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August 1882 165 more beautiful than any that he had seen in this country. Their color and features, he said, were richer and more regular, and at this point the manager entered to bring an invitation to the apostle to visit the Charleston Club, and the reporter seized the opportunity to take his leave and bow himself from the too awfully awful presence of the mighty aesthete. 1. William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody (1846–1917), a soldier and showman, was one of the most colorful figures of the Old West. John Wilson “Texas Jack” Vermillion (1842–1911) was a Confederate Civil War veteran, gambler, and gunfighter. 2. George W. Denham was an American star of opera and light opera. 3. Lyrics by M. H. Rosenfeld, “Oscar Dear!” (1882). 4. Sunflower seed tea is the only green tea produced in China without leaf stalks; this is, of course, more likely a jab at Wilde’s love of sunflowers than a comment about his drink. 46. “Loveliness and Politeness,” New York Sun, 20 August 1882, 5 The following extract from the New Orleans Times was shown to Oscar Wilde by a Sun reporter in a parlor car of the Long Beach Railroad on Wednesday evening: the most beautiful woman in america. Oscar Wilde pronounced Miss Alsatia Allen of Montgomery, Ala., the most beautiful young lady he had seen in the United States. Mr. and Mrs. Steele Mackaye1 were in Mr. Wilde’s party, which was returning from Long Beach. Mr. Wilde was dressed in a light gray suit of Irish frieze, with a high-crowned slouch hat of light gray. He removed his hat as he read the paragraph, allowing his abundant long hair to descend about his face. Then he chuckled gently and said: “This is a remark, my dear fellow, I supposed I have made of some lady in every city I have visited in this country. It could be appropriately made. American women are very beautiful, and some of the finest types of beauty I have ever seen I found in the South. But it is in the decay of manners that the thoughtful and well-bred American has serious cause for regret. I have repeatedly said this, but I am told in reply, ‘We are still a young country. You must not be too severe upon us. Where we are raw and crude now these finer arts will come with time.’ ‘Ah, yes,’ I answer, ‘but when your country was still younger its manners were better. They have never been equal since to i-xii_1-196_Wild.indd 165 8/4/09 9:12:01 AM 166 October 1882 what they were in Washington’s time—a man himself whose manners were irreproachable.’ I believe a most serious problem for the American people to consider is the cultivation of better manners among its people. It is the most noticeable, the most painful defect in American civilization. “I shall spend some weeks more in this country,” Mr. Wilde continued. “I shall lecture at Long Branch, Cape May, and several other watering places. I meet at these summer resorts people who are interested with me in these matters. Of course, there are many disadvantages in lecturing in summer hotels. The lectures are apt to be badly managed, the rooms are often difficult to speak in, and there is an inevitable bustle and confusion, which nobody can help, and for which nobody is to blame. From America I shall go to Japan, the most highly civilized country on the globe. Nowhere else do good manners so universally prevail among all classes. The culture and attainments of these people are little understood in this country. “Next to Japan is France, where, in spite of frequent revolutions, good manners have reached a strange degree of perfection. If you visit France do not waste your time in Paris, among the ruined monuments of the empire, but go into the villages and the remote country hamlets, and note the instinctive politeness of the peasant, who will convince you that you have honored him and honored his country by coming into it. “The Englishman abroad is in the main a man of good manners and an agreeable companion. I am a Celt, but I can tell the truth about him. At home the average Englishman is arrogant, ill-tempered, and tied down by prejudices which nothing will induce him to lay aside.” 1. James Steele Mackaye (1842–94), American actor, producer, and theatrical manager . 47. “The Apostle...

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