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 witty, but he had new views on art and original ideas.  As a great artist he knew that “there never was an artistic period.  There never was an Art-loving nation.”  Again and again he reached pure beauty of expression.  The masterly persiflage, too, filled me with admiration and I declared that the lecture ranked with the best ever heard in London with Coleridge’s on Shakespeare and Carlyle’s on Heroes.  To my astonishment Oscar would not admit the superlative quality of Whistler’s talk; he thought the message paradoxical and the ridicule of the professors too bitter.  “Whistler’s like a wasp,” he cried, “and carries about with him a poisoned sting.”  Oscar’s kindly sweet nature revolted against the disdainful aggressiveness of Whistler’s attitude.  Besides, in essence, Whistler’s lecture was an attack on the academic theory taught in the universities, and defended naturally by a young scholar like Oscar Wilde.  Whistler’s view that the artist was sporadic, a happy chance, a “sport,” in fact, was a new view, and Oscar had not yet reached this level; he reviewed the master in the Pall Mall Gazette, a review remarkable for one of the earliest gleams of that genial humour which later became his most characteristic gift:  “Whistler,” he said, “is indeed one of the very greatest masters of painting in my opinion.  And I may add that in this opinion Mr. Whistler himself entirely concurs.”

Whistler retorted in The World and Oscar replied, but Whistler had the best of the argument....  “Oscar—­the amiable, irresponsible, esurient Oscar—­with no more sense of a picture than of the fit of a coat, has the courage of the opinions ... of others!”

It should be noted here that one of the bitterest of tongues could not help doing homage to Oscar Wilde’s “amiability”:  Whistler even preferred to call him “amiable and irresponsible” rather than give his plagiarism a harsher attribute.

Oscar Wilde learned almost all he knew of art[8] and of controversy from Whistler, but he was never more than a pupil in either field; for controversy in especial he was poorly equipped:  he had neither the courage, nor the contempt, nor the joy in conflict of his great exemplar.

Unperturbed by Whistler’s attacks, Oscar went on lecturing about the country on “Personal Impressions of America,” and in August crossed again to New York to see his play “Vera” produced by Marie Prescott at the Union Square Theatre.  It was a complete failure, as might have been expected; the serious part of it was such as any talented young man might have written.  Nevertheless I find in this play for the first time, a characteristic gleam of humour, an unexpected flirt of wing, so to speak, which, in view of the future, is full of promise.  At the time it passed unappreciated.