Wilde had come to the United States for a lecture tour. He was part of a movement of literature and art known as Aestheticism, which valued beauty in art over moral or sentimental ideas. The lecture tour was set up for an unusual reason. The comic opera duo Gilbert and Sullivan wrote an operetta called Patience (1881), which poked fun at the Aesthetic movement. It was a big success in England and New York, but Gilbert and Sullivan’s manager, Richard D’Oyly Carte, was concerned that the rest of the United States wouldn’t know what Aestheticism was, and they wouldn’t think Patience was funny. So in order to educate the general public about Aestheticism before trying to satirize it, he decided to arrange for a lecture tour from England’s most prominent Aesthete personality, Oscar Wilde.

Wilde’s lectures got a lot of criticism. Many people thought he was ridiculous. But he got to meet American personalities like Walt Whitman and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. And his lecture tour did well in surprising places, like the rough mining town of Leadville, Colorado, where he was a hit. It was there in Leadville that he saw a sign at the local salon that said: “Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.” Oscar Wilde later said that it was “the only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across.”

(via thelifeguardlibrarian)