Читать книгу Oscar Wilde: A Life in Letters - Оскар Уайльд, Merlin Holland, F. H. Cornish - Страница 64

16 March 1882 Metropolitan Hotel, St Paul, Minnesota

Dear Mr Carte, I have received your letter about the play. I agree to place it entirely in your hands for production on the terms of my receiving half-profits, and a guarantee of £200 paid down to me on occasion of its production, said £200 to be deducted from my share of subsequent profits if any. This I think you will acknowledge is fair. Of course for my absolute work, the play, I must have absolute certainty of some small kind.

As regards the cast: I am sure you see yourself how well the part will suit Clara Morris: I am however quite aware how difficile she is, and what practical dangers may attend the perilling of it on her. If you, exercising right and careful judgment, find it impossible to depend on her—then, while the present excitement lasts, let us go to Rose Coghlan, and Wallack’s Theatre—they have a good company—and if Miss Morris cannot be really retained I am willing to leave it in your hands for Rose Coghlan. In case of producing it here, I will rely on you to secure a copyright for England also by some simultaneous performance. This however you can manage naturally without any advice of mine.

Please let me know your acceptance of my terms, and your decision of the cast by wire, as soon as possible. Yours very truly

OSCAR WILDE

Prologue follows soon: have been so tired—too tired to write.

By the middle of March, Wilde had completed the New England leg of his tour and was deep into the Mid-West on his way to California. Sidney Colvin was the Slade Professor of Fine Arts at Cambridge and Robert Kerr a teetotal Scottish judge sitting in the City of London. The reason for Wilde’s apparent dislike of them both can only be conjectured.