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March 1882 115 2. Julian Waldbridge Rix (1850–1903), American painter, illustrator, and landscape artist who studied at the School of Design in San Francisco. 3. See the San Francisco Daily Chronicle, 30 March 1882: “The aesthete’s bitter sarcasm against the plastering ability of the present day caused quite a flutter in the middle section of the hall, where a large number of sunflowers were dancing in the bonnets of the Jessie and Natoma Street aristocracy.” 4. According to the San Francisco Daily Chronicle (30 March 1882), Wilde “dealt a most unchivalrous blow” to a “delegation of Minna and Sixth Street dressmakers” by scorning modern millinery in his lecture. 5. Marcus Mayer (1847–1918) was an American producer and manager. 6. Mount Tamalpais, a popular subject in California landscape painting, is the highest peak in the Marin hills, just north of San Francisco’s Golden Gate. 7. The poet Charles Warren Stoddard (1843–1909) coedited the Overland Monthly and celebrated same-sex love in such books as South-Sea Idyls (1873). 8. The Irish National Land League was founded by Michael Davitt in 1879, just prior to the Land War of 1880–82, as an instrument to abolish “landlordism” and help poor tenant farmers own the land they worked. Wilde praised the work of the league at greater length in “A Home Ruler,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 27 February 1882, 6. 9. TheoldeststructureinSanFrancisco,theMissionDoloresstandsonasitededicated in 1776, half a block from what is now the corner of Sixteenth and Valencia. 10. John Jerome Howson (1842–1887), an Australian-born actor, played Reginald Bunthorne to great success in the Comley-Barton company’s touring production of Patience. 31. “Oscar Arrives,” Sacramento RecordUnion , 27 March 1882, 3 As a fitting introduction to the apostle of modern aestheticism, a RecordUnion representative yesterday morning met Oscar Wilde at the depot with a bouquet of the choicest flowers that could be culled from Sacramento’s floral wealth, and being received by that gentleman with cordiality, the twain sat down to breakfast and had a chat, which, being unconcluded when train time was up, the apostle and the news-gatherer, having found themselves upon pleasantly debatable ground, continued the conversation in the cars as they went Bayward. Mr. Wilde is one of the best talked about men of the day. This cultured young English poet is, his friends claim, the most misrepresented of foreigners that ever visited the country. The Oxonian, who is a genial companion and an admirable conversationalist, showed no disinclination to unbosom himself, and the determination being announced to give him i-xii_1-196_Wild.indd 115 8/4/09 9:11:51 AM 116 March 1882 for once a perfectly “fair show” in a representative American newspaper, responded to the questions propounded to him with ready fluency and sincere earnestness. He is scarcely twenty-six years of age, very tall and quite slender. This “build” gives him the appearance of slightly stooping in the shoulders when he addresses men of ordinary stature. He dresses plainly, to severity, indulges in a broad turn-down collar, a simple knotted scarf without jewelry, and wears a broad-brimmed white sombrero decidedly Spanish in style. His clean-shaven face is long, broadest at the lower jaw, with a full, round and oversized chin; a large and well-developed nose, a broad mouth, with full lips opening over large, prominent teeth, the upper lip a shade too short, and eyes very full, large and handsome and an apology between gray and blue, are arched by delicately lined eyebrows. His forehead is high, narrows as it ascends, and on either side his straight brown hair, which from a middle parting falls to a level with his chin in unstudied negligence, and shades a neck rather long and with a tendency to crane slightly forward. The expression of his countenance is very amiable, and a constant smile of perfect content rests upon his overfull features, which are almost effeminate in apparent lack of vigor and force, but which in that respect belie the man, whose conversation proves him to be shrewd, perfectly self-possessed, and entirely able to take care of himself in this world. With a Chesterfieldian bow, he returned his thanks for a button-hole bouquet a Sacramento lady sent by the newsman for “the lover of the beautiful,” and the aesthete settled himself in the cushions of a palace car and signified his readiness to be put upon the categorical rack. The news-gleaner opened the ball...

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