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Philip Spiess
Offered as a little tribute to Walnut Hills High School’s students in the Fine Arts and Drama programs:
OSCAR WILDE IN CINCINNATI
“You have no architecture, no scenery,” complained Oscar Wilde on being asked his first general impression of Cincinnati on his visit in 1882. Was the great “aesthete” trying to attract attention to himself by offering derogatory remarks, or was he so puffed up with his own importance that he failed to see what lay around him? For, had he gone to the heights of Eden Park, he would have seen the Ohio River and the Ohio and Kentucky hills laid out before him in all their splendor; downtown, much well-designed Greek Revival architecture (still a major style in London) would have graced the scene (Gothic Revival and the Italianate style, then the rage in London, were just emerging in Cincinnati’s suburbs). Well, apparently when he made his comment, it was raining hard and smog created a visibility problem in this industrial city even on the best of days.
Wilde was in the United States at the behest of Richard D’Oyly Carte, that famous Gilbert & Sullivan entrepreneur who also built the Savoy Hotel in London. He was bringing to the United States the touring company of Gilbert & Sullivan’s operetta Patience, which satirized the cult of Aesthetism, the offspring of Pre-Raphaelitism. Wilde had been used as the inspiration for the central character of Bunthorne, whose poetic sense of beauty involved a divine admiration for his own poetry and for the admiration of others. Although the English at the time were more than familiar with these sorts of cultural shenanigans (London was full of them), it had suddenly dawned on D’Oyly Carte that the Americans might not get all of the operetta’s witty allusions and cultural caricatures. Therefore, with a promise of fat lecture fees, D’Oyly Carte hired Wilde to run in advance of the show, making a general scene of himself (with his almond, heavily-lidded eyes, heavy, overhung lips, and long flowing hair) in his standard evening dress: flowing Byronic collar, loosely knotted cravat, short velvet coat, black velvet knee britches, silk stockings, and (sometimes) a green carnation button-hole, and usually carrying a lily or a sunflower in his hand and lecturing to American audiences on “The Art of Beauty” or “The Beauty of Art.”
Advance publicity ran high in Cincinnati; after all, on arriving in New York on January 3, 1882, Oscar announced to the press that he had been “disappointed by the Atlantic Ocean.” Cincinnati’s newspapers (egged on by D’Oyly Carte’s publicity agents, no doubt) ran articles, ads, and comments from the newspapers of other cities where Wilde had appeared. Local advertisements consciously employed the jargon of “aesthetism”: “OSCAR WILDE! OSCAR WILDE! OSCAR WILDE! Gents, have you seen the Oscar Wilde Shoes (they are too Utterly utter too-too) at B. FRANK HARTS, 31 West 4th Street, Pike Building?” Opera Puffs Cigarettes (Wilde was a devoted cigarette smoker) advertised themselves as “luxuriously luxurious and just too too,” while Lloyd & Company, located on Central Avenue, offered artificial flowers for sale: “The Oscar Wilde Aesthetic Lilies and Sunflowers” (two of Oscar’s favorite flowers). Alden’s Hat Parlor, in the Emery Arcade (forerunner of the Arcade underneath Carew Tower), displayed the “Aesthetic Hat” (whatever that was!).
Then the fun really began. Rice’s Opera Comique Company, beating the D’Oyly Carte Company to the punch, presented Patience in Cincinnati a month before Oscar arrived. Then two other companies scheduled productions of the operetta in the three weeks following Wilde’s lecture: Heuck’s Opera House played Charles E. Ford’s Company’s production, while the Grand Opera House played the Emma Abbott Grand Opera Company’s production. (It would have taken a lot of Patience to sit through all of the Cincinnati productions.)
Wilde passed through Cincinnati on his way to Louisville on February 20, 1882, and spent the day there in order to gather material to incorporate into the talk he was to give in Cincinnati on February 23. He stayed in Parlor 62 of the Burnet House, the city’s finest hotel [see Post #4519], and there greeted reporters. The Cincinnati Enquirer wrote a long “aesthetic” account, giving a detailed description of the appearance of Wilde and his mannerisms. All the Cincinnati press accounts, in fact, are replete with details of Wilde’s fashion in dress.
According to the Cincinnati Gazette, Wilde spent his day visiting Robert Clarke & Co.’s Bookstore (where he bought several American works), took a tour through the nascent and pioneering Rookwood Pottery (soon to become world famous for its delicate glazes), tried to visit the Cincinnati Art Museum (it was closed), but did manage to visit the McMicken School of Art and Design (predecessor to the Cincinnati Art Academy).
The Cincinnati Gazette further reported: “When shown the School of Design, with its forlorn corridors and dark rooms, his eye lighted on the legend, ‘No Smoking,’ painted in the window. ‘Great heaven, they speak of smoking as if it were a crime. I wonder they do not caution the students not to murder each other on the landings. Such a place is enough to incite a man to the commission of any crime,’ and then, unkindest cut of all, ‘I wonder no criminal has ever pleaded the ugliness of your city as an excuse for his crimes’”! Wilde also drove through some of the suburbs, admiring the Grandin Road estates in the rain. He visited the home of Mrs. Maria Longworth Nichols, founder of the Rookwood Pottery, and found her quickly dusting off some of the pottery pieces. He gallantly remarked, “Oh, dust should never be removed; it is the bloom of time.”
As to Oscar Wilde’s lecture on February 23, which was to be on “The Decorative Arts” (suited to Cincinnati’s budding “arts and crafts movement,” headed by George Ward Nichols, Maria Longworth Nichols’ husband, a movement noted especially for pottery and wood-carving at that time), to be given at the Grand Opera House: advertisements stated that reserved seats would sell for $1.00, while general admission was 75 cents (the lecture filled to capacity, about 1,000 persons). The lecture was scheduled to begin at 2:30 p.m.
Oscar began his address by delivering a brief history of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement, explaining its attempts to incorporate beauty into everyday objects. He then began to discourse on Cincinnati art. He criticized the School of Design for producing dinner plates with landscapes on them. [This line of thought stems from the dictates of the founders of London’s South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria & Albert Museum), outgrowth of the 1851 “Crystal Palace” Exhibition, the world’s first world’s fair (see also the opening chapter of Dicken’s Hard Times, which criticizes this approach to design)]. “So far from wishing to give from the center of a dish the effect that it is gradually fading away into the misty clouds and distant hills, you want to be perfectly sure that it does nothing of the kind. You want to be certain that it remains there very solidly, and that it will support anything that you place on it. I am afraid I saw some designs on your pottery that I feel quite sure were done by some one who had exactly five minutes in which to catch the train, and who thought he could decorate two vases and a dish in that time!” However, Wilde did say he thought the School of Design was doing good work in educating the people to an artistic standpoint.
Wilde then suggested that Cincinnati might well be on its way to establishing a separate school of decoration, such as Venice and Florence had done. He said that the city’s artists should employ such motifs as turkeys, deer, and buffaloes. “The golden rod and aster are the flowers for you,” he intoned. The public generally enjoyed the lecture, but the critics panned it. The most violent criticisms were directed against his delivery, which was said to be dreadful. [I don’t know if this was due to his lack of projection in a large auditorium in the days before microphones; in after-dinner conversations in more intimate settings, he was said to be mesmerizing (see Table Talk: Oscar Wilde, 2000).]
He dined in the evening with several Cincinnati artists, included the noted Henry Farney, as well as the art dealer Loring Andrews. On the next day he visited Henry Probasco at his Anglo-Norman castle in Clifton, “Oakwood” (still there, on the heights of Clifton overlooking the Mill Creek Valley and Winton Place; I've enjoyed visiting its tower). Mr. Probasco (who gave the Tyler Davidson Fountain on Fountain Square to the city [see Post #3001]) had the largest art collection in the city, as well as a rare book library, including a First Folio Shakespeare, a 1481 edition of Dante, and the like (all now in the Newberry Library in Chicago). In the afternoon he had lunch with Mrs. Nichols [see above]. He pronounced the Cincinnati artist, Frank Duveneck (of the “Munich School”), as the greatest painter in America [well, he’s still probably the greatest painter that Cincinnati ever produced], and then left town.
But soon he was back. On June 10, 1882, Oscar Wilde returned to Cincinnati, making the comment that Cincinnatians should ornament their pianos [whether at this point he recognized Cincinnati as an essentially musical city, or whether someone at the D. H. Baldwin Piano Company in town had gotten to him, I don’t know]: “The shape of the grand piano [he declared] is hopelessly ugly,” and he said that there had been no beautiful pianos made in America. [Okay, I guess he wasn’t in the pay of Baldwin Piano, and he failed to recognize the shape of the piano as necessary for a particular type of musical machine; it was not just a piece of decorative furniture.] (Historical footnote: Perhaps spurred on by Wilde’s remarks, famed Cincinnati sculptor Clement Barnhorn designed an “aesthetic piano” in the Art Nouveau style for the Baldwin Company – it may be in the collections of the Cincinnati Art Museum [a picture of it is in my undergraduate thesis, “English Bards and Scotched Reviewers: British Literati in 19th Century Cincinnati,” Hanover College, 1968].)
Wilde gave his second Cincinnati talk on “Household Decoration”; it was poorly attended (it was only the “Decorative Arts” speech reworded, anyway). Cincinnati had tired of Aesthetism: Wilde could criticize the domestic arts, but he offered no practical solutions. The Cincinnati Commercial satirized his ideas when it said, “Oscar Wilde ought to go to Minnesota and commune with the cold wave. He would enjoy thirty degrees below zero. It’s so intense.”
In short, Wilde left no great influence behind him in Cincinnati, with the possible exception of the following song, sung for many years along Vine Street at any fop who paraded himself up and down, or in any other way resembled the great English “ass-thete”: “Is that Oscar Wilde, / The dude I should smile! / Is that Oscar Wilde the Jim Dandy? / The ladeez all sigh, and the babies all ke-ry / Is that Oscar Wilde the Jim Dandy?”
Epilogue: Back in England, Wilde mentioned that he considered Cincinnati one of the kindest and friendliest cities he had visited in America. [Perhaps so: after all, in Washington, D. C. (for example), the prominent and very exclusive gentlemen’s venue, The Metropolitan Club (still in existence on the southwest corner of 17th Street and H Street, N. W.), refused Wilde admittance because he was reportedly and reputedly homosexual.] So to conclude, let us quote local historian Robert Herron (1957): “It is refreshing, then, to note that, far unlike those of Trollope, Martineau and Dickens, Oscar Wilde’s visit to Cincinnati had no historical significance whatsoever.”
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our club, when we lived in Grosse Pointe Farms, the Detroit Golf Club, a Donald Ross pair of 18s, was opened in 1899. The gorgeous club house by Albert Kahn was completed in 1918. All before Avon Fields opened in 1924.
