When Oscar Wilde’s tour of the Maritimes was being booked, it was not expected to be a success. Despite being heckled in Fredericton and reports circulating around the world that he got arrested in Moncton, the tour was a rousing success; every date was sold out, scalpers were selling tickets outside at outrageous prices, he received rapturous receptions, extra dates had to be added, and a wave of people began copying his style across the region.
In 1882, Oscar Wilde was only 27 years old. His greatest works, such as The Picture of Dorian Grey and The Importance of Being Earnest, would not be written for years. His conviction for “gross indecency” and being sent to prison, which broke him, was still 13 years away. His greatest successes and tragedies still lay ahead of him, so why the public interest from Maritimers in seeing Oscar Wilde?
While he had published some works of poetry already, they generally had not been particularly well received. Indeed, they'd been mocked by critics in London, where he had just moved to from Ireland only a year before his tour. Maritimers weren’t seeing him for his poetry.
Oscar Wilde was, however, seen as the spokesperson for a new movement called Aestheticism. Aestheticism was a philosophy that advocated “art for art’s sake” – that art didn’t need to exist to push a moral or sentimental purpose, but that art could exist for its own sake. It sought to add beauty to everything, not for any particular purpose, but for its own sake. It advocated refined sensibilities and tastes, and putting more work into aspects of one's life to add beauty and art into the everyday, for no reason but for its own sake.
Aestheticism was quite the contrast to Victorian sensibilities, which dominated the day. Victorian culture at the time was heavily conservative, moralistic, materialistic, and utilitarian. This new philosophy was a stark contrast to that dour worldview, and provided people a whole new way of looking at the world and of living, and also of fashion, which was indeed a part of it.
There must have been a longing for something different from Victorian culture at the time because the ideas of aestheticism effectively went viral in England and its colonies in a short amount of time, despite being frowned upon by Victorian elites.
While Victorian fashion was conservative, dark and drab, Oscar Wilde stepped out onto the London scene in stockings and shoe buckles, in velvet clothes and in lacy cuffs and frills, in bright colours, one aspect of putting art into daily life.
Despite all of this, in a modern sense, Oscar Wilde was also famous for being famous. The garish clothes, the outrageous ideas, his wit and charm and ability to speak in memorable quotes and soundbites made him a celebrity in a very modern sense in London. He would almost certainly be a social media sensation if he were alive today, and his youthful fame might be best understood if thought of that way, as a celebrity who keeps being reported on because others are reporting on him.
His fame for his outrageous clothes and Aesthetic beliefs soon reached such a fever pitch in London that W.S. Gilbert – of Gilbert & Sullivan fame – wrote a play that featured a character closely resembling Wilde named Bunthorp. Gilbert described Bunthorp as a “grandiose boob.”
The play was a success in England, with Bunthorp being a particularly popular sensation. Gilbert decided that he wanted to export his play to New York City and have it run on Broadway, but was worried that the American audiences would not understand it, as they were not familiar with Wilde.
Gilbert’s producer approached Wilde and convinced him to come to America with an outrageous series of outfits –including one coat shaped like a cello– and to give a lecture series on Aestheticism.
The producer’s expectation was that Wilde’s appearance and ideas would scandalize the Americans and make the play a big hit. Instead, Wilde charmed the Americans. After his initial rapturous reception in New York City, more dates were added, which took Wilde all over the United States and Canada, and his tour ultimately lasted an entire year.
Wilde came to the Maritimes after touring up through New England, where he had stayed in Boston and used it as a base to speak at smaller towns nearby.
Then Wilde crossed the border into a brand-new country called Canada, which was only 15 years old, coming first to Fredericton, New Brunswick.
The Maritimes were relatively prosperous at the time, with a thriving economy, and there was an air of optimism about a brighter future sweeping the new country.
In these heady and optimistic times, a remarkable amount of interest was paid to the arts by the average Maritimer, with many people from all walks of life attending lectures on art and education in their leisure time in both the big cities and small towns of the region.
Fredericton was the first place Wilde reached in the Maritimes, where he spoke to a sold-out crowd at City Hall.
Fredericton was the home of New Brunswick’s wealthy at the time, and was also the home of the province’s only school for higher education, King’s College, the precursor to the University of New Brunswick.
King’s College was seen by many to be a highly restrictive and sectarian institution, one which was thought to only admit the sons of the wealthiest men in the province –and even then only if they were Protestant and Anglophone. The reformist-minded Premier Albert Smith railed against the privileges of those who attended the school, once calling it “an enclave for the sons of the richest men in the Province.”
Soon after Wilde began his lecture in Fredericton, a large group of students from King’s College loudly marched in, interrupting the lecture. They were all carrying canes and bouquets of flowers, as an exaggerated parody of Wilde’s style. The students caused a scene, stomping, shouting and mocking Wilde, and then arguing with him on the stage. It seems that the Frederictonians in the audience were largely supportive of the students.
Wilde had worn a blue velvet suit to the lecture, which was described as the type “used by the Salvation Army people to draw a crowd.”
Frederictonians also seemed to be particularly upset over Wilde’s flowery and dramatic speaking style, with the line “I have seen wallpaper which must lead a boy brought up under its influence to a career of crime” in particular receiving derision from the audience.
Wilde, for his part, seems to have taken the poor reception in Fredericton in stride, saying of the students, “they were highly intelligent-looking boys, all of them. They had their fun, and I did not mind them.”
The local newspaper, The Fredericton Evening Capital, wrote with a disapproving tone about Wilde: “people found themselves actually face to face with the stocking and shoe buckles, the lace cuffs and the frills, about which so much has been written.” However, the paper grudgingly admitted that his points were sound; “The good common sense which marked the lecturer’s address,” the newspaper said, “was a pleasing contrast to the impression of effeminacy, rather than beauty, which was left by his costume.”
Wilde, for his part, is said to have remarked that the best thing about Fredericton is the river.
After the poor reception in the province’s capital city, Wilde continued to Saint John, where he stayed at the Royal Hotel, which was between King and Germain Streets, and which was demolished in the 1970s.
He spoke at the Mechanics’ Institute to a sold-out crowd, which filled beyond capacity with people standing in the aisles to get a chance to hear him speak. Scalpers outside the venue sold tickets for as much as $3, an exorbitant sum of money for the time, especially when the face value of the ticket was fifty cents a seat, which was already considered to be rather expensive.
Wilde’s lecture topic that evening, to the distinctly working-class audience in New Brunswick’s largest city, was on “The Decorative Arts.”
In contrast to Fredericton’s rather snooty reaction to Wilde, Saint Johners were polite and warm towards Wilde, although perhaps they did not quite understand or approve of his message. The Saint John newspaper took a swipe at the poorly behaved audience in Fredericton the night before, saying, “We are very cosmopolitan for a small town, and don’t hoot a man because he dresses oddly or butts against our notions of things.”
In Saint John, Wilde came across a particular little house, a Queen Anne style cottage, which “delighted him beyond measure” and reminded him of an art gallery in London, and explored it at length, admiring its wood carvings.
While Wilde received a very warm welcome in Saint John to his face, after he left, he was the target of a letter-to-the-editor campaign where complaints about him called him, among other things, a “conceited coxcomb” and a “knight errant of bad taste.” By then Wilde was already in Nova Scotia.
He first spoke at the Academy of Music in Amherst, where he remarked that he’d “never spoken in so small a place before.” He was referring to the town, not the venue.
It was said later that he affected the people of Amherst’s sensibilities for some time after in regards to flowers. Flowers, being beautiful, short-lived, and ultimately not serving much practical purpose, were something that Asceticism was a fan of. Wilde talked up flowers in his speeches, and reporters interviewing him in his hotel rooms often mentioned large bouquets of flowers he had.
A newspaper report later said that “so far as the outward and visible effects of Mr. Wilde’s teachings have become apparent in our social life, they have manifested themselves in an exuberance of flowers.”
Next, Wilde spoke at the YMCA Hall in Truro, and then went on to Halifax, where the Lieutenant Governor sent a carriage to meet Wilde. He was met with great fanfare and acclaim in the city where he stayed in the Waverly Hotel, which is still standing at 1266 Barrington Street.
He delivered a lecture on the decorative arts on the first night, in which he advocated that art be recognised and sought to be added to daily life, as opposed to being revered as something for a special occasion. “The arts are made for life, and not life for the arts,” he told the audience.
The next day, he delivered a lecture to another sold-out Halifax audience about “The House Beautiful,” in effect, on the importance of decorating one's home. The second lecture was considered the better of the two and caused quite a stir in Halifax.
Wilde was immensely popular in Halifax, with a steady stream of well-wishers and reporters wishing to speak with him.
From Halifax, he went to Charlottetown, which provided a stark contrast to his reception in Halifax.
He was absolutely savaged by the local newspaper, The Daily Patriot, which said it “did not appear to us anything remarkable in either his dress, or his personal appearance, or his lecture, certainly not enough to warrant one-tenth part of what has been written about him.”
The newspaper went on to complain about his socks, “which were decidedly baggy” and “not at all different from what we have seen on other young fellows.” They also didn’t care for his hair, saying, “Mr Wilde wears his hair long, but we saw not long ago a Quebec pilot with a longer and a handsomer head of hair.”
Like Fredericton’s newspaper, the Charlottetown paper complained that he was effeminate: “Mr Wilde is too effeminate in his appearance to be a handsome man, and he is too masculine to pass for a good-looking woman.”
From there, Wilde went to Moncton, where he spoke to 400 people at the Methodist Church; however, newspapers like The Montreal Gazette reported another story of what happened: “he had a sad experience in Moncton, being arrested by the YMCA management.”
It seems that the Moncton YMCA had sent a telegram to Wilde soon after his first appearance in New York City, inviting him to appear in Moncton. Wilde replied that he was not available on those dates as he was in America, and tried to reschedule. It seems that the Moncton YMCA did not reply to Wilde.
Months after this, when Wilde did appear in Moncton, the situation had escalated remarkably, with the managers of the YMCA, A.J. Williams and M.J. Hubly, hunting down Wilde. The mood during Wilde’s lecture was described as “tense.”
The managers of the YMCA showed up with the police and a lawyer to try and have Wilde arrested for breach of contract.
The confrontation escalated, and Wilde was threatened that unless he gave $100 to the YMCA, “something unpleasant would happen.” Wilde dismissed the threats from the YMCA, and it seems that he wasn’t particularly concerned.
Ultimately, it turned out that the YMCA managers had badly overstepped their authority and were later reprimanded for their behaviour. While the YMCA never got the $100, the people of Moncton, who were largely on Wilde’s side, raised $35 for the YMCA to placate their surprisingly aggressive managers.
However, a very different story was reported all over North America, that Oscar Wilde had been arrested for breach of contract in Moncton and had to pay a $100 fine. None of that was true, however, and there never was any fine, nor an actual arrest. Then as now, it seems that the facts of the matter would not stop a salacious rumour about a famous celebrity from sweeping the world.
Oscar Wilde then returned to Saint John again for an extra date to deliver the last lecture of his North American tour. Again speaking to a largely working-class audience at the Mechanics Institute, he delivered a lecture on the importance of making the inside of one's house attractive and artful when interior decorating. The audience was very appreciative, and in Saint John, still being a cosmopolitan small town, there were again no reports of hooting.
From there, Oscar Wilde left the Maritimes, returning to New York City. Although he told Saint Johners at his last lecture that he would be travelling onwards to Australia and Japan on his tour, those plans fell through, and he returned to England. He continued to reach giddy career highs after high for years after, before his fall from grace at the peak of his fame and literary prowess, ultimately leading to his early death at the age of only 46 years old. He never would return to the Maritimes, nor would he ever make it to Australia and Japan.
This story appears in the book: Backyard History: Forgotten Stories From Atlantic Canada's Past
