The Nation underrated American curiosity.  Oscar lectured some ninety times from January till July, when he returned to New York.  The gross receipts amounted to some L4,000:  he received about L1,200, which left him with a few hundreds above his expenses.  His optimism regarded this as a triumph.

One is fain to confess today that these lectures make very poor reading.  There is not a new thought in them; not even a memorable expression; they are nothing but student work, the best passages in them being mere paraphrases of Pater and Arnold, though the titles were borrowed from Whistler.  Dr. Ernest Bendz in his monograph on The Influence of Pater and Matthew Arnold in the Prose-Writings of Oscar Wilde has established this fact with curious erudition and completeness.

Still, the lecturer was a fine figure of a man:  his knee-breeches and silk stockings set all the women talking, and he spoke with suave authority.  Even the dullest had to admit that his elocution 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.