Читать книгу Oscar Wilde: A Life in Letters - Оскар Уайльд, Merlin Holland, F. H. Cornish - Страница 67

27 March 1882 San Francisco

My dear Norman, Here from the uttermost end of the great world I send you love and greeting, and thanks for your letters which delight me very much. But, dear boy, your hair will lose its gold and your cheek its roses if you insist on being such a chivalrous defender of this much abused young man. It is so brave and good of you! Of course I will win: I have not the slightest intention of failing for a moment, and my tour here is triumphal. I was four days in the train: at first grey, gaunt desolate plains, as colourless as waste land by the sea, with now and then scampering herds of bright red antelopes, and heavy shambling buffaloes, rather like Joe Knight in manner and appearance, and screaming vultures like gnats high up in the air, then up the Sierra Nevadas, the snow-capped mountains shining like shields of polished silver in that vault of blue flame we call the sky, and deep cañons full of pine trees, and so for four days, and at last from the chill winter of the mountains down into eternal summer here, groves of orange trees in fruit and flower, green fields, and purple hills, a very Italy, without its art.

There were 4000 people waiting at the ‘depot’ to see me, open carriage, four horses, an audience at my lecture of the most cultivated people in ‘Frisco, charming folk. I lecture again here tonight, also twice next week; as you see I am really appreciated—by the cultured classes. The railway have offered me a special train and private car to go down the coast to Los Angeles, a sort of Naples here, and I am feted and entertained to my heart’s content. I lecture here in California for three weeks, then to Kansas; after that I am not decided.

These wretched lying telegrams in the Daily News are sent by Archibald Forbes, who has been a fiasco in his lecturing this season and is jealous of me. He is a coward and a fool. No telegram can kill or mar a man with anything in him. The women here are beautiful. Tonight I am escorted by the Mayor of the city through the Chinese quarter, to their theatre and joss houses and rooms, which will be most interesting. They have ‘houses’ and ‘persons’.

Pray remember me to all at home, also to that splendid fellow Millais and his stately and beautiful wife.

Love to Johnston. Ever yours

OSCAR WILDE

(My new signature—specially for California)