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  IMPRESSIONS
  OF
  AMERICA.

  BY
  OSCAR WILDE.

  EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION,
  BY STUART MASON.

  Keystone Press, Sunderland.
  1906.


This Edition consists of 500 Copies.

50 Copies have been printed on hand-made paper.


  TO
  WALTER LEDGER:

  PIGNUS
  AMICITIAE.




IMPRESSIONS.


I.

LE JARDIN.

    The lily's withered chalice falls
      Around its rod of dusty gold,
      And from the beech trees on the wold
    The last wood-pigeon coos and calls.

    The gaudy leonine sunflower
      Hangs black and barren on its stalk,
      And down the windy garden walk
    The dead leaves scatter,--hour by hour.

    Pale privet-petals white as milk
      Are blown into a snowy mass;
      The roses lie upon the grass,
    Like little shreds of crimson silk.


II.

LA MER.

    A white mist drifts across the shrouds,
      A wild moon in this wintry sky
      Gleams like an angry lion's eye
    Out of a mane of tawny clouds.

    The muffled steersman at the wheel
      Is but a shadow in the gloom;--
      And in the throbbing engine room
    Leap the long rods of polished steel.

    The shattered storm has left its trace
      Upon this huge and heaving dome,
      For the thin threads of yellow foam
    Float on the waves like ravelled lace.

                              Oscar Wilde.




PREFACE.


Oscar Wilde visited America in the year 1882. Interest in the AEsthetic
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
AEstheticism, 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.

  Paumanokides:--

      Who may this be?
    This young man clad unusually with loose locks, languorous,
          glidingly toward me advancing,
    Toward the ceiling of my chamber his orbic and expressive eyeballs
          uprolling,

and so on, to which Narcissus replies,

    O clarion, from whose brazen throat,
      Strange sounds across the seas are blown,
    Where England, girt as with a moat,
      A strong sea-lion sits alone!

Of the lectures which he delivered in America only one has been
preserved, namely that on the English Renaissance. This was his first
lecture, and it was delivered in New York on January 9th, 1882.
According to a contemporary account in the "New York Herald" a
distinguished and crowded audience assembled in Chickering Hall that
evening to listen to one who "was well worth seeing, his short breeches
and silk stockings showing to even better advantage upon the stage than
in the gilded drawing-rooms, where the young Apostle has heretofore been
seen in New York."[2]

On leaving the States in the "fall" of the year Wilde proceeded to
Canada and thence to Nova Scotia, arriving in Halifax in the second week
of October. Of his visit there we have no record except an amusing
interview described in a local paper a few days later. He was dressed in
a velvet jacket with an ordinary linen collar and neck tie and he wore
trousers. "Mr. Wilde," the interviewer states, "was communicative and
genial; he said he found Canada pleasant, but in answer to a question as
to whether European or American women were the more beautiful, he
dexterously evaded his querist."

As regards poetry he expressed his opinion that Poe was the greatest
American poet, and that Walt Whitman, if not a poet, was a man who
sounded a strong note, perhaps neither prose nor poetry, but something
of his own that was "grand, original and unique."

During his tour in America Wilde "happened to find" himself (as he has
himself described it), in Louisville, Kentucky. The subject he had
selected to speak on was the Mission of Art in the Nineteenth Century.
In the course of his lecture he had occasion to quote Keats' Sonnet on
Blue "as an example of the poet's delicate sense of colour-harmonies."
After the lecture there came round to see him "a lady of middle age,
with a sweet gentle manner and most musical voice," who introduced
herself as Mrs. Speed, the daughter of George Keats, and she invited the
lecturer to come and examine the Keats manuscripts in her possession.

Some months afterwards when lecturing in California he received a letter
from this lady asking him to accept the original manuscript of the
sonnet which he had quoted.

Mention must be made of Wilde's first play, a drama in blank verse
entitled "Vera, or the Nihilists." It had been arranged that, before his
departure for America, this play should be performed at the Adelphi
Theatre, London, with Mrs. Bernard Beere as the heroine, on Saturday,
December 17th, 1881, but a few weeks before the date fixed for the first
performance, the author decided to postpone the production "owing to the
state of political feeling in England."

On his return to England in 1883 Wilde started on a lecturing tour, the
first being to the Art Students of the Royal Academy at their Club in
Golden Square on June 30th. Ten days later he spoke at Prince's Hall on
his "Personal Impressions of America," and on subsequent occasions at
Margate, Ramsgate and Southampton. On Monday, July 30th he lectured at
Southport and on the following Thursday he went to Liverpool to welcome
Mrs. Langtry on her return from America, and the same afternoon he left
on his second visit to the States in order to superintend the rehearsals
of "Vera," which it had been arranged to produce at the Union Square
Theatre, New York, on August 20th following. The piece was not a
success--it was, indeed, the only failure Wilde had. However, his next
play, which he called his "Opus Secundum," also a blank verse tragedy,
had a successful run in America in 1891. This was "The Duchess of
Padua," played by Lawrence Barrett, under the title of "Guido Ferranti."
This has not been seen in England, nor is it even possible for Wilde's
admirers to read this early offspring of his pen, for only twenty copies
were printed for acting purposes in America and of these but one is
known to be in existence, in this country at least.

An authorised German translation was made by Max Meyerfeld and the first
performance took place at the German Theatre in Hamburg about a year
ago. An English version is advertised from a piratical publisher in
Paris but it is only a translation from the German back into English.

Towards the end of September 1883 Oscar Wilde returned to England and
immediately began "an all round lecturing tour," his first visit being
to Wandsworth Town Hall on Monday, September 24th, when he delivered to
an enthusiastic audience a lecture on his "Impressions of America,"
which is contained in the following pages. He was dressed, a London
paper of the time states, "in ordinary evening costume, and carried an
orange-coloured silk handkerchief in his breast. He spoke with great
fluency, in a voice now and then singularly musical, and only once or
twice made a scarcely perceptible reference to notes." The lecture was
under the auspices of a local Literary Society, and the principle
residents of the district turned out "en masse." The Chairman, the Rev.
John Park, in introducing the lecturer, said there were two reasons why
he was glad to welcome him, and he thought his own feelings would be
shared by the audience. They must all plead guilty to a feeling of
curiosity, he hoped a laudable one, to see and hear Mr. Wilde for his
own sake, and they were also glad to hear about America--a country which
many might regard as a kind of Elysium.

On March 5th in the following year Wilde lectured at the Crystal Palace
on his American experiences, and on April 26th he "preached his Gospel
in the East-end," when it is recorded that his audience was not only
delighted with his humour, but was "surprised at the excellent good
sense he talked." His subject was a