23 CL, 162.
24 CL, 166.
25 CL, 164.
26 CL, 205.
27 CL, 140, 175.
28 OW, L’Envoi; see also ‘Aesthetic: An Interesting Interview with Oscar Wilde’, Dayton Daily Democrat, 3 May 1882, in Hofer & Scharnhorst 144: here OW claims to be no longer a ‘Pre-Raphaelite’ and disciple of Ruskin, but, rather, ‘the Champion’ of Whistler’s ‘new school’.
29 Martin Birnbaum, Oscar Wilde: Fragments and Memories (1914), 18; Mason, 182–6.
30 R. D’Oyly Carte to OW [fragment] (Clark); CL, 150.
31 CL, 150n.
32 CL, 151.
33 [Unknown employee of Carte Agency in NYC] to OW, 21 March 1882 (Clark), ‘As Mr Carte wrote you, Mr Harriott [Morris’s husband], in his last communication seemed disposed to throw cold water on the matter rather – at any rate for this season, owing to Mrs Harriott’s uncertain health.’ Morse to OW, CL, 156n.
Chapter 5: Different Aspects
1 CL, 169.
2 Morse, 84–5. Receipts from first lecture at Montreal (15 May) were $300, from first lecture at Toronto (25 May) $403.55, from Quebec City (18 May) $158.50; Frederick Dunbar to Richard Glaezner, 28 July 1911 (Clark). Dunbar recalled that when the bust was exhibited at the Art Institute, ‘in true Hellenic style’ the pedestal was daily decorated with flowers by adoring maidens.
3 Toronto Globe, in O’Brien, Oscar Wilde in Canada, 98–9.
4 Friedman, 216–17; CL, 174.
5 ‘Oscar Wilde in Brooklyn’ (newspaper cutting), George Lewis archive (Bodleian).
6 ‘Mr Oscar Wilde in America’, Freeman’s Journal, 11 July 1883.
7 CL, 175.
8 OW, ‘Impressions of America’.
9 New Orleans Picayune, 25 June 1882, in Hofer & Scharnhorst, 157; Saratoga Weekly Journal, 20 July 1882, in Ellmann, 187.
10 Richard III programme notes, Carll’s Opera House, New Haven, 30 January 1882, reprinted in Intentions, June 2010, 25; Lewis & Smith, 362.
11 Hofer & Scharnhorst, 157. OW later claimed that ‘When I went to Texas I was called “Captain”; when I got to the centre of the country I was addressed as “Colonel,” and, on arriving at the borders of Mexico, as “General”’ (‘Impressions of America’).
12 Friedman, 223–4; see E. P. Alexander to Jefferson Davis, 12 June 1882, Louisville, Kentucky, introducing OW, item 372 in the Oscar Wilde collection of John B. Stetson.
13 Hofer & Scharnhorst, 156–7; CL, 176; Hofer & Scharnhorst, 362.
14 ‘New Notes’, Sedalia Weekly Bazoo, 27 June 1882, in Friedman, 218.
15 ‘Oscar Wilde and His Negro Valet’, NYT, 9 July 1882, in Friedman, 227.
16 Hofer & Scharnhorst, 166, 161; Manchester Times, 27 May 1882; CL, 174, 166. H. W. B. Howard to Oscar Wilde, 2 September 1882 (Clark), offering OW $500 for four articles of 3,500 words each on Japanese art and handicraft ‘to be written while you are in Japan or immediately after starting your return’, and suggesting that he could then publish the articles in book form; CL, 177; there are three letters of introduction to Japanese officials and academics at Clark.
17 Morse; Hofer & Scharnhorst, 147.
18 CL, 183; W. F. Morse to OW, 20 November 1882 (Fales), re. ‘I have got track of the Australian man Lyons and have written him’; Lewis & Smith, 420.
19 Morse to ‘Dear Sir’, 5 August 1882, MSL collection, Delaware.
20 Morse, 91. Sun (New York), 20 August 1882, quotes OW: ‘Of course there are many disadvantages in lecturing in summer hotels. The lectures are apt to be badly managed, the rooms are often difficult to speak in, and there is an inevitable bustle and confusion, which nobody can help, and for which nobody is to blame.’
21 ‘From the Ladies Pictorial’, Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle, 9 August 1882. OW introduced the line about ‘millionaires’ at the time of his Californian tour; San Francisco Chronicle, 30 March 1882. ‘Oscar Wilde at Newport’, Sun, 16 July 1882, does give an outline of his talk there: ‘He made a stir among the ladles when he spoke of the ugliness of their bonnets, which is only equaled, he said, by the extreme ugliness of the artificial flowers, which he hoped none of them wore.’
22 Other dates included: Sharon Springs, Cooperstown, Richfield Springs, the Catskills, Cornwall, Saratoga Springs, Seabright, Spring Lake, Asbury Park, Ocean Beach and Cape May.
23 CL, 175; Richards, Howe and Howe Hall, Julia Ward Howe, 2:72.
24 CL, 177.
25 ‘Guide to the Oscar Wilde Invitation’, catalogue of Newport Historical Society, MS 2012.3.
26 Richards, Howe and Howe Hall, Julia Ward Howe, 2:72. Julia Ward Howe refers to OW’s poem as ‘The Ode to Albion’.
27 Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, New York), 11 July 1882, 2; ‘London Gossip,’ Freeman’s Journal, 17 July 1882; JFW to OW, 6 August 1882 and 16 August 1882, in Tipper, Oscar, 82, 83.
28 Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, v. 54, 12 August 1882, 389; OWIA.
29 James L. Ford, Forty-odd Years in the Literary Shop (1921), 143.
30 New York Mirror, ‘The World of Society’, August 1882, 8. Stops mentioned included Babylon, Jesse Conkling’s, the Surf Hotel (aka ‘Sammis’), Fire Island, Bay Shore, and Wa Wa Yanda Club.
31 ‘Polo at Newport’, Sun (New York), 16 July 1882.
32 Sam Ward to Maud Howe, 31 July 1882, in Maud Howe Elliott, Uncle Sam Ward and his Circle (1938).
33 CL, 175; Lily Morgan Morrill, A Builder of the New South: Notes in the Career of Thomas M. Logan (2011), 142.
34 Natalie Barney, Aventures de l’esprit (1929), at OWIA.
35 Lewis & Smith, 391.
36 Edward J. Renehan Jr., John Burroughs: An American Naturalist (1998), 148; Ellmann, 154.
37 Sun (New York), 30 July 1882; ‘From the Ladies Pictorial’; Sam Ward to F. Marion Crawford, 3[0] July 1882, in Maud Howe Elliott, My Cousin, F. Marion Crawford (1934), 134; Hofer & Scharnhorst, 78. Kerr & Co. advertised their ‘spool cotton’ with a cartoon trade card depicting Wilde and Beecher (see Intentions, 64 (October 2009), 27).
38 OW received $623.96 from his Summer Lecture Tour (Morse, ‘Receipts,’ BL). CL, 183, 182. It was hoped that Moore could guarantee ‘700 [dollars] a week’ for two weeks that autumn. Initial returns, however, were disappointing.
39 ‘Gleanings’, Birmingham Daily Post, 13 October 1882.
40 His itinerary ran from St John, to Amherst, Truro, Halifax, Charlottetown, Moncton and St John (again).
41 ‘Oscar Wilde Explains’, Moncton Daily Transcript, 18 October 1882.
42 ‘Oscar Wilde Thoroughly Exhausted’, New York Tribune, 27 November 1882, in Hofer & Scharnhorst, 172–3.
43 Ellmann, 195.
44 ‘By a Correspondent of the Manchester Examiner’, Manchester Times, 27 May 1882.
45 Estelle Jussim, Slave to Beauty (1981), 77.
46 E. Brainerd to OW [1882] (Clark).
47 Charles Volkmar to OW, 29 August 1883 (Clark); Charles G. Leland to OW, 11 May 1882, in John B. Stetson, cat. item 385: ‘I can never thank you as you deserve for the good you have done the Great Cause of Art Education – and to me as one of its humble teachers.’
Chapter 6: The Dream of the Poet
1 CL, 178, Ellmann, 189.
2 CL, 182.
3 Unknown to OW, 10 February 1882 [Clark].
4 CL, 183n; Morse’s accounts show the sum of $69.00 ‘for Printing Play’.
5 There are c. 1882 manuscripts of the scenario of The Cardinal of Avignon, and some pages of dialogue, at Dartmouth College and Princeton.
6 ‘Literary Notes’, PMG, 1 November 1883; OW made these remarks to Whistler at the Hogarth Club ‘Conversazione’.
7 Lewis & Smith, 47; Topeka Daily Capital, 16 January 1882, re. Anderson at Croly reception.
8 OET V, 3–5.
9 CL, 178–9.
10 CL, 178–9; ‘Rachel’ was the stage name of Elisa Felix (1821–58).
11 OW to S. Mackaye, [26 September 1882], Providence, RI, in Epoch, 446; CL, 181.
12 OW to S. Mackaye, [26 September 1882], in Epoch, 446; CL, 181.
13 CL, 181. The editors date the letter [September 1882], but I think it more probable that it dates from around 2 October, and follows on from OW’s letter to Mackaye, CL, 184.
14 S. Mackaye to OW, 4 October 1882 (Clark).
15 CL, 185.
16 H. Griffin to OW, 1 Dec 1882 (Clark); Mason, 327; Schroeder, 71–2; CL, 191.
17 CL, 186, 187; Mary Anderson to OW (Morgan); her handwriting is not very legible but the letter seems to read, ‘Vera charms me; it is very powerful. I think I would like to play the part – for me it is stranger [stronger?] than the Duchess’. OW, however, felt it important that she tackle the ‘Duchess’ first. As he explained to Mackaye – in his letter of 26 September – ‘to begin with the Nihilists would be very foolish; as it affords no opportunity for artistic and beautiful setting’.
18 Mason, 258: the meeting took place on Sunday 12 November 1882; Lewis & Smith, 442.
19 Standard (London), 31 October 1882; this led to a poetic parody – ‘The Too-Too Fire’ in PMG, 2 November 1882: ‘He dwelt on its chords of intense white and yellow, / Of umber and chrome he impassionedly spoke, / He remarked how the crudest of reds became mellow / In softening effects of harmonious smoke.’
20 ‘Mrs Langtry’, New York World, 7 November 1882, 5; in OET VI, 23–5.
21 Lewis & Smith, 420; Birnbaum, Oscar Wilde: Fragments and Memories, 19.
22 Ellmann 197; ‘London Gossip’, Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle, 11 October 1882; ‘Literature & Art’, Nottinghamshire Guardian, 20 October 1882, 3; Liverpool Mercury, 21 October 1882.
23 JFW to OW, 22 December 1882, in Tipper, Oscar, 95–6; although there is no evidence that OW ever seriously considered taking to the stage, he did, while in New York, apparently visit a clairvoyant who predicted – among other things – that he would ‘play Hamlet’. He was delighted, declaring that it had been ‘the dream of his life’ to play the part and that ‘if he went to Australia he would’. ‘The Trifler’ [James Huneker], Musical Courier (New York), 26 July 1893.
24 Lewis & Smith, 420. Illustrated Police News, 14 October 1882, on dinner at Brown’s Chop House with John Howson, Harrison Gray Fiske and others; Edgar Fawcet to OW, 10 November [1882] (Austin) re. dinner at the Union Club with ‘Tal, Martin van Buren, Frankie Riggs & Myself’. Desmond Hawkins, ed., The Grove Diaries (1995), 785, notes that on 18 November 1882 Agnes Grove was at ‘Mrs Botta’s party. Mr [Waldo] Story the sculptor read his poems. Oscar Wilde was there’. William Merritt Chase to OW, 21 November 1882, ‘Hoping again I may have the pleasure to see you at my studio.’
25 CL, 190n.
26 Evening News (Sydney), 20 January 1883.
27 Standard (London), 20 September 1882, 5; Era (London) 30 September 1882.
28 ‘Oscar Wilde See the Beauties’, Sun (New York), 20 November 1882, 3.
29 ‘Oscar Wilde’s Legs’, National Police Gazette (New York) 30 December 1882, in Intentions, 35 (December 2004), 34–5.
30 Robert Marland and John Cooper, ‘Wilde’s Final Farewell Lecture in New York’, Wildean, 42 (2013), 57–61.
31 Sherard, Life, 172.
32 W. F. Morse to OW, 20 November 1882 (Fales): ‘I enclose a cheque for $500. The whole amount due now is $550 – without a return from Moncton which has not yet come to hand, and exclusive of our Petty Cash a/c which is still open.’ Morse’s account book (Berg) indicates that – for the second part of the year – OW was owed $1010.50, although by 21 December – after the deduction of various private expenses and cash advances – there was only $44.12 outstanding. OW had moved to rooms in Greenwich Village, at 48 West 11th Street.
33 CL, 209 transcribes the figure as ‘£200’ (i.e. $1,000), but $200 seems more likely.
34 Morse, 132–3; Lewis & Smith, 439–40; ‘The United States’, South Australian Register (Adelaide), 16 February 1883.
35 ‘Andrew’s American Queen’, 23 November 1882, in Ellmann, 195; Theodore Tilton to OW, 13 December [1882] (Clark), having just heard OW was ill.
36 Lewis & Smith, 440.
37 New York Tribune, 10 January 1883; Lewis & Smith, 442–3.
Part V: The Devoted Friend
Chapter 1: Over the Seine
1 World, 10 January 1883.
2 E. Levy to OW, 26 January 1883 (Clark); JFW to OW, 9 [Feb? 1883], in Tipper, Oscar, 100, re. ‘the creditors are dreadful’.
3 CL, 195; Rodd, Social and Diplomatic Memories, 25; Walter Ledger to Thomas Bird Mosher, 2 April 1906 (Houghton); Sherard, SUF, 40; OW, L’Envoi; CL, 205. Schroeder, 74, notes that there is ‘no evidence’ linking the epigram in OW’s commonplace book to Rodd; but the entry can be confidently dated to OW’s time in Paris in 1883, immediately after the break; and Rodd had been described in print as OW’s ‘disciple’. So the connection seems plausible.
4 The Hôtel Continental is now the Westin Paris – Vendôme, rue Castiglione; the Hôtel Voltaire is now called the Hôtel Quai Voltaire.
5 Sherard, SUF, 26.
6 OET V, 34–42.
7 CL, 197.
8 OW notes (Berg).
9 CL, 196–203.
10 Mason, 259–65; CL, 203–4 (where OW’s letter to Marie Prescott is re-dated from ‘December 1882’ to ‘[March–April, 1883]’; There is a ‘contract’ at Clark between Prescott and Wilde, drawn up by a New York solicitor, dated 7 February 1883, and signed by Prescott (but not Wilde). It gives the same terms as Prescott gives in her letter to OW (Mason, 260). OW seems to have expressed some anxiety about being able to countersign the document (not being in New York). There are two letters from George Lewis to OW at Clark, which seem to address this issue: the first, 27 February 1883, about drawing up an ‘agreement’ for ‘the Play’ (‘I hope it may turn out as well as you anticipate’); the second (15 March 1883) apologizing for his clerk’s failure to draft the agreement, and recommending R. O. Maugham (father of Somerset Maugham) at 54 rue Faubourg St Honoré, for the task.
11 CL, 206.
12 OW to Dorothy Tennant [1883], in Waller, The Magnificent Mrs Tennant, 216–17; Dorothy Tennant to OW, Richmond Terrace, 9 April [1883] (Austin). Mrs Tennant, an ardent Francophile, was a friend of Coquelin the elder.
13 Harris, 48; OW notes (Berg); JFW to OW, [1883], in Melville, 174.
14 OW, ‘Balzac in English’, PMG, 13 September 1886, in OET VI, 89.
15 OW, ‘Decay of Lying’.
16 Sherard, SUF, 21, Real, 200; JFW to OW, in Melville, 174.
17 Kate Moore to [OW] ‘Mr Wylde’, [1883] (Clark); CL, 207; Goncourt Journal, 2:1002, Saturday, 2 April 1883.
18 CL, 204, OW to Clarisse Moore, ‘I will now, along with my art work, devote to the drama a great deal of my time.’; Sherard, SUF, 18; Anna Gruetzner Robins, ed., Walter Sickert: The Complete Writings on Art (2000), 520; Sherard, Real, 243.
19 Sherard, SUF, 66 – the picture is now lost; the Oscar Wilde collection of John B. Stetson, cat. item 404; J. S. Sargent to OW, [1883], ‘I hope you will be able to come to-morrow morning and see my portrait. If you cannot please send me an answer about Sunday at once, for I should like to ask a Frenchman to meet you, Bourget, a clever writer and Poet.’
20 CL, 206, J. E. Blanche, Portraits of a Lifetime (1937), 98.
21 JMW to OW, [1883], ‘The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler’ at GUL; for Degas’ comments see OW notes [1883] (Berg) ‘Degas to Walter [Sickert])’ (10).
22 Sherard, SUF, 23–4.
23 Sherard, Real, 235; SUF, 33–6.
24 Sherard, SUF, 36; Edgar Jepson, Memories of a Victorian (1933), 261; Augustus John, Chiaroscuro (1954), 35; CMW to Otho Lloyd, CL, 228; Reginald Auberon [Horace C. Wyndham], The Nineteen Hundreds (1922), 78–9.
25 CL, 210; 211.
26 Sherard, SUF, 26.
27 Sherard, SUF, 29–30; R. H. Sherard to OW, [26 May 1883] (Clark).
28 Sherard SUF, 67–9; Life, 233.
29 Sherard, SUF, 17–18.
30 CL, 205; Sh
erard, SUF, 32, 43–6.
31 Sherard, SUF, 46.
32 OW notes (Berg).
33 Sherard, SUF, 33–4.
34 Théophile Gautier, ‘Notice’ preceding Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal (1868) quoted in Matthew Sturgis, Passionate Attitudes (2011), 22–3.
35 Sherard, SUF, 56.
36 CL, 207–8; Sherard, SUF, 48.
37 OW notes (Berg).
38 Sherard SUF, 48–50.
39 Sherard, Real, 274–6; SUF, 31–2; ‘I believe the musical value of a word is greater than its intellectual value and nowhere is this better exemplified than in that supreme imaginative work of the young American who wrote “The Raven”’. ‘Wilde in Utica’, Utica Daily Observer, 7 February 1882.
40 Sherard, Real, 155; R. H. Sherard to A. J. A. Symons, 3 June [1937] (Clark). The cocotte’s name was Marie Aguétant; she achieved an unwanted fame three years later when she was murdered by a petty thief. Sherard found it necessary to visit a prostitute once a week for what he termed an ‘evacuation.’
41 Sherard, Life, 243; Sherard to A. J. A. Symons, 13 May (Clark).
42 Sherard, SUF, 85; Real, 236.
43 Sherard, SUF, 85; Real, 236–7.
44 Sherard, Real, 237–8.
45 Mary Anderson to OW, Friday, Victoria [1883]; Oscar Wilde collection of John B. Stetson, cat. item 374; Ellmann, 212. Anderson later told a reporter that she had found the play ‘unsuitable, as it dealt almost entirely with crime, so I was compelled to return it’. ‘Literary Notes’, PMG, 7 September 1883.
46 Sherard, Real, 238.
47 Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, ‘Journal’, ed. by Robert Ricatte (1989), Goncourt Journal 2:1005. Goncourt mistakenly refers to the stories as relating to a town in ‘Texas’.
48 20 April 1883, Daily Advocate (Newark, Ohio); Liverpool Mercury, 15 March 1883 in Dibb, 17.
49 ‘The European Mail’, Brisbane Courier, 6 June 1883.
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