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February 1882 61 people call picturesqueness, to a building, but age will never make an ugly building beautiful.” “But is not modern civilization the greatest?” “The greatest civilization of the world existed ages ago, and existed without steam engines. Of what use is it to a man to travel sixty miles an hour? Is he any better for it? A fool can buy a railway ticket and travel sixty miles an hour. Is he any the less a fool?” 17. “Truly Aesthetic,” Chicago Inter-Ocean, 13 February 1882, 2 Oscar Wilde sat in his room in the Grand Pacific last night, a room made bright and artistic with beautiful things. A large center-table was heaped with choice old books, some of them rare old curios, with precious broken binding and soulful mediaeval dogs’ ears. In the window’s embrasure was a beautifully intense writing desk, all inlaid with pearl, quite Japanese and early English, heaped with letters answered and unanswered. The bright coal blazed in the grate. The sofa, with its covering of skins of wild beasts and its further curtain of the old-gold silk shawl, with netted fringe, was drawn up to a comfortable angle with the fire, and upon the couch thus made reclined the aesthetic young man, this time smoking a cigarette. He was dressed in a quilted black silk smoking jacket with scarlet collar, lapels, and waistbands. He wore the same scarlet necktie, handkerchief, and socks, or at least they were of the same color as upon the previous visit of the Inter-Ocean reporter. His pantaloons were black, with a scarlet cord down the seams to match the trimming of the jacket. He greeted his visitor with languid eyes. “As my former interview with you was necessarily brief,”1 said the reporter, “there were a few questions I should like to ask you.” Mr. Wilde made a gesture of assent, and the reporter asked him what he thought of Chicago. “That is a difficult question to answer,” he said. “I don’t pretend to have seen the city yet. I have been here too short a time; but from what I have seen I like it much better than New York. The streets are wider, cleaner, and there are not all the railways overhead and in the middle of the street, and that dreadful noise is not here. It is wonderful to think how you have built such a large city in so short a time, especially after such a great calamity as your great fire.2 But of course it is a little sad to think of all the millions of money spent on buildings and so little architecture.” i-xii_1-196_Wild.indd 61 8/4/09 9:11:40 AM 62 February 1882 This he said with a sigh, and glance out of the window upon the twinkling lights of the city. “But that will come in time, no doubt.” “Have you seen any art in Chicago?” “I have seen one Chicago artist, whose work is of the highest artistic quality, whose work is beautiful—more beautiful than the work of any sculptor I have seen yet, and of whom you should all be proud. I refer to Mr. Donoghue.”3 “Is Donoghue a sculptor?” asked the reporter. “Do you tell me you don’t know him? He is a native of Chicago, studied in Paris, has come back to his own city, having done beautiful work already, and prepared to do beautiful work for you if any of you care for it,” said Mr. Wilde, with ill-concealed sarcasm. “Here is a plaque he designed for one of my poems—a figure of a girl—so simple, so powerful, so pretty. It is perfect.” The reporter took his word for it. “What do you think of the people of America?” “In the Eastern cities the people are very cosmopolitan. I think this is strongly characteristic as regards the men and women. It was in the West of America that I expected to find real American life—life made by yourselves and for yourselves.” “How have you liked your audiences?” “At all important large cities I find the audiences intelligent, courteous, and sympathetic. In some of the small provincial towns which I have visited on my journey there have been attempts at disturbances. However, in all these cases the good sense and good feeling of the majority of the audiences entirely stopped any attempts of the kind.” “You refer more particularly...

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