19 R. Davis to OW (Clark). George Lewis urged OW to keep his eye ‘open for an engagement as Correspondent to some paper, or some other engagement which may bring with it pecuniary advantage’. George Lewis to OW, 25 January 1882 (Austin); even so, OW turned down the chance to write an article for the Sunday Star (Wilmington, Delaware) giving his ‘impressions of American life’. J. C. Farra to OW, 21 January 1882 (Clark).
20 JFW to OW, 19 February 1882, in Tipper, Oscar, 69.
21 Robert S. Davis to OW, 20 January 1882 (Clark).
22 Archibald Forbes to Flossie [Boughton], 15 January 1882 (Clark).
23 J. Pennell to Elizabeth Robins [Pennell], 19 January 1882, in Elizabeth Robins Pennell, The Life and Letters of Joseph Pennell (1930), 51.
24 ‘What Oscar Has To Say’, Baltimore American, 20 January 1882, in Hofer & Scharnhorst, 34–5; ‘Wilde and Forbes’, New York Herald, 21 January 1882, in Hofer & Scharnhorst, 35–8.
25 CL, 133n, 134; Morse, 79–80.
26 CL, 148, 159.
27 Hofer & Scharnhorst, 45.
28 Lewis & Smith, 82ff; Argonaut; Caroline Healey Dall, ‘Diary’ (Massachusetts Historical Society).
29 Healy Dall, ‘Diary’.
30 ‘The United States’, ‘New York, Feb 4 [1882]’, Argus (Melbourne) 21 March 1882; also ‘Oscar the Aesthete’ [newspaper cutting], 29 January 1882 (Clark) where the incident is placed in Philadelphia.
31 Argonaut.
32 Healy Dall, ‘Diary’.
33 Ward Thoron, ed. Letters of Mrs Henry Adams (1936), 328–9.
34 Harriet Loring to John Hay, 23 February 1882; quoted in George Monteiro, ‘A Contemporary View of Henry James and Oscar Wilde, 1882’, American Literature, 35 (1964), 529–30.
35 ‘Wilde’s Buncome’, National Republican (Washington, DC), 24 January 1882; Evening Star (Washington, DC) 24 January, 1882.
36 Henry James, The American Scene (1907), 335.
37 Friedman, 122–3.
38 Letters of Mrs Henry Adams, 113, Clover Adams to her father, 31 January 1882.
39 Lewis & Smith, 114.
40 CL, 132.
41 Holmes used the phrase ‘70 years young’ about himself in a letter to Julia Ward Howe, 27 May 1879; CL, 131; J. R. Lowell, too, had been a member, and it was his letter of introduction that secured OW’s invitation.
42 Hofer & Scharnhorst, 70. Hofer & Scharnhorst 47, list two of the other guests at the lunch – James Freeman Clarke and Phillips Brooks, both of them ministers and writers.
43 Lewis & Smith, 116; Hofer & Scharnhorst, 50; OW presented O’Reilly with a letter of introduction from Florence Duncan, though his own name would have been enough to secure him an entrée. See Grey and Whitmore, eds, Florence, 1:165.
44 CL, 137; C. E. Norton to Mr Simon, 6 February 1882, in Kermit Vanderbilt, Charles Eliot Norton (1959), 178; C. E. Norton to J. R. Lowell, 22 February 1882, in Sarah Norton and M. A. de Wolfe Howe, eds, The Letters of Charles Eliot Norton (1913).
45 CL, 137, 132, Mark De Wolfe Howe, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: The Proving Years 1870–1882 (1963), 255n.
46 Laura E. Richards, Maud Howe Elliott and Florence Howe Hall, Julia Ward Howe (1916), 70. The colourful first-hand account of the occasion in Alice Cary Williams’s memoir, Thru The Turnstile (1976) does not seem credible – not least because Williams was not born until 1892. A letter from F. Marion Crawford to OW, ‘Monday morning’ [1882] (Austin), suggests OW went to call on the eldest Ward Howe daughter, the poetically inclined Mrs Angauos, the following afternoon.
47 Two letters from JFW to Henry Longfellow – 30 November 1875 and 11 May 1878 (Clark).
48 Mikhail, 379, 384.
49 Lewis & Smith 115–6; Hofer & Scharnhorst, 84.
50 Hofer & Scharnhorst, 70.
51 Hofer & Scharnhorst, 49.
52 Hofer & Scharnhorst, 129.
53 Lewis & Smith, 116; O’Sullivan, 215
54 Boston Evening Traveller, 30 January 1882, in Ellmann, 172.
55 Lewis & Smith, 116; H. W. Longfellow to Mrs Bean, 5 February 1882 (Morgan).
56 Journal, in Lewis & Smith, 125.
57 Lewis & Smith, 125–6, Kelly, ‘Memoirs’.
58 Transcript in Lewis & Smith, 128.
59 Detroit Saturday Night, in Lewis & Smith, 128.
60 Washington Star, January 1882, quoted in Lewis & Smith, 88; ibid., 90; ‘Wilde’s Experience’, Topeka Daily Capital, 16 January 1882: initially when OW’s ‘green’ paper ran out, ‘he was obliged to his chagrin to write his name on common cream tint’.
61 Friedman, 136–8; OW confessed to being disappointed in American cigarettes. Having used up the supply of Turkish cigarettes he had brought with him from England he settled on ‘Old Judge’ as his favoured American brand.
62 Kelly, ‘Memoirs’.
63 ‘A Man of Culture Rare’, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 8 February 1882, in Hofer & Scharnhorst, 55.
64 ‘Wilde and Forbes’, New York Herald, 21 January 1882, in Hofer & Scharnhorst, 36.
65 St Louis Globe-Democrat, 26 February 1882, in Lewis & Smith, 82.
66 CL, 136.
67 ‘Oscar Wilde’, Boston Herald, 29 January 1882, in Hofer & Scharnhorst, 40; OW gave other versions of this story, including to the St Louis Globe-Democrat, 26 February 1882, in Lewis & Smith, 88–9.
68 CL, 141; Lewis & Smith, 101; ‘Oscar Wilde’, Boston Herald, 29 January 1882, in Hofer & Scharnhorst, 44.
69 Higginson and Ward Howe, quoted in Lewis & Smith, 119–21; see also Schroeder, 62; for Joaquin Miller’s open letter to OW, published in the New York World (10 February 1882), apologizing for ‘the coarse comments of the Philistine press’ – and OW’s reply – see CL, 141–3.
70 JFW to OW, 19 February 1882, in Tipper, Oscar, 70; ‘Mr Oscar Wilde in America’, Daily News, 2 March 1882 (‘by our New York correspondent’), 6; CL, 148n. WCKW wrote, on 10 March 1882, to T. G. Bowles, editor of Vanity Fair (of which WCKW was the drama critic): ‘I have held my tongue on one special matter which is very painful indeed to me and mine – why is it that whenever you get an opening you “go for” my brother Oscar so wickedly? Chaff, satire, wit, fun, honest criticism are all fair enough, but such stories as your “Chief” [in the magazine’s ‘Notes’ section] tells of his being “utterly out of English Society” – neither received nor recognized – (about two numbers ago) are nasty and, as a matter of fact, false… [and] the apocryphal American anecdotes are surely attacking a young man from ambush – not after the wonted honest fashion of the paper. I have said my say, cost what costs.’
71 ‘The Aesthete and His Travels’, Truth, 2 February 1882, 175–7.
72 Rennell Rodd to OW, [February 1882], (Austin).
73 Rennell Rodd to OW, [February 1882], (Austin); CL, 147, 148n.
74 Quoted in Argonaut (San Francisco), 10, no. 1, 7 January 1882.
75 William [Merritt] Chase to OW, 21 November 1882 (Clark), ‘I am much stimulated by your enthusiasm for Whistler.’ ‘Aesthetic: An Interesting Interview with Oscar Wilde’, Dayton Daily Democrat, 3 May 1882, in Hofer & Scharnhorst, 144–5; Joseph Pennell to Elizabeth Robins [Pennell], 19 January 1882, in Pennell, The Life and Letters of Joseph Pennell, 51.
76 LFW to OW, 19 March 1882, Tipper, op. cit. 73.
77 Violet Hunt diary for 27 May 1882, quoted in ‘Aesthetes and Pre-Raphaelites’, 399. Lady Wilde reported Violet Hunt’s presence at the party: ‘Pretty Violet all eager to see you.’ LFW Letters to OW, 28 May 1882. Tipper, op. cit., 78.
78 JFW to OW, 25 February 1882, in Tipper, Oscar, 70; JFW to OW, 18 September 1882, in Tipper, Oscar, 88.
79 Intentions, 14 (2001), 9; CD available; Hofer & Scharnhorst,162.
80 ‘American Letter – New York, 13th Jan. 1882’, Belfast News-Letter, 26 January 1882.
81 Lois Foster Rodecape, ‘Gilding the Sunflower: A Study of Oscar Wilde’s Visit to San Francisco’, California Historical Society Quarterly, 19 (1940), 104.
82 Freeman’s Journal, 9 February 1882.
84 Lewis & Smith, 157; OWIA, ‘Ephemera’.
85 Friedman, 96–7; Kit Barry, of the ‘Ephemera Archive for American Studies’ has traced ‘nearly a hundred’ different products advertised with Wilde’s image; more than for any other figure during 1882.
86 ‘Speranza’s Gifted Son’, St Louis Globe-Democrat, 26 February 1882, in Hofer & Scharnhorst, 81.
Chapter 3: This Wide Great World
1 D. Boucicault to Mrs Lewis, 29 January 1882, CL, 135n.
2 CL, 136.
3 CL, 136; Hofer & Scharnhorst, 63; Morse, Accounts book (New York Public Library).
4 ‘London Gossip’, Royal Cornwall Gazette (Truro), 9 June 1882; ‘London Gossip’, York Herald, 10 June 1882; Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 8 July 1882.
5 Chicago Inter-Ocean, 13 February 1882; Hofer & Scharnhorst, 64.
6 Hofer & Scharnhorst, 36.
7 CL, 136.
8 CL, 141.
9 CL, 163.
10 CL, 135n.
11 Morse, Accounts book: 5 February, draft to Levy $343.00 (c. £68 12s); JFW to OW, 25 February 1882, in Tipper, Oscar, 70; OW sent JFW £15, from which WCKW was to receive £5.
12 For trunks see St Louis Daily Globe Democrat, 26 February 1882. The 1880 US census lists J. Sydney Vale (born 1856, England) as ‘President of Literary Bureau’. Morse gave his name as ‘J. H. Vail’; Lewis & Smith as ‘J. H. Vale’ and Ellmann as ‘J. S. Vail’. Lewis & Smith, 204, 211, claim that the valet was called ‘John’ (quoting, it seems, a report in the St Louis Post-Dispatch). Ellmann, 177, apparently misreading the reference in Lewis & Smith, 204, where ‘John, the “liver-coloured” valet’ is mentioned in the same sentence as the St Louis theatrical manager W. M. Traguier, dubs OW’s valet ‘W. M. Traquair’.
13 Kevin O’Brien, Oscar Wilde in Canada (1982), 150.
14 Utica Daily Observer, 7 February 1882.
15 Lewis & Smith, 156–8.
16 Buffalo Express, c. 9 February 1882; Hofer & Scharnhorst, 57.
17 OW, ‘Impressions of America’.
18 ‘The United States’, Standard, 11 February 1882; ‘Politics and Society’, Leeds Mercury, 13 February 1882: ‘Poor Mr. Oscar Wilde is once more a disappointed man. It was first the Atlantic Ocean which failed to rise to the occasion when he crossed it, and now the Falls of Niagara have been guilty of the same grievous offence.’ Fun, 8 March 1882, 103, in Friedman, 157–8.
19 Chicago Inter-Ocean, 13 February 1882, 2; Hofer & Scharnhorst, 61.
20 Hofer & Scharnhorst, 132, 147.
21 Lewis & Smith, 178.
22 Friedman, 160.
23 CL, 139.
24 ‘Oscar Wilde, The Aesthetic Apostle,’ Chicago Tribune, 14 February 1882.
25 ‘Wilde’, Cleveland Leader, 20 February 1882, ‘Speranza’s Gifted Son’, St Louis Globe-Democrat, 26 February 1882, in Hofer & Scharnhorst, 66, 80.
26 CL, 143, and St Louis Globe-Democrat, 26 February 1882.
27 Lewis & Smith, 188–91, 199–201; ‘With Mr Oscar Wilde’, Cincinnati Gazette, 21 February 1882, in Hofer & Scharnhorst, 70; ‘Oscar Wilde’, Chicago Tribune, 1 March 1882, in Hofer & Scharnhorst, 89.
28 John Wyse Jackson, Oscar Wilde in St. Louis (2012) 52, 54; Hofer & Scharnhorst, 132, 161. According to the St Louis Globe-Democrat, which maintained a hostile attitude towards him, Wilde, as he stepped off the stage, declared the St Louis audience ‘villainous’, and pronounced it the worst he had experienced since coming to America. But all his other known pronouncements about his St Louis lecture were positive.
29 ‘Oscar Wilde’, Chicago Tribune, 1 March 1882, in Hofer & Scharnhorst, 89.
30 OW, ‘Keats’ Sonnet on Blue’, OET VI, 84; Emma Keats Speed to OW, 12 March [1882] (Austin).
31 CL, 157.
32 CL, 146; OWIA; Milwaukee Sentinel, 6 March 1882, 5.
33 Dubuque Herald, 3 March 1882, at OWIA.
34 Hofer & Scharnhorst, 63.
35 Chicago Tribune, 7 March 1882, 4, at OWIA.
36 OWIA; CL, 146, 147; Morse, Account book: Aurora: Receipts: $7.35 against expenses (personal, business, and private) of $15.32; Joliet: Receipts $18.75 against expenses of $27.64.
37 ‘Oscar Wilde’, Chicago Tribune, 1 March 1882, 7; Hofer & Scharnhorst, 91–2.
38 ‘The House Beautiful’, in O’Brien, Oscar Wilde in Canada, 165–81; O’Connell, ‘Bohemian Experiences of Oscar Wilde’.
39 ‘A Home Ruler’, St Louis Globe-Democrat, 26 February 1882, in Wyse Jackson, Oscar Wilde in St. Louis, 75–7; CL, 115–16.
40 Daily Globe (St Paul, Minnesota), 18 March 1882, 1; OWIA.
41 Hofer & Scharnhorst, 45.
42 Hofer & Scharnhorst, 45; Phil Robinson, Sinners and Saints, A Tour Across the States (1892), 39.
43 CL, 152–3 and n.
44 Alta California, 17 March 1882, in Rodecape, ‘Gilding the Sunflower’, 98; W. F. Morse to OW, 11 March 1882 (Clark) shows Morse negotiating with two other promoters – Seager of Lincoln and Fulton of Kansas City – for ‘this California trip’ – suggesting terms of ‘60% of the gross and a guarantee of $200 per night’ in advance, plus three return fares. CL, 155; Morse’s account book (New York Public Library) gives the actual figures: ‘Receipts: $3,000.00’ minus ‘personal’ expenses: $212.50 and ‘business: $547.90’. The net – $2,239.60 – was divided 50/50 with the Carte Agency. During his time in the far west OW also ran up $267.90 of ‘private’ expenses.
Chapter 4: Bully Boy
1 CL, 158; ‘Dinners and Dishes’, PMG, 7 March 1885; OET VI, 40.
2 San Francisco Chronicle, 27 March 1882; Record-Union (Sacramento, California), 27 March 1882; OWIA.
3 Rodecape, ‘Gilding the Sunflower’, 100; ‘Oscar Wilde At Home’, San Francisco Examiner, 9 April 1882, in Hofer & Scharnhorst, 123–4.
4 San Francisco Chronicle, 28 March 1882, OWIA; Examiner, 28 March 1882, in Rodecape, ‘Gilding the Sunflower’, 102. Daily Report, 28 March 1882, in Wildean, 30, 82. Having been booked to give three lectures in San Francisco, Wilde had revived his talk on ‘The English Renaissance’ for this occasion, delivering it from memory; Alta California, 28 March 1882, in Rodecape, ‘Gilding the Sunflower’, 102. The full schedule of OW’s Californian lectures (established by John Cooper at OWIA) is: 27 March, San Francisco: ‘English Renaissance’; 28 March, Oakland, ‘English Renaissance’; 29 March, San Francisco, ‘Decorative Arts’; 30 March, Oakland, ‘Art Decoration’; 31 March, Sacramento, ‘Decorative Arts’; 1 April, San Francisco (matinee), ‘House Beautiful’; 3 April, San José, ‘Decorative Arts’; 4 April, Stockton, ‘Decorative Arts’, 5 April, San Francisco (an unscheduled addition), ‘Irish Poets and Poetry of the Nineteenth Century’; 8 April, Sacramento (matinee), ‘House Beautiful’.
5 Robert D. Pepper, Oscar Wilde, Irish Poets and Poetry of the Nineteenth Century (1972); OWIA; The Livermore Herald, 6 April 1882, had noted that OW on his train journey to Sacramento was ‘absorbed in stealing the matter for his next lecture… from a weighty volume on the poets and prose of Ireland’.
6 Hofer & Scharnhorst, 104, 146, 133; OW, ‘Impressions of America’, 28–9 (here OW increases the thickness of the hotel teacup to ‘an inch and a half’).
7 O’Connell, ‘Bohemian Experiences of Oscar Wilde’, in Rodecape, ‘Gilding the Sunflower’, 105.
8 O’Connell, ‘Bohemian Experiences of Oscar Wilde’; Lewis & Smith, 255–6; the portrait, by Bohemian Club member Theodore Wores (1859–1939) was destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.
9 Isobel Field, The Life I’ve Loved (1937), 143–9. Isobel ‘Belle’ Field, née Osbourne, was the stepdaughter, and sometime amanuensis, of Robert Louis Stevenson.
10 ‘Interview with a Theatrical Manageress’ (Helen Lenoir), South Australian Weekly Chronicle (Adelaide) 8 August 1885; Freeman’s Journal, 3 August 1882.
11 JFW to OW, 25 April 1882, in Tipper, Oscar, 75.
12 Hofer & Scharnhorst, 2.
; 13 Peoria Evening Review, 11 March 1882.
14 Topeka Daily Capital, 16 January 1882.
15 M. H. Elliott, ‘This Was My Newport’; ‘Andrew’s American Queen’, 17 June, 15 and 29 July 1882, in Ellmann, 193.
16 San Francisco Chronicle, ‘Local Art Notes’, 30 April 1882; ‘Oscar Wilde’, Argonaut, vol. 10, no. 13, 1 April 1882, 4; Field, The Life I’ve Loved, 147. Aimée [Amy] Crocker, in her 1936 autobiography And I’d Do It Again (286) mentions a dinner chez Crocker at which the guests tried to drink OW under the table, and failed. But the story rings false, and is probably an adaptation of the Bohemian Club anecdote.
17 CL, 19 April 1882. The letter (at Clark) was written from ‘St Joseph, Missouri’; Wilde had visited Kansas City, Denver, Colorado Springs, Leadville and Salt Lake City in the ten days before, but had never stayed more than a day in any of them, so it is hard to imagine him developing attachments during that time. His fortnight based in San Francisco seems the likely moment for a romance to have sprung up. The 1880 Census lists ‘Hattie Crocker’ as the only ‘Hattie’ in San Francisco, together with three less socially plausible ‘Harriets’ of similar age. A ‘Hattie Rice’ also appears occasionally in the San Francisco social pages during 1882.
18 CL, 161; Hofer & Scharnhorst, 147.
19 Chicago Inter-Ocean, 13 February 1882, 2; in Hofer & Scharnhorst, 63.
20 CL, 161–2; Leadville Daily Herald, 14 April 1882; ‘Mr. Oscar Wilde on America’, Freeman’s Journal, 11 July 1883.
21 OW, ‘Impressions of America’, 31; Sherard, Life, 226.
22 CL, 165–6; OW, ‘Impressions of America’; ‘Mr. Oscar Wilde on America’, Freeman’s Journal, 11 July 1883; these sources suggest that OW mentioned Cellini in his lecture, and although this is not confirmed in any of the press reports it is possible. OW’s answer to the question about Cellini’s whereabouts, however, suggests a less formal setting for the discussion about the artist.
Oscar Page 104
