One of the most frequently repeated quotations attributed to Oscar Wilde comes from the novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray”: “... there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” He would be pleased to know that we will be talking about him a great deal over the next few minutes.
Few people know that this great playwright, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde, author of works such as “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and “The Importance of Being Earnest,” gave lectures in Texas in 1882. He was only 27 at the time and was on his first American tour.
Fortunately, during his tour Wilde gave many interviews to American newspapers, in which he freely shared his colorful and amusingly phrased opinions about the people, places, and standards of taste he encountered. Two professors from the University of New Mexico collected these interviews in a book titled “Oscar Wilde in America” in 2010, giving us easy access to his remarks.
At 27, Wilde was already immensely famous in Europe as a provocative personality and leader of the Aesthetic Movement. He was such a prominent figure that Gilbert and Sullivan wrote an entire operetta parodying both him and aestheticism. When this operetta, “Patience,” was staged in America, Wilde was hired to promote it with a series of lectures on interior design. He was known for his affected mannerisms, including dressing opulently in purple and brocade fabrics, often with an eccentric sunflower in his lapel. There was therefore great curiosity in Texas about what would happen when this Irish dandy lectured in the macho world of Texas cowboys.
When passing through customs in New York, he famously—though perhaps apocryphally—declared: “I have nothing to declare except my genius.” Many Texans, who tend to be somewhat Texas-centric, wondered what Wilde would think of their state. Well, for the most part, he liked Texas, as he told a reporter from the New Orleans Picayune after returning there from his Texas excursion.
As he traveled by train to Galveston through East Texas and Houston, the Picayune reported that he was fascinated by all the alligators lying lazily on the muddy banks of the bayous.
His first Texas lecture was in Galveston, which was then the largest city in Texas. Oscar described it enthusiastically, telling the Picayune reporter: “Galveston, set like a jewel in a crystal sea, was beautiful. Its fine beach, shady oleander avenues, and pleasant sea breezes were something to be enjoyed.”
He said: “The people of Galveston were wonderful to me. They made me an honorary colonel of the Texas Rangers. So I immediately wrote to all my friends that from then on they were to address me as Colonel Wilde.”
From Galveston, he traveled by train to San Antonio in what he considered the monstrous Texas heat. (Incidentally, Wilde observed during another journey in the northeastern United States that traveling by train and rushing past everything at 40 miles an hour was not the proper way to see a new country. The proper way to see a new country, he believed, was on horseback.)
In San Antonio, Wilde stayed at the Menger Hotel, which of course still exists today. Even in 1882, the Menger was known for its luxury, as was Wilde, who famously said: “Let me be surrounded by luxury; I can do without the necessities!”
He visited San Antonio’s famous missions and declared Mission San José “the finest example of beautiful architecture I have encountered in all America.”
He was deeply moved by “those old Spanish churches, with their picturesque remains of towers and domes and their beautifully carved stone, standing in the greenery and sunshine of the Texas prairie.”
As for the Alamo, he described the condition of this “noble” structure as “monstrous.” He thought it shameful that Texas had allowed this most sacred shrine to fall into such Philistine conditions. At the time, the Alamo was being used as a military warehouse.
In San Antonio, he lectured on architecture and interior design and strongly approved of the local use of natural wood and stone, which were so readily available in the Hill Country. When it came to interiors, he was less enthusiastic. At his American stops, he often complained about the excessive use of dreadful wallpaper and remarked that a child raised in an atmosphere of such wallpaper might later use it as “a defense for a life of crime.” (If this seems like an excessive fixation on wallpaper, remember that Wilde’s last words are said to have been: “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has got to go.”)
When Wilde was asked in Louisiana how his lecture in San Antonio had gone, he replied that the women had loved it, but the men not so much. The men were quite disruptive, he told the Picayune reporter, “going in and out with their creaking boots and jingling spurs. The men went out for beer, you know.
“Evidently,” he said, “the men in Texas cannot go for more than an hour without beer.”
If he returned today, 135 years later, he would probably find us much the same.
FOR FURTHER READING: “Oscar Wilde in America: The Interviews” by Oscar Wilde and Matthew Hofer; “Declaring His Genius: Oscar Wilde in North America” by Roy Morris Jr.
