Impressions of America

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Impressions of America

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.

В В В В Oscar Wilde.

PREFACE

Oscar Wilde visited America in the year 1882. Interest in the Æsthetic 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 - First produced at the Opera Comique, April 23rd, 1881. Wilde was burlesqued as Reginald Bunthorne, a Fleshly Poet.] 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 Æstheticism, 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 Nar