Turn of the Crank

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Oscar Wilde on Machines

The irresistible force of the industrial revolution meets the
immovable objection of the aesthetic movement.

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The reasons for Oscar Wilde’s much-heralded lecture tour of America seemed clear enough: to promote Gilbert & Sullivan’s latest operetta, Patience, while conducting a series of lectures on subjects of his own choosing.

At least that was the undertaking devised by the theatrical impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte.

Any suggestion that Oscar might, meanwhile, attempt to inculcate the American masses with what he perceived as much-needed ideas about art and aesthetics, would be entirely ulterior.

But Oscar made it his self-imposed mission to do just that.

By the time Oscar Wilde reached Chicago in the heartland of the manufacturing Midwest, he had encountered American machines on a large scale: in dock yards, at train depots, and notably when baited by a reporter to see anything aesthetic in a New Jersey grain elevator—but as the satanic mill in question was on the other side of the river, Oscar sidestepped the appraisal by saying he was too shortsighted to give an opinion.¹

And thus was Oscar ever ready with a memorable remark—a penchant that makes it possible for us to follow his flirtation with the mechanically-minded in a series of quotations.

He began his commentary in cultural terms with a secure grasp of the self-evident:

Oscar’s college debating society could have told him this was a logical fallacy: an appeal to antiquity does not constitute an argument. It would take Oscar a few more years to factor in that his beloved ancients who built the pyramids or the Parthenon, might have been grateful for the odd steam engine or two to make their classical lives a little more civilized.²

But he was quick enough for now to back-pedal somewhat when he gave an interview the same day to another Chicago newspaper :

This was still too poetic an argument for pragmatic Americans of the 1880s, who we can safely suppose were suspicious of being lectured to by an effeminate scribbler of the flimsy school with a short track record and even shorter pants.

The Chicago Water Tower

Undaunted, Oscar gave his first lecture in Chicago on February 13, 1882 on the subject of The Decorative Arts. And as he often included local observations, he took the opportunity to take aim at a heroic piece of civic architecture: the imposing (154 feet) water tower built in 1869.³

He described it peremptorily thus:

With this idea Wilde was echoing Hazlitt, who had said the Brighton Pavilion was “like a collection of stone pumpkins and pepper boxes.⁴

Oscar, of course went further, imagining mailed knights peering over the ramparts, and while this was not strictly an architectural critique, he probably thought he was titled to his opinion about the building.

But when a reporter informed him that he had also offended the good citizens of Chicago, Oscar thought it was all too ridiculous, and his fairly abrupt response was: “I can’t help that!”

Offended himself, he went on to malign the entire city:

Reinventing the Wheel

A month later, Oscar had to return to Chicago for a second lecture.

It was perhaps while shooting the breeze with Windy City dignitaries, that Oscar sensed the currents were against him. So he took a closer look at the Water Tower. He must have realized that having gone on record denigrating the outside of the structure—critique of surfaces that he was—the only slipstream of redemption lay on the inside:

Interior of the Chicago Pumping Station (1875)

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Wilde departed Chicago as one does Dodge City, armed, but now with the revised tactic of turning his critical faculty to the interior—which happened to be in keeping with his new lecturing subject of The House Beautiful.

Oscar determined that the most disagreeable offender indoors was the American pot-bellied stove, He thought that the way people made stoves was an outrage. If we must have the horrid, dreadful thing with their black alien bodies and ugly coiling pipe, he said, let us have them plain and an ornament…

Wilde continued in this unrepentant vein as he progressed across the Midwest. Little wonder that sensible Americans demanded a more reasoned rationale for his evident culture shock. Just how was the romantic tradition being assailed?

When pressed on this very point by a reporter, Oscar was in no doubt as to the cause:

By quixotically blaming the demise of the Venetian gondola on the founding of New World, Oscar had conveniently overlooked that it was those two renaissance Italians, Columbus and Vespucci, who had discovered America in the first place. Or, as Oscar once stooped to observe, “detected it“.

And so it was with pronouncements like these that the press was prompted to label Wilde as a charlatan and a crank. Would such admonishment mean that Wilde’s objection was movable after all? Was the crank for turning?

Machine-Like

Upon his return to Britain Oscar penned his Impressions of America.

Cognizant that not everybody back home would read The Chicago Daily Tribune he massaged his most favorable mot, and being no stranger to hyperbole put it this way:

© John Cooper, 2023.

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Footnotes:

1. Oscar Wilde. The Evening Post (New York), Jan 4, 1882, 4. ↩︎
2. The Soul of Man Under Socialism, 1891. ↩︎
3. The Chicago Water Tower, 806 North Michigan Avenue, between E. Chicago Ave. and E. Pearson St., Chicago, IL (then Lincoln Parkway):
   Built: 1869 (architect William W. Boyington), extant
   Renovated: 1913–1916
   Renovated: 1978
   Current use: Chicago Office of Tourism art gallery. ↩︎
4. Notes of a Journey Through France and Italy, 1826, ch. 1. ↩︎

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