Читать книгу Oscar Wilde: A Life in Letters - Оскар Уайльд, Merlin Holland, F. H. Cornish - Страница 55

[Circa 29 January 1882] Boston

Dear Mr Forbes, I cannot tell you how surprised and grieved I am to think that there should have been anything in my first letter to you which seemed to you discourteous or wrong.

Believe me, I had intended to answer you in the same frank spirit in which you had written to me. Any such expressions however unintentional I most willingly retract.

As regards my motive for coming to America, I should be very disappointed if when I left for Europe I had not influenced in however slight a way the growing spirit of art in this country, very disappointed if I had not out of the many who listen to me made one person love beautiful things a little more, and very disappointed if in return for the dreadfully hard work of lecturing – hard to me who am inexperienced – I did not earn enough money to give myself an autumn at Venice, a winter at Rome, and a spring at Athens; but all these things are perhaps dreams.

Letter-writing seems to lead to grave misunderstandings. I wish I could have seen you personally: standing face to face, and man to man, I might have said what I wished to say more clearly and more simply. I remain yours truly o.

WILDE

Forbes was not alone in his mockery of what he saw as Wilde’s namby-pamby aesthetics. The students at Harvard and Rochester, where he went in early February, attempted to disrupt his lectures and newspaper columnists questioned his sincerity of purpose, hinting that his motives were purely financial. The poet Joaquin Miller and the anti-slavery campaigner Julia Ward Howe both came to his defence in print, and Wilde consoled himself with recounting his American adventures to friends back home, among them the solicitor George Lewis and his wife.