Editing Oscar Wilde (section)

=== North America: 1882 ===
[[File:Oscar Wilde at Harper's Theatre, April 1882.jpg|thumb|upright|Wilde lectured on "The English Renaissance" in art during his US and Canada tour in 1882.]]
[[Aestheticism]] was sufficiently in vogue to be caricatured by [[Gilbert and Sullivan]] in ''[[Patience (opera)|Patience]]'' (1881). [[Richard D'Oyly Carte]], an English impresario, invited Wilde to make a lecture tour of North America, simultaneously priming the pump for the US tour of ''Patience'' and selling this most charming aesthete to the American public. Wilde journeyed on the [[SS Arizona|SS ''Arizona'']], arriving on 2 January 1882, and disembarking the following day.<ref>{{cite web |last=Cooper |first=John |title=S.S. Arizona |url=http://www.oscarwildeinamerica.org/arrival/ss-arizona.html |access-date=15 October 2017 |publisher=Oscar Wilde in America |archive-date=16 October 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171016013839/http://www.oscarwildeinamerica.org/arrival/ss-arizona.html |url-status=live}}</ref>{{efn|Wilde reputedly told a customs officer that "I have nothing to declare except my genius", although the first recording of this remark was many years later, and Wilde's best lines were often quoted immediately in the press.<ref>{{cite web |last=Cooper |first=John |title=Attribution of 'I have nothing to declare except my genius' |url=http://www.oscarwildeinamerica.org/quotations/nothing-to-declare.html |access-date=12 August 2012 |publisher=Oscar Wilde in America |archive-date=3 April 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190403075918/http://www.oscarwildeinamerica.org/quotations/nothing-to-declare.html |url-status=live}})</ref>}} Originally planned to last four months, the tour continued for almost a year owing to its commercial success.<ref>{{cite web |last=Cooper |first=John |title=The Lecture Tour of North America 1882 |url=http://www.oscarwildeinamerica.org/lectures-1882/index.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171016014206/http://www.oscarwildeinamerica.org/lectures-1882/index.html |archive-date=16 October 2017 |access-date=15 October 2017 |publisher=Oscar Wilde in America}}</ref> Wilde sought to transpose the beauty he saw in art into daily life.<ref name="Mendelssohn">{{cite book |last=Mendelssohn |first=Michèle |title=Making Oscar Wilde |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2018 |isbn=978-0-19-880236-5 |page=285}}</ref> This was a practical as well as philosophical project: in Oxford he had surrounded himself with blue china and lilies, and now one of his lectures was on interior design. In a [[British Library]] article on aestheticism and decadence, Carolyn Burdett writes, {{quote|"Wilde teased his readers with the claim that [[Life imitating art|life imitates art]] rather than the other way round. His point was a serious one: we notice London fogs, he argued, because art and literature has taught us to do so. Wilde, among others, 'performed' these maxims. He presented himself as the impeccably dressed and mannered [[dandy]] figure whose life was a work of art."<ref>{{cite news |last=Burdett |first=Carolyn |date=15 March 2014 |title=Aestheticism and decadence |agency=British Library |url=https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/aestheticism-and-decadence |access-date=19 January 2021 |archive-date=21 October 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201021132118/https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/aestheticism-and-decadence |url-status=live}}</ref>}}

When asked to explain reports that he had paraded down [[Piccadilly]] in London carrying a lily, long hair flowing, Wilde replied, "It's not whether I did it or not that's important, but whether people believed I did it".<ref name="Mendelssohn" /> Wilde believed that the artist should hold forth higher ideals, and that pleasure and beauty would replace utilitarian ethics.{{sfn|Kiberd|2000|pp=329–330}}

[[File:The Modern Messiah - Keller 1882.jpg|left|thumb|alt=A Satirical cartoon shows a dandy figure, fancily dressed in a long coat and breeches, floating across the crowd in a tightly packed ballroom.|Keller cartoon from the ''[[The Wasp (magazine)|Wasp]]'' of San Francisco depicting Wilde on the occasion of his visit there in 1882]]
Wilde and aestheticism were both mercilessly caricatured and criticised in the press: the ''[[The Republican (Springfield)|Springfield Republican]]'', for instance, commented on Wilde's behaviour during his visit to Boston to lecture on aestheticism, suggesting that Wilde's conduct was more a bid for notoriety rather than devotion to beauty and the aesthetic. [[Thomas Wentworth Higginson|T. W. Higginson]], a cleric and abolitionist, wrote in "Unmanly Manhood" of his general concern that Wilde, "whose only distinction is that he has written a thin volume of very mediocre verse", would improperly influence the behaviour of men and women.<ref name="Unmanly">{{cite journal |last=Higginson |first=Thomas Wentworth |date=4 February 1882 |title=Unmanly Manhood |url=http://www.classroomelectric.org/volume2/price/remembered/womans_journal.htm |journal=Woman's Journal |access-date=14 April 2010 |archive-date=3 June 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170603070637/http://www.classroomelectric.org/volume2/price/remembered/womans_journal.htm |url-status=live}}</ref>

According to biographer Michèle Mendelssohn, Wilde was the subject of [[anti-Irish]] caricature and was portrayed as a monkey, a [[blackface]] performer and a [[Christy's Minstrels|Christy's Minstrel]] throughout his career.<ref name="Mendelssohn" /> "''[[Harper's Weekly]]'' put a sunflower-worshipping monkey dressed as Wilde on the front of the January 1882 issue. The drawing stimulated other American maligners and, in England, had a full-page reprint in the ''Lady's Pictorial''. ... When the ''National Republican'' discussed Wilde, it was to explain 'a few items as to the animal's pedigree.' And on 22 January 1882, the [[The Washington Post|''Washington Post'']] illustrated the [[Wild Men of Borneo|Wild Man of Borneo]] alongside Oscar Wilde of England and asked 'How far is it from this to this?'"<ref name="Mendelssohn" /> When he visited San Francisco, the ''[[San Francisco Chronicle]]'' reported, "The city is divided into two camps, those who thought Wilde was an engaging speaker and an original thinker, and those who thought he was the most pretentious fraud ever perpetrated on a groaning public."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Chamings |first=Andrew |date=8 April 2021 |orig-date=8 April 2021 |title=Oscar Wilde's visit to San Francisco sent the city into a bitter, clamoring frenzy |url=https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/Oscar-Wilde-visit-to-San-Francisco-history-15983256.php |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240814011757/https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/Oscar-Wilde-visit-to-San-Francisco-history-15983256.php |archive-date=14 August 2024 |access-date=22 August 2024 |website=The San Francisco Gate}}</ref> Though his press reception was hostile, Wilde was well received in diverse settings across America: he drank whiskey with miners in [[Leadville, Colorado]], and was fêted at the most fashionable salons in many cities he visited.<ref>{{cite web |last=King |first=Steve |title=Wilde in America |url=http://www.todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=12/24/1881 |access-date=14 April 2010 |publisher=Today in Literature |archive-date=13 February 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100213024306/http://www.todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=12%2F24%2F1881 |url-status=live}} Regarding Wilde's visit to Leadville, Colorado, 24 December 1881.</ref>