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",
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