Impressions of America
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Long masses of dark brown hair, parted in the middle, fell in odd curves of beauty over his broad shoulders. He wore neither beard nor moustache. The full, rather sensuous lips, now pressed close together with momentary tension, now parted in kindly smile, showed to perfection the nobility of his countenance.
A Grecian nose and a well-tinged flush of health on the poet’s face added all that was required to make it a truly remarkable one. The eyes were large, dark6 and ever-changing in expression. He was a charming companion who could tell racy stories and repeat bons mots of those whom society delighted to honour, and at the same time could cap quotations from Greek authors.
1
First produced at the Opera Comique, April 23rd, 1881. Wilde was burlesqued as Reginald Bunthorne, a Fleshly Poet.
2
Wilde repeated this lecture throughout the States during his tour. At Rochester, on February 7th, he met with a most disorderly reception on the part of the College Students. Two days later Mr. Joaquin Miller, of St. Louis, wrote to Wilde saying that he had “read with shame about the behaviour of those ruffians.” To this Wilde replied, “I thank you for your chivalrous and courteous letter,” and in the course of his letter makes a more special attack on that critic whom he terms “the itinerant libeller of New England.”
3
In a poem published in an American magazine on February 15th, 1882, Wilde wrote
“And in the throbbing engine room
Leap the long rods of polished steel.”
4
Poems by Oscar Wilde. Also his Lecture on the English Renaissance. The Seaside Library, Vol. lviii. No. 1183, January 19th, 1882. 4to. Pp. 32. New York: George Munro, Publisher. A copy of this edition was sold by auction in New York last year for eight dollars.
5
See An Essay concerning Human Understanding, IV. xii. 10.
A still more striking instance of the use of this expression is to be found in the same writer’s Thoughts concerning Education, s. 28, where he says: – “Once in four and twenty hours, I think, is enough; and nobody, I guess, will think it too much.”
6
A French writer, M. Joseph-Renaud, recently described Wilde’s eyes as being blue, while Lord Alfred Douglas affirms that they were green.