Why name a conference on gay and lesbian studies after Wilde<\/strong>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n By 1982, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was a well-established gay icon. There were numerous reasons for this status: he was known as a dandy, media personality, and wit, famous for the epigrams that peppered his West End plays\u00a0Lady Windermere\u2019s Fan<\/em>\u00a0(1892),\u00a0A Woman of No Importance<\/em>\u00a0(1893),\u00a0An Ideal Husband\u00a0<\/em>(1895), and\u00a0The Importance of Being Earnest<\/em>\u00a0(1895). He was also the author of the homoerotic novel,\u00a0The Picture of Dorian Gray<\/em>\u00a0(1891), and a decadent play on a biblical figure,\u00a0Salome<\/em>\u00a0(1893\/1894), famous for her \u201cdance of the seven veils.\u201d But most significantly, in 1895, urged on by his lover Lord Alfred Douglas, Wilde unwisely brought an action for libel against Douglas\u2019s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, who had been harassing them both, and who had left a card at Wilde\u2019s club accusing him of \u201cposing as a sodomite.\u201d In response to the libel case, Queensberry had private agents collect evidence for Wilde\u2019s \u201csuspicious\u201d socializing with younger, mostly working-class men, which led to Wilde dropping the libel case. The evidence Queensberry had collected was turned over to the Public Prosecutor, and, after two trials (the first one resulted in a hung jury), Wilde was charged, convicted, and imprisoned for two years with hard labour for \u201cgross indecency\u201d with other men. Upon his release, a pariah in England, he lived in Europe, dying in Paris in 1900. The prominence of his case and the vindictiveness with which he was prosecuted ensured Wilde\u2019s becoming a gay hero and martyr representing society\u2019s oppression and persecution of gay men and other sexual minorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why was Oscar Wilde in Toronto in 1882?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1882, Wilde was just starting to make a name for himself. He had had a brilliant undergraduate career at Oxford University, obtaining his degree in 1878, after which he moved to London to become a \u201cProfessor of Aesthetics.\u201d Through self-promotion and by associating himself with prominent London artistic personalities, he ensured he was talked about (and often attacked and satirized) in the press as a leading figure of the so-called Aesthetic Movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After he published his Poems<\/em> in 1881, the popular comic magazine Punch<\/em> dubbed him the \u201cAesthete of Aesthetes.\u201d When Gilbert and Sullivan\u2019s operetta, Patience<\/em>, which satirized the Aesthetic Movement, was scheduled to tour North America, the producer Richard D\u2019Oyly Carte approached Wilde and asked if he would be interested in undertaking a lecture tour at the same time. Wilde agreed and prepared lectures on \u2018aesthetic\u2019 ideas concerning artisan craftmanship and home decoration (Ellmann 151-3). Lectures were a very popular form of \u2018respectable\u2019 recreation or entertainment at the time, and other literary figures, such as the novelist Charles Dickens, had had immensely successful lecture tours in North America.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Wilde saw the lecture tour as an opportunity for fame and profit, and sailed for New York City on Christmas Eve, 1881. When he arrived in the harbour of New York on January 2nd<\/sup>, 1882, and was asked by a customs official if he had anything to declare, Wilde is reputed to have said: \u201cI have nothing to declare except my genius\u201d (Ellmann 157-60). <\/p>\n\n\n\n In Philadelphia, where he delivered his second lecture, Wilde expressed to reporters his desire to meet with Walt Whitman, whose poetry he greatly admired. Whitman responded to this desire by inviting Wilde to visit him in Camden. The two talked while sharing a bottle of homemade elderberry wine: “‘I will call you Oscar,’ said Whitman, and Wilde, laying his hand on the poet’s knee, replied, ‘I like that so much.’ To Whitman, Wilde was ‘a fine handsome youngster'” (Ellmann 168). Wilde revisited Whitman in May. Unlike the first visit, what the two discussed was not recorded, but Wilde was later to tell a friend, “The kiss of Walt Whitman is still on my lips” (Ellmann 171). (At the Wilde ’82<\/em> conference, Michael Lynch and Richard Partington performed a reading of Richard Howard’s poem, “Wildflowers,” a speculative imagining of Whitman and Wilde’s conversation [Howard].)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wilde\u2019s lecture tour in North America was extensive and included many stops in the United States and Canada (see Cooper for a full itinerary). From the day he arrived in New York, the North American press both lionized and mocked him incessantly. In New York, he made sure to get a series of photographs taken by the celebrity photographer Napoleon Sarony of himself in \u2018Aesthetic costume,\u2019 which are today some of the most widely circulated and recognizable photographs of Wilde. Wilde was delighted, if a little overwhelmed, by the attention. As he wrote jokingly to a friend: \u201cI am torn in bits by Society. Immense receptions, wonderful dinners, crowds wait for my carriage. I wave a gloved hand and an ivory cane and they cheer.\u201d He claimed to have two secretaries: \u201cone to write my autograph and answer the hundreds of letters that come begging for it. Another, whose hair is brown, to send locks of his own hair to the young ladies who write asking for mine; he is rapidly becoming bald\u201d (Holland and Hart-Davis 127). Although a humorous exaggeration, Wilde indeed was treated like a celebrity during his tour of North America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wilde\u2019s first lecture in Canada was in Montreal on May 15, 1882. In a letter to a friend he drew a sketch of the view from his room in the Windsor Hotel\u2014a gigantic but un-Aesthetic poster of his name on a wall across the street\u2014commenting, \u201canything is better than virtuous obscurity, even one\u2019s own name in alternate colours of Albert blue and magenta and six feet high\u201d (Holland and Hart-Davis 168). He then went to Ottawa and Quebec City, returned to Montreal for a second lecture, and then made his way to Toronto via Kingston and Belleville. He arrived in Toronto on May 24th<\/sup>, Victoria Day, and was driven to the Queen\u2019s Hotel, which was situated on Front Street where the Royal York Hotel currently stands: \u201cLittle ragamuffins chased his carriage\u2026shouting, \u2018Oscar, Oscar is running Wilde.\u2019 Wilde loved it\u201d (O\u2019Brien 97). <\/p>\n\n\n\n After lunch at the hotel, Wilde was taken to one of the Victoria Day events, a lacrosse match at the Lacrosse Grounds at the northwest corner of Jarvis and Wellesley Streets, situated in what is now Toronto\u2019s Gay Village neighbourhood. The book Picturesque Canada<\/em> (1882) included an illustration of the Lacrosse Grounds and gave this description: <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAt the corner of Wellesley and Jarvis are the grounds of the Toronto Lacrosse Club, a favourite resort of the athletic youth of the town, and, on gala days, of their fair admirers. The field is kept in fine order. Upon it many an exciting contest has taken place between the local and outside clubs, the home team generally succeeding in carrying off the laurels\u201d (422).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wilde sat in the Lieutenant-Governor\u2019s box, attracting much attention from the spectators, as reported by the Toronto newspaper,\u00a0The Globe<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs he passed through the gate, someone shouted \u2018Here\u2019s Oscar Wilde.\u2019 The intelligence soon passed along the rows of seated spectators, and all eyes were at once strained to catch a glimpse of him. \u2026 Without noticing the sensation his arrival had created he reclined his head gracefully on his hand, assuming the aesthetic attitude, and gazed earnestly into the field where the teams were preparing for the fight\u201d (\u201cOscar Wilde. Arrival\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The reporter went into considerable detail about Wilde\u2019s appearance:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe was dressed in a grey tweed pair of trousers and cobweb-coloured velveteen coat and vest; his necktie was a dark green in colour, tied loosely around his neck, and covering his shirt front. He wore a handkerchief to match. He had a flowing coat, with a deep velvet collar, and secured to his form by a tasselated cord, which passed across his chest. He wore a black felt hat of unusual proportions. The earnest or intense expression of his almost feminine face, his long flowing hair, and his tall, handsome figure, and graceful movements gave him a striking appearance, producing immediately a favourable impression\u201d (\u201cOscar Wilde. Arrival\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The lacrosse match was between the \u201cTorontos\u201d (the Toronto Lacrosse Club) and the \u201cSt. Regis Indians.\u201d St. Regis was a name given to the Mohawk nation at Akwesasne, which straddles the current provinces of Ontario and Quebec and the state of New York (the American portion is still federally recognized by the name \u201cSt. Regis Mohawk Reservation\u201d). The Globe<\/em> reporter observed:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen the game was started he evinced the most lively interest, and as it progressed his enthusiasm seemed to keep pace with the players, for he laughed heartily when any of them went unceremoniously to \u2018grass,\u2019 or clapped his hands when a good piece of play was done\u201d (\u201cOscar Wilde. Arrival\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the evening, Wilde dined at the Toronto Club at Wellington and York Streets, which still exists today (although the current building dates from 1888). He then attended a ball given in his honour at Government House, which stood by St Andrew\u2019s Presbyterian Church at King Street West and Simcoe Streets (O\u2019Brien 100). <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n The next day, Wilde attended the Exhibition of the Ontario Society of Artists in their rooms on King Street West by Yonge Street. While attendance at the Exhibition had been poor, on the day of Wilde\u2019s visit it was packed: the visitors were apparently more interested in seeing Wilde than the art (O\u2019Brien 102). Wilde then toured the University of Toronto (O\u2019Brien 105). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Wilde\u2019s lecture that evening, at the Grand Opera House on Adelaide Street West, was on \u201cArt Decoration.\u201d The Globe<\/em> reported that \u201cseldom has any lecturer in this city secured a more representative or elite audience\u201d (\u201cOscar Wilde. Lecture\u201d).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n After giving a lecture in Brantford on May 26th<\/sup>, on May 27th<\/sup>, he gave a second lecture in Toronto on \u201cThe House Beautiful\u201d in the Pavilion at the Horticultural Gardens (now Allan Gardens). After the lecture he was the guest of Henry Pellatt Jr., who later built Casa Loma. That evening he sat for a bust by the sculptor Frederick Dunbar (O\u2019Brien 109-10). An example of Dunbar\u2019s work can be seen as part of the monument in Sir Casimir Gzowski Park on the Lakeshore: the bust of Gzowski is by Dunbar. In the June 2, 1882 \u201cLocal Briefs\u201d column of\u00a0The<\/em>\u00a0Globe<\/em>, there is a notice that the \u201cplaster cast\u201d of Wilde \u201chas been placed in the art exhibition\u201d (its fate is unknown). Another intriguing notice in the same column states: \u201cTwo young ladies living on Seaton street [a couple of blocks west of the Horticultural Gardens] dressed in men\u2019s clothes the other night and went out calling on residents of that street.\u201d Toronto in the 1880s was perhaps a bit queerer than might be assumed!<\/p>\n\n\n\n While most of the Toronto newspapers were respectful and even complimentary towards Wilde and his aesthetic message, one paper, the Evening News<\/em>, consistently attacked Wilde, pretending to mistake him for a female, \u201cMiss Oscar Wilde.\u201d A fictional scenario in one article has Wilde \u2018confessing\u2019 that, despite his appearance and \u2018feminine\u2019 interests, he is actually man: \u201c\u2018Yes, I am a man. It is a painful thing for me to say. It is the skeleton in our own family, the blot on my life, the clog which drags me down and embitters my existence. Oh! If I only had been a woman!\u2019\u201d (qtd. O\u2019Brien 108). Coverage like this may have inspired his epigram in The Picture of Dorian Gray<\/em>: \u201cThere is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n After leaving Toronto, Wilde lectured in Woodstock and Hamilton, then returned to the United States. In October, he lectured in the Maritime provinces, before sailing home from New York on December 27th<\/sup>, 1882.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sources<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Canadian Illustrated News<\/em>. 1869-1883. Canadiana<\/em>, https:\/\/www.canadiana.ca\/view\/oocihm.8_06230<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Cooper, John. Oscar Wilde in America<\/em>, https:\/\/www.oscarwildeinamerica.org\/<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ellmann, Richard. Oscar Wilde<\/em>. Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Holland, Merlin, and Rupert Hart-Davis, eds. The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde<\/em>. Fourth Estate, 2000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Howard, Richard. “Wildflowers.” Two-Part Invention<\/em>. Macmillan, 1974. Reprinted on the Poetry Foundation website<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLocal Briefs.\u201d The Globe<\/em> (Toronto), 2 June, 1882, p. 6.<\/p>\n\n\n\n O\u2019Brien, Kevin. Oscar Wilde in Canada: An Apostle for the Arts<\/em>. Personal Library, 1982.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOscar Wilde. Arrival of the Apostle of Aestheticism in Toronto.\u201d The Globe<\/em> (Toronto), 25 May, 1882, p. 3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOscar Wilde. Lecture in the Grand Opera House Last Night.\u201d The Globe<\/em> (Toronto), 26 May, 1882, p. 6.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOscar Wilde\u2019s tomb<\/a>.\u201d Wikipedia<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Picturesque Canada<\/em>. Edited by George Monro Grant; Illustrated under the supervision of L. R. O\u2019Brien. Beldon Bros, 1882, Volume I. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Further Reading<\/strong> by Jason Boyd Wilde \u201982 was named in commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of Oscar Wilde\u2019s 1882 visit to Toronto. Why name a conference on gay and lesbian studies after Wilde? By 1982, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was a well-established gay icon. There were numerous reasons for this status: he was known as a dandy, media personality,… Continue reading Oscar Wilde from 1882 to 1982<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":253,"featured_media":0,"parent":167,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-332","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cdh.rula.info\/wilde82\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cdh.rula.info\/wilde82\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cdh.rula.info\/wilde82\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cdh.rula.info\/wilde82\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/253"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cdh.rula.info\/wilde82\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/cdh.rula.info\/wilde82\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":647,"href":"https:\/\/cdh.rula.info\/wilde82\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/332\/revisions\/647"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cdh.rula.info\/wilde82\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cdh.rula.info\/wilde82\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdh.rula.info\/wilde82\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2023\/10\/Wilde_82_Image_4_Tomb.jpeg\")
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Bartley, Jim. Stephen and Mr. Wilde. <\/em>1994. A play that takes place during Wilde\u2019s time in Toronto. Set in the Queen\u2019s Hotel, it is an imaginative recreation of the relationship between Wilde and his valet during the lecture tour, a Black man named Stephen Davenport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"