Wanganui Herald - Thursday, May 2, 1895

OSCAR WILDE.
A Yankee Account of Him Ten Years Ago.

In light of recent startling events the following Yankee account of Oscar Wilde as he appeared ten years ago will prove interesting. At that time the Apostle of the Sunflower and Evangelist of Beauty was on a lecturing tour in the United States. Here is what the New York Times says of him:—

Mr Oscar Wilde, the Irish (this was a nasty dig) poet and apostle of æstheticism spoke his little piece the other evening. The lover of the sunflower and the lily must have been much gratified, for he drew many shekels to the hall, and received much adulation from rapturous maidens and lovers of the æsthetic who mingled with the commonplace—the latter, however, composing the greater part of the audience. The young æsthetic seemed an athlete as he rose to speak, but when a mild, fair, beardless face peeped from out of a mass of wavy-brown hair, that fell from the centre of his head to his shoulders, the æsthetic and not the athlete was discerned. He was dressed in a swallow-tail coat, white vest cut low, black knee-breeches, black silk stockings, and low shoes. A single diamond stud scintillated in a sea of shirt bosom, and a ribbon and a seal dangled from his waistcoat. A low cut, turn down collar and white silk necktie completed his costume, and the original of Gilbert's æsthetic Bunthorne stood before the expectant audience. His lecture was delivered in a rather monotonous tone, and was listened to politely, but not gushingly, the majority of even that cultured audience being out of their depths at times in following the too too utterly Oscar in his poetic flights. His art idea is contained in the following: 'Beauty is the one thing that cannot harm. Philosophers melt away like the morn; creeds follow one another like the withered leaves in autumn; but beauty is a joy for all time, possession of all eternity.' His opinion of the non-æsthetic world may be summed up in his words as follows:—"Satire is the homage which ignorance pays to genius.' 'To disagree with three-fourths of all England on all points is one of the first elements of sanity. The most startling idea he advanced was that he had cast his large soft eyes on America, and said 'It is to you, rather we look for the perfection of our movement. There is something Hellenic in your life. Something Elizabethian that our life cannot give. You are at least young.'