was
excellent, and the manner of speech is keenly appreciated in America.
In some of the Eastern towns, in New York especially, he had a certain
success, the success of sensation and of novelty, such success as
every large capital gives to the strange and eccentric.

In Boston he scored a triumph of character. Fifty or sixty Harvard
students came to his lecture dressed to caricature him in "swallow
tail coats, knee breeches, flowing wigs and green ties. They all wore
large lilies in their buttonholes and each man carried a huge
sunflower as he limped along." That evening Oscar appeared in ordinary
dress and went on with his lecture as if he had not noticed the
rudeness. The chief Boston paper gave him due credit:

"Everyone who witnessed the scene on Tuesday evening must
feel about it very much as we do, and those who came to
scoff, if they did not exactly remain to pray, at least left
the Music Hall with feelings of cordial liking, and, perhaps
to their own surprise, of respect for Oscar Wilde."[7]

As he travelled west to Louisville and Omaha his popularity dwined and
dwindled. Still he persevered and after leaving the States visited
Canada, reaching Halifax in the autumn.

One incident must find a place here. On September 6 he sent L80 to
Lady Wilde. I have been told that this was merely a return of money
she had advanced; but there can be no doubt that Oscar, unlike his
brother Willie, helped his mother again and again most generously,
though Willie was always her favourite.

Oscar returned to England in April, 1883, and lectured to the Art
Students at their club in Golden Square. This at once brought about a
break with Whistler who accused him of plagiarism:--"Picking from our
platters the plums for the puddings he peddles in the provinces."

If one compares this lecture with Oscar's on "The English Renaissance
of Art," delivered in New York only a year before, and with Whistler's
well-known opinions, it is impossible not to admit that the charge was
justified. Such phrases as "artists are not to copy beauty but to
create it ... a picture is a purely decorative thing," proclaim their
author.

The long newspaper wrangle between the two was brought to a head in
1885, when Whistler gave his famous _Ten o'clock_ discourse on Art.
This lecture was infinitely better than any of Oscar Wilde's. Twenty
odd years older than Wilde, Whistler was a master of all his
resources: he was not only w