A Wilde Story

A “Cliff Notes” Story

November 2024

Oscar Wilde was a celebrity in his own time and more than a century later, his prestige has only grown. He was a playwright beloved for his flamboyance, celebrated today by the LGBTQ+ community for his honest and open depictions of queer romance. Before his meteoric rise, Wilde began his life in Dublin with a very long name: Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde. He later quipped, “My Irish accent was one of the many things I forgot at Oxford.”

By 1881 at the age of 27, he entered the public eye and became a proponent of “Asceticism,” the doctrine that art exists for the sake of its beauty alone. This subject was so popular that the next year, 1882, Wilde created his Great American Tour, where he lectured on the topic of style. By giving these talks the playwright was able to earn an income from admission sales while visiting resorts across the continent. He was able to explore places like Quebec City, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Denver. Closer to the Palisades, he frequented resorts in the Catskills and spent time in New York City going to plays and seeing the sights. Not all public attention was positive, however, and Oscar Wilde had to overcome local hostility.

During the month of August, Wilde gave lectures on the shore in New Jersey, stopping at Sea Bright and Long Branch. On August 23rd, 1882, he was scheduled to give a lecture in Spring Lake, New Jersey, though he never made an appearance. This caused outrage among bathers, resulting in a startling sight:

Known as “The Sunflower” by supporters and critics alike, Oscar Wilde caricatures were commonly recognized by a sunflower cravat, as this effigy was decorated with. Sources say Wilde was “scarce” on the 23rd, though he gave a lecture the day before in Long Branch, and the next day he spoke in Asbury Park.

This is where the story ran cold, until our Public History department unwittingly stumbled across the trail…

For one of our “Historic Palisaders” social media posts, park staff wanted to highlight Oscar Wilde. We happened to have a newspaper clipping mentioning that the playwright gave a lecture at the Palisades Mountain House:

This massive hotel overlooked the Palisades in what is now Englewood Cliffs, and was an important resort destination for those who wished to escape city life and breathe in the fresh Jersey air. Vacationers could take a steamboat from lower Manhattan to a new landing built for the hotel, then take a carriage up a narrow roadway to the top of the Palisades. (This road was also built for the hotel, and decades later was widened by the park to become Dyckman Hill Road.) From the summit, the gargantuan building would be within sight. If you came by railroad, you would be dropped off at the Englewood station and travel in a less dramatic, but more pragmatic carriage route to your destination.

We contacted Vanessa Heron, chairwoman of the Oscar Wilde Society in London, who referred us to John Cooper as an authority on Oscar Wilde in America. Through our correspondence with him, we were able to fully realize the importance of our newspaper clipping: a “new” lecture that was not known beforehand. To make matters more befuddling, the Palisades Mountain House was advertised as hosting Oscar Wilde the same exact day as the Spring Lake lecture!

Since the newspaper that this clipping is from has not been digitized, our staff then visited the Johnson Public Library in Hackensack, where we went through microfilm scans of the three newspapers operating in Bergen County during 1882. Resource Librarian Rosaline was incredibly helpful, and through her assistance we were able to find a second Oscar Wilde mention on August 22, 1882 — a day before the possible lecture at the Palisades Mountain House.

Just when we thought we knew the story, the plot thickened further… John Cooper made another discovery! Apparently there was a bogus agent who during the same week in August 1882 decided to book a fake Wilde lecture in Port Jervis, New York.

This phony managed to bamboozle an entire town and run off with the admission fees. Could the Palisades Mountain House have been a victim of the same hoax?

Oscar Wilde lectured on the topic of Aestheticism and style, drawing crowds across the continent. Perhaps the Palisades Mountain House embraced a similar spirit because within the next few years they tried to paint the exterior of their hotel a bright red with olive green trimmings. While the painting process was happening in 1884, the entire resort succumbed to a large fire. If there were any autographs or photographs of an Oscar Wilde lecture at the Palisades Mountain House, they would have burned along with the rest of the building.

We cannot know for certain if Oscar Wilde actually gave this lecture, or if he was a no-show as in Spring Lake — or if it was a bogus agent out to make a quick buck. The day after, he lectured in Asbury Park. It would have been possible to take the new (1881) railroad line from Englewood down to Asbury Park within a day. Though it seems a strange itinerary, Oscar Wilde made similar “jumps” during his time in the Catskills.

Now, we know less than ever where Oscar Wilde was on August 23, 1882! Whether or not the playwright set foot in the Palisades Mountain House is still a subject for ongoing research, but he leaves us with a story that keeps us entertained and wanting to find out more.

In 1895 “The Sunflower” would be imprisoned for two years on suspicion of homosexual acts. He would not receive a pardon until 2017 under “Turing’s Law,” which pardoned over 50,000 gay men in the United Kingdom living or dead who were convicted for being LGBTQ+.

– Francesca Costa –