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78 February 1882 much to do in life that there is not time to be troubled about such matters. Our duty is to admire and worship the beautiful and the good. Everything else, including the annoyances, is mere failures, simply shadows.” “What are your impressions of the people as you have met them?” “Ah, there is a wide difference between your papers and your men and women.FromthelatterIhavealwaysmetwiththekindesttreatment.You have a great country, and the things that are said about me I am willing to bear. Of course the treatment is not fair. Some of our best lecturers would not come here, Ruskin, for instance, on account of the newspapers. When I declared I was coming they all wondered. ‘Why,’ said Mr. Ruskin, ‘everything will be said about you. They will spare nothing.’ But I said I would come, and I came. The feeling there is almost fear of your papers, but I do not mind it. The ludicrous things are said in good part, and as for the rest I let it pass me by.” 1. Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87), a clergyman, liberal social reformer, and advocate of woman suffrage, abolition, temperance, and the theory of evolution, was after 1875 a controversial figure as a result of his alleged affair with a married woman, Elizabeth Tilton. 2. In Richard Ellmann’s estimation, Wilde contracted syphilis while at Oxford and underwent a course of mercury treatment. Although mercury does not cure venereal disease, it did have the effect of discoloring Wilde’s already uneven, prominent, and slightly protrusive teeth (Wilde, 92). 3. W. D. Howells (1837–1920), American realist author, critic, and first president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. 22. “Speranza’s Gifted Son,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 26 February 1882, 3 A Globe-Democrat reporter awaited an hour when the Prince of Languor had presumably suspended the delights of deglutition, and then sent up a lilywhite card, decorated with the legend by which he is known to his creditors. “He will see you in ten minutes,” said “Front” on his return. Mr. Wilde evidently desired time in which to run through the authorities on aesthetics in order to meet the reporter on equal terms. It must be remembered that he had entered the city at the Union Depot, had obtained a rear view of the Jail and the Four Courts, and had been whirled through the delightful boulevards known as Clark Avenue and Myrtle Street, and, having seen so much of the utterly utter in that brief ride, he was prepared to find in a St. Louisan a poet, and in one who assists to mold the opinions of St. Louisans he naturally anticipated a poem. When at last the reportorial aesthete i-xii_1-196_Wild.indd 78 8/4/09 9:11:44 AM February 1882 79 entered the apartment where the lord of the lah-de-dah sat enthroned upon a sofa, over which had been carelessly thrown a dressed bearskin rug, it was to meet a boyish-faced young man, long-haired, smooth-faced, long nosed, thick lipped, uncertain-mouthed, of the general appearance of an overtasked medical student. His hair brushed back from his forehead and hanging about his shoulders gave him the romantic appearance of the tenor-lover in an opera, as he rose from the couch on which he half reclined in an attitude that somehow suggested the backline of a ballet, for studied as it palpably was, graceful it positively was not. He extended in a very languid manner a large, soft, rather fat hand, which half closed upon the aristocratic duke of the inquisitor, then relaxed, and fell slowly to position, where it dangled at the end of an angular arm. As if exhausted by the effort, he sank back on to the sofa, and assumed another position suggestive of cramp colic. Our Berry1 could have done this much better. In a few moments he summoned strength enough to light a cigarette, which he puffed contentedly for a while, and seemed to await the first twitch of the reportorial rack. He said nothing, and the reporter hesitated to begin, for it is not often that a genuine worshipper of the sunflower happens along. Oscar sat, continuing to look intently at the reporter in the dim light. Oscar always affects Rembrandt shadows; he looks better in the dark, perhaps. The reporter, feeling that he was the object of the poet’s attention and evidently filled his thoughts, at length...

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