaping squirrel is on the beaten brass, or the bird arrested in marble flight on the carven stone, he will never be cruel to them again), learns too to wonder and worship at God’s works more, the carving round a Gothic cathedral with all its marvels of the animal and vegetable world always seeming to me a Te Deum in God’s honour, quite as beautiful and far more lasting than that chanted Te Deum of the choir which dies in music at evensong—well, I felt my audience was with me there both in Philadelphia and in New York. When I showed them the brass work and the pretty bowl of wood with its bright arabesque at New York they applauded to the echo, and I have received so many letters about it and so many congratulations that your school will be known and honoured everywhere, and you yourself recognised and honoured as one of the great pioneers and leaders of the art of the future. If you come across the Tribune of last Friday you will see an account of my lecture, though badly reported.
For your kind words of confidence accept my thanks. I feel that I am gaining ground and better understood every day. Yes: I shall win, for the great principles are on our side, the gods are with us! Best regards to Mrs Leland. Very truly yours OSCAR WILDE
To Julia Ward Howe
6 July [1882] Augusta, Georgia
My dear Mrs Howe, My present plan is to arrive in New York from Richmond on Wednesday evening, and to leave that night for Newport, being with you Thursday morning and staying, if you will have me, till Saturday. I have an enormous trunk and a valet, but they need not trouble you. I can send them to the hotel. With what incumbrances one travels! It is not in the right harmony of things that I should have a hat-box, a secretary, a dressing-case, a trunk, a portmanteau, and a valet always following me. I daily expect a thunderbolt, but the gods are asleep, though perhaps I had better not talk about them or they will hear me and wake. But what would Thoreau have said to my hat-box! Or Emerson to the size of my trunk, which is Cyclopean! But I can’t travel without Balzac and Gautier, and they take up so much room: and as long as I can enjoy talking nonsense to flowers and children I am not afraid of the depraved luxury of a hat-box.
I write to you from the beautiful, passionate, ruined South, the land of magnolias and music, of roses and romance: picturesque too in her failure to keep pace with your keen northern pushing intellect; living chiefly on credit, and on the memory of some crushing defeats. And I have been to Texas, right to the heart of it, and stayed with Jeff Davis at his plantation (how fascinating all failures are!) and seen Savannah, and the Georgia forests, and bathed in the Gulf of Mexico, and engaged in Voodoo rites with the Negroes, and am dreadfully tired and longing for an idle day which we will have at Newport.
Pray remember me to Miss Howe, and believe me very truly yours
OSCAR WILDE
Would you send a line to me at 1267 Broadway to say if it is all right.
The lecture tour, which was only planned to last until April, was extended to the middle of May when Col. Morse offered him a further two months in the Southern States and Canada. Wilde accepted and by the middle of July was glad of a two-week break (not three as it turned out) in Rhode Island and New York. The visit to Japan never took place because Morse arranged a further tour of New England in August, and Canada again in October. Wilde had met Donoghue when in Chicago and his championing of the young sculptor publicly in America made Donoghue’s career.
To Charles Eliot Norton
[Circa 15 July 1882] Ocean House, Newport [Rhode Island]
Dear Mr Norton, I send you the young Greek: a photograph of him: I hope you will admire him. I think it is very strong and right, the statue: and the slight asceticism of it is to me very delightful. The young sculptor’s name is John Donoghue: pure Celt is he: and his address is Reaper Block, Chicago: any word of interest from you would be very cheering to him. I feel sure he could do any one of your young athletes, and what an era in art that would be to have the sculptor back in the palaestra, and of much service too to those who separate athletics from culture, and forget the right ideal of the beautiful and healthy mind in a beautiful and healthy body. I can see no better way of getting rid of the mediaeval discord between soul and body than by sculpture. Phidias is the best answer to Thomas à Kempis, but I wish you could see the statue itself, and not the sun’s libel on it.
When I had the privilege of dining with you you spoke to me, if I remember right, of Professor Morse, the Japanese traveller. As I am going to Japan myself it would be of great service to me to get any instructions or letters from him which would enable me to see their method of studying art, their schools of design and the like. I hardly like to ask you to do this for me, knowing how busy your days are, but I am so anxious to see the artistic side of Japanese life that I have ventured to trespass on your courtesy. I have just returned from the South and have a three-weeks holiday now before Japan, and so find it not unpleasant to be in this little island where idleness ranks among the virtues. I suppose you are still among your beautiful trees. How rich you are to have a Rossetti and a chestnut tree. If I happen to be in Boston pray allow me to call on you, and believe me yours truly OSCAR WILDE
Wilde used the little free time that he had to work on the scenario of a new play, The Duchess of Padua, a blank verse tragedy set in mediaeval Italy. Despite what he always said later about never having written a play for a particular actress, he appears to have approached his leading actress in early September in order to persuade the director Steele Mackaye and the producer Lawrence Barrett to take it on. Hamilton Griffin, Anderson’s stepfather and manager, finally agreed terms with Wilde in late November, $1000 down and $4000 on acceptance of the play to be delivered by p March 1883.
To Mary Anderson
[September 1882] 1267 Broadway, New York
Dear Miss Anderson, I am very anxious to learn what decision you have come to as regards the production of my play. It is in our power to procure all the conditions of success by the beauty of costume, the dignity of scenery, the perfection of detail and dramatic order, without which, in England at any rate, you could not get your right position as an artist.
I will merely remind you of the complete fiasco made by Edwin Booth this summer in London merely through the inartistic style of the stage management, and the mediocre company. If you desire, as I feel that you at any rate do, to create an era in the history of American dramatic art, and to take your assured rank among the great artists of our time, here is the opportunity: and remember we live in an age when without art there is really no true success, financial or otherwise.
That I can create for you a part which will give your genius every scope, your passion every outlet, and your beauty every power, I am well assured. The bare, meagre outline I have given you is but a faint shadow of what Bianca Duchess of Padua will be.
Mr Lawrence Barrett has made me a very large offer for the play, but I feel that it is for you to create the part and I have