though Willie was always her favourite.
Oscar returned to England in April, 1883, and lectured to the Art
Students at their club in Golden Square. This at once brought about a
break with Whistler who accused him of plagiarism:--"Picking from our
platters the plums for the puddings he peddles in the provinces."
If one compares this lecture with Oscar's on "The English Renaissance
of Art," delivered in New York only a year before, and with Whistler's
well-known opinions, it is impossible not to admit that the charge was
justified. Such phrases as "artists are not to copy beauty but to
create it ... a picture is a purely decorative thing," proclaim their
author.
The long newspaper wrangle between the two was brought to a head in
1885, when Whistler gave his famous _Ten o'clock_ discourse on Art.
This lecture was infinitely better than any of Oscar Wilde's. Twenty
odd years older than Wilde, Whistler was a master of all his
resources: he was not only witty, but he had new views on art and
original ideas. As a great artist he knew that "there never was an
artistic period. There never was an Art-loving nation." Again and
again he reached pure beauty of expression. The masterly persiflage,
too, filled me with admiration and I declared that the lecture ranked
with the best ever heard in London with Coleridge's on Shakespeare and
Carlyle's on Heroes. To my astonishment Oscar would not admit the
superlative quality of Whistler's talk; he thought the message
paradoxical and the ridicule of the professors too bitter.
"Whistler's like a wasp," he cried, "and carries about with him a
poisoned sting." Oscar's kindly sweet nature revolted against the
disdainful aggressiveness of Whistler's attitude. Besides, in essence,
Whistler's lecture was an attack on the academic theory taught in the
universities, and defended naturally by a young scholar like Oscar
Wilde. Whistler's view that the artist was sporadic, a happy chance, a
"sport," in fact, was a new view, and Oscar had not yet reached this
level; he reviewed the master in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, a review
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