Since writing this blogpost I have made a list of all Wilde’s uncollected letters. This letter can be found on that list, here.
Recently, while researching Oscar Wilde’s American lecture tour, I came across a letter by Wilde printed in the Baltimore Sun. I checked Wilde’s Complete Letters but this letter wasn’t included. The Complete Letters was published in 2000, and I can’t be sure whether the Baltimore letter still remains unknown to scholarship (perhaps in the intervening years it has been referred to by one of Wilde’s many biographers). I am sharing it here so that it will be more easily discoverable in web searches.
‘Complimentary and Explanatory’, The Sun (Baltimore, MD), 24 Jan. 1882, 6 (view source)
Messrs. A. A. Abell & Co.—Dear Sirs: America should be a country without prejudice, so I will pray you to permit me to say that my failing to visit your city was due entirely and absolutely to some misunderstanding on the part of a messenger from my manager's office, who met me at Philadelphia with instructions to proceed direct to Washington, and not stop at Baltimore, as I had hoped to do. Since my arrival in America I have received in each city that courtesy for which your country is famous, and I would not wish it to be thought that I could be willingly capable of any such unpardonable rudeness as your papers would seem seriously to charge me with. I remain, your obedient servant, OSCAR WILDE.
Washington, D. C., Jan. 23. 1882.
As Wilde mentions, he did not disembark at Baltimore as some in that city believed he would. The local press alleged that this was because Wilde had argued on the train with a fellow lecturer, Archibald Forbes, and, in a huff, had decided to continue on to Washington. There was also a claim that he had insisted upon payment for appearing at a private reception in Baltimore, something he denied emphatically in interviews. This was Wilde’s first big scandal in America, and he was keen to end speculation in the press as to his motives and his relationship with Forbes.
On 21 January the New York Herald published an interview with Wilde about the incident, which can be read here.
Comments
Post a Comment