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Original paragraph in
The Toronto World - Monday, April 8, 1895
The Toronto World - Monday, April 8, 1895
Most similar paragraph from
Daily World - Tuesday, April 16, 1895
Daily World - Tuesday, April 16, 1895
Difference
New York Sun: Oscar Wilde first achieved notoriety as a prostrate apostle and then as the leader of the then infantile aesthetic craze.
He carried his aesthetic peculiarities so far that he became the subject of Du Maurier’s caricaturing pencil and Gilbert’s satirizing fun. That may have
been what he was trying for. Neither the caricaturist nor the satirist diminished the ardor with which Wilde pursued what was vaguely called aestheticism.
The Bunthornes of "Patience" made up in exact imitation of Wilde, and he posed in the lobbies of the same theatres and composed phrases which outdid, in
lily-like languor, the phrases that Gilbert had thought to be satires. One of the songs of "Patience" which seemed to contain a more or less pointed
allusion to Wilde ran:
Then, a sentimental passion of a vegetable fashionShould excite your languid spleen;An attachment, a la Plato, for a bashful
young potato,Or a not too French French bean;Though the Philistines may jostle, you will rank as an apostleIn the sentimental
band;If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy on a lilyIn your medieval hand;And every one will sayAs you walk your mystic
way,"If he’s content with a vegetable love that would certainly not suit me,Why, what a most particularly pure young man this pure young man
must be."
Made His Reputation in Six Years
The more limp Du Maurier drew his caricature the limper was Oscar when he confronted the next assemblage; the longer Du Maurier made his
people’s hair the longer Wilde stayed away from the barber’s.
Up to that time, 15 years ago, Wilde had done little else to attract attention to himself. He was known to be the son of exceptionally
clever parents and winner of the Newdigate at Oxford, but besides cleverly advertising himself and writing a few verses, he had done no clever original
work, and was not seriously considered. His reputation as lecturer, man of fashion, wit, poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, has been made, in most
particulars, in the last half dozen years, all since his lecturing tour in this country.
He came to America about 12 years ago, frankly advertised as a freak lecturing on "aestheticism." He wore knee breeches, silk hose, lace
cuffs, and was otherwise variously freakish in his dress. At Boston a half hundred Harvard boys marched into his lecture hall dressed as he was, each
carrying a lily. Wilde’s noted imperturbability did not desert him. Here merely lisped, "How tenderly droll!" and went on with his lecture.
In a Western city he was the guest of a club, among whose members were a number of stout drinkers. They undertook to "tank up the
aesthete," as they expressed it. The process was long. As the sun was breaking into the club windows, Wilde looked about over a room strewn with fallen
braves, and said to the one man still able to comprehend speech:
In a western city he was the guest of a club, among whose members were a number of stout drinkers. They undertook to "tank up the
aesthete" as they expressed it. The process was Iong. As the sun was breaking into the club windows, Wilde looked about over a room strewn with fallen
braves, and said to the one man still able to comprehend speech: "We've had a charmingly quiet little evening. Don't you feel like a bit of a run about
town before breakfast?"
"We’ve had a charmingly quiet little evening. Don’t you feel like a bit of a run about town before breakfast?"
But those who met him under normal conditions found Mr. Wilde a witty and engaging talker; unusually well informed on a wide range of
literature and art subjects, and quite able to care for himself in any mental encounter. The public at large, not knowing this of him, refused to accept
him or his cult seriously, and Wilde returned to England richer only in experiences and a few hundred pounds. He had apologists, not of his class, for his
"lily-like" eccentricities. In 1889 Edmund Yates wrote of him in The London World:
But those who met him under normal conditions found Mr. Wilde a witty and engaging talker; unusually well informed on a wide range of
literature and art subjects, and quite able to care for himself in any mental encounter. The public at large not knowing this of him refused to accept him
or his cult seriously, and Wilde returned to England richer only in experience, and a few hundred pounds. He had apologists, not of his class for his
"lily-like" eccentricities.
"He came out with a great splurge: his hair, his watch fob, his costume and his walking stick started him well; the living up to the
lily, and his disappointment with the Atlantic, and other quaint phrases carried him on for a bit; but he made something of a failure of his lecturing
tour in America, and has not been much heard of since his return, so that there was a general impression that though he had come out well, he had gone in
again. But those who were well acquainted with him knew better, and had perfect reliance on his unquestionable cleverness and his determination to make a
mark. They felt that in these days, when every gate is thronged with suitors, a little charlatanism to call attention to one’s self is not merely
admissible, but is necessary; granted always that when the attention has been attracted there is something really worth seeing in the show. Mr. Wilde has
"justified these good opinions by working unobtrusively, indeed, but always well."