Duchess of Padua,” played by Lawrence Barrett, under the title of “Guido Ferranti.” This has not been seen in England, nor is it even possible for Wilde’s admirers to read this early offspring of his pen, for only twenty copies were printed for acting purposes in America and of these but one is known to be in existence, in this country at least.
An authorised German translation was made by Max Meyerfeld and the first performance took place at the German Theatre in Hamburg about a year ago. An English version is advertised from a piratical publisher in Paris but it is only a translation from the German back into English.
Towards the end of September 1883 Oscar Wilde returned to England and immediately began “an all round lecturing tour,” his first visit being to Wandsworth Town Hall on Monday,
September 24th, when he delivered to an enthusiastic audience a lecture on his “Impressions of America,” which is contained in the following pages. He was dressed, a London paper of the time states, “in ordinary evening costume, and carried an orange-coloured silk handkerchief in his breast. He spoke with great fluency, in a voice now and then singularly musical, and only once or twice made a scarcely perceptible reference to notes.” The lecture was under the auspices of a local Literary Society, and the principle residents of the district turned out “en masse.” The Chairman, the Rev. John Park, in introducing the lecturer, said there were two reasons why he was glad to welcome him, and he thought his own feelings would be shared by the audience. They must all plead guilty to a feeling of curiosity, he hoped a laudable one, to see and hear Mr. Wilde for his own
sake, and they were also glad to hear about America—a country which many might regard as a kind of Elysium.
On March 5th in the following year Wilde lectured at the Crystal Palace on his American experiences, and on April 26th he “preached his Gospel in the East-end,” when it is recorded that his audience was not only delighted with his humour, but was “surprised at the excellent good sense he talked.” His subject was a plea in favour of “art for schools,” and many of his remarks about the English system of elementary education—with its insistence on “the population of places that no one ever wants to go to,” and its “familiarity with the lives of persons who probably never existed”—were said to be quite worthy of Ruskin. A contemporary account adds that Wilde “showed himself a pupil of Mr. Ruskin’s, too, in insisting
on the importance of every child being taught some handicraft, and in looking forward to the time when a boy would rather look at a bird or even draw it than throw “his customary stone!”
The British “gamin” has not made much progress in this respect during the last twenty years!
His lectures on “Dress,” with the newspaper correspondence which they evoked, including some of Oscar Wilde’s replies in his most characteristic vein, must be reserved for a future volume.