Horse Feathers

The American expression “horse feathers” is a quaint riposte of contemptuous disbelief to foolish or untrue claims deemed to be as unlikely as feathers on a horse.

Much the same could be said about accounts Oscar Wilde’s visits to various one-horse stops on his American lecture tour—and not least by Wilde himself who acknowledged the West’s “boundless mendacity” in the quotation above.

Oscar meant this kindly—he favored the folklore of the American frontier, and as we know, often welcomed the opportunity for the facts and fiction of his life to become conflated. As Jan Wellington observed in the article Oscar Wilde’s West: “Wilde and the West were myths in process.”

In this article we shall see how those old myths were eventually processed into modern fiction.

The mythology of Wilde’s wanderings in the west usually settles upon Leadville, a fabled mining town in Colorado. In this connection, we are grateful to Rob Marland for recently highlighting that the reported “facts” of Wilde in Leadville—led by Wilde himself—are in fact mostly fiction. Specifically a repeated conceit about Cellini being shot, and the plagiarized anecdote of not shooting the pianist. Both of these witticisms come from Wilde’s lecture ‘Impressions of America‘ where we find other traveler’s tales such as the threatened shooting of his own manager; the “damaged” arms of the Venus de Milo statue; and the moon being more beautiful before the Civil War.

Wilde’s “Impressions’ is so replete with such amusements it is de facto a comedy routine. Yet the stories have been taken at face value in many a literary biography, and rehearsed in countless articles—even a piece in that august publication Cowboy Magazine where one would have expected them to know their oats.

But it’s hardly surprising. The incongruous figure of effete aesthete fraternizing with muscular miners is a seductive premise.

So far there have been a stage play, a TV play, two television episodes, and at least two novels that have capitalized on the idea. And this does not include the opening of the film Wilde (1997) which, apart from appropriating the Leadville bon mots gratuitously into a movie set ten years hence in London, also has Oscar arriving for his lecture in town on horseback, never mind his actual journey in the comfort of a Pullman car.²

This article reviews these various “Wilde West” outings chronologically. You will notice that the titles of these various works did not place too much of a creative strain upon successive authors.

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Wilde West (1955) — TV Play

In 1955 the budding screen writer Elaine Morgan won a Television Play Competition with her “Wilde West” which was subsequently produced by the BBC.

In her memoir Knock ‘Em Cold, Kid (2012) Morgan recalled entering the competition with a story…

“…in which Oscar Wilde on his visit to the United States got stranded overnight, due to some mishap to the wheel of a carriage, among some hillbilly characters. I figured that the cinema-going viewers would have seen enough cowboy films to be comfortable with that setting, the judges could be kept happy with some Wildean epigrams, and the producer would be glad there was only one set and a very cheap one at that. There were over a thousand entries for that competition. And Wilde West was the winner.“

Unfortunately, this “Wilde West” did not prove to be a winner with reviewers, and was poorly, albeit sympathetically, received.

Perhaps the problem, for those who know Wallace & Gromit, was that Oscar’s knee breeches were preemptively the wrong trousers because the actor cast as the Wilde was the debonair future voice of Wallace, Peter Sallis.

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The Ballad of Oscar Wilde (1958) — TV Episode of ‘Have Gun Will Travel’

The idea behind this ballad of Oscar Wilde is that each man kidnaps the thing he loves and so it is that Oscar ends up in the hands of the do-badders.³

He is happily returned, of course, but not before insisting that his captors raise the insulting ransom fivefold from the “measly ten thousand” that was being demanded, “in dollars, mind you”.

Have Gun, Will Travel (1957–1963) was a successful TV series starring Richard Boone as the recurring hero Paladin.

In this episode Wilde was played by the little-known Australian actor John O’Malley who died in August 1959, aged 42, less than a year after the episode first aired on December 6, 1958.

Read more about this in my article here where you can also find a link to the full episode.

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Wilde West (1965) — TV Play (Danish version)

This is a remake of the Elaine Morgan “Wilde West” of ten years earlier (above) but now in a Danish translation by Mette Budtz-Jorgensen. It aired in Denmark on July 7, 1965. Wilde was played by the theater, film, radio, and TV actor Henning Palner.

In this version Oscar is again stranded overnight in a log cabin but this time with Danish speaking hillbillies. As a self-styled lord of language, however, Oskar manages admirably with the native tongue. Neither does the ordeal appear to diminish his charm and manners—as evidenced in the many photographs of the show which, perhaps surprisingly, still exist.

The production stills can be viewed here.

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Wilde West (1988) — Play by Charles Marowitz

This two-act farce, is again set in Leadville, and again repurposes Oscar’s American remarks—not just who shot Cellini but also his earlier opinions about Niagara Falls.

But in addition this “Wilde West” manages a few smart moments of its own. For instance, Oscar is held at gunpoint and when asked whether he is ready to meet his maker says he wouldn’t dream of doing so without an appointment, and besides, “my own calendar is rather full at the moment.”

The premise of the play is that Oscar’s planned Leadville lecture is forestalled at the local saloon owing to some impromptu proceedings—set up with the sole purpose of finding guilty a young outlaw in the Jesse James gang. Oscar intervenes just as the accused is about to be strung-up—his sympathies no doubt stirred by the youth’s “dandelion locks” and “incandescent blue eyes” peering through the noose.

Oscar demands a proper trial, and self-evidently thinks he is qualified to conduct the defense himself because when challenged about his license to practice law, he replies cryptically, “That’s like asking Moses if he got a receipt for the Ten Commandments!”

Neither does the absence of a court recorder prove to be a barrier. The dubious judge in his makeshift barbershop chair protests that, “there ain’t nobody able to read or write here,” which Oscar rationalizes by saying “illiteracy goes under the guise of journalism and is quite respectable” before appointing his tour manager to take everything down—which he clarifies means a transcript, after some confusion.

As for a jury, fortunately on hand is the “Leadville Ladies Esthetic Society,” hosts of their hero’s visit, who quit swooning long enough to be sworn in. They are not disappointed. So sympathetically heart-warming is Oscar’s summing up that the improvised jury organizes a collection for the accused amounting to $56 and a silver brooch.

Once acquitted, there ensues a tug-0f-love for the lad’s loyalties between Oscar and the sexually ambiguous Jesse, which, according to the judge, “we can’t get into with ladies present”—suffice to say it all culminates in the obligatory shoot-out with the Sheriff’s men.

Despite a little anachronistic language, and the fact that in real life Jesse James had died ten days earlier—something the author readily accepts in the foreword—the play really is quite amusing.

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Wilde West (1992) — Novel by Walter Satterthwait

The novel opens with the following undisguised nod to the first line of Joyce’s Ulysses⁴:

STATELY AND PLUMP, OSCAR FINGAL O’Flahertie Wills Wilde lightly with the pale tips of spatulate fingers pressed aside the wooden batwing doors and, regally blinking, sailed forward into the gaudy gaslight glare.

Thereafter, any textual comparison with Joyce ends rather abruptly, but not as abruptly as the lives of several practitioners of the oldest profession, whose careers are graphically cut short with Jack the Ripper precision at successive stops along Wilde’s midwest lecture tour. Oscar becomes the chief murder suspect of the intrepid Marshall Grigsby’s,⁵ of course, and has to clear his name.

Meanwhile, our Wilde Westhete has to negotiate cowboy life in disagreeable surroundings. When local magnates present him with their labor-saving machines of manufacturing progress, Oscar dismisses their industrial revolution with the reflection that, “the road to Hell is paved with good inventions.”

Unsurprisingly, this being the outlaw west as well. firearms are to the fore. Oscar defines gunfights as the local equivalent of cricket, except that “cricket is more deadly”.⁶ We even notice that the printer’s devices used to separate text in the book are little guns instead of decorative ornaments. All of which probably bears out the authors observation that American men remain adolescent until the the age of 60 at which point they become toddlers.

In summary there are lots of earthy goings-on delivered in a rich prose, or as Michael Seeney described it at the time: the story adds little, if anything, to our understanding of Wilde, but is a wonderful concoction.⁷

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Oscar (1993) — TV Episode of ‘The Adventures of Ned Blessing’

This episode of the 1993 CBS made-for-TV mini-series The Adventures of Ned Blessing with Stephen Fry as guest star is titled simply ‘Oscar’.

You could be forgiven for not knowing about it. Not even Fry himself recalled it in an interview with Barry Norman in 1997 at the time of the movie Wilde when he gave the distinct impression that he had not yet had a chance to play Wilde. Yet here he was back in 1993 getting into hot water in more ways than one between lectures in San Antonio and Galveston.

The poetic Oscar “swishy-pants”, as he is referred to in the story, saves the day by overpowering an armed thug despite his hands being tied behind his back and with his head in a hangman’s noose. Frankly, the scene in which Oscar takes a bath with two old men in barn is far more believable.

The Ned Blessing series first aired in 1993. And, predictably, it last aired in 1993 as well. The Stephen Fry episode was the fourth of four, and after Oscar rides off into the sunset under a Japanese parasol they stopped making ’em.

Read more about it in my article here where you can also watch the full episode.

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Stoker’s Wilde West (2020) — Novel by Steven Hopstaken, Melissa Prusi

The title Stoker’s Wilde West (2020), published by Flame Tree Press, is one word longer and appears one year later than its predecessor Stoker’s Wilde (2019)—and in keeping with Bram Stoker’s Dracula, is epistolary.

From what I can glean, the story begins with Willie Wilde apparently transformed into a rabid dog on the loose in the London fog “all fangs and growls” with a “great bushy tail.”

Werewolf Willie sets about wreaking havoc along the Thames embankment stopping only for a canine comfort break against Cleopatra’s Needle, until he is captured by Oscar half way up a lamppost using a chicken as bait and a handy wad of chloroform.

This is probably all one needs to know and, quite possibly, more than one wants to know. Besides, it is all I do know from the book’s sample pages—except that the action must eventually switch to America to fulfill its remit.

So for an otherworldly overview of the book’s new world shenanigans we must depend upon the publisher’s blurb as follows:

Thinking they have put their monster-hunting days behind them, Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker return to their normal lives. But when their old ally Robert Roosevelt and his nephew Teddy find a new nest of vampires, they are once again pulled into the world of the supernatural, this time in the American West. A train robbery by a band of vampire gunslingers sets off a series of events that puts Bram on the run, Oscar leading a rescue party and our heroes being pursued by an unstoppable vampire bounty hunter who rides a dead, reanimated horse.

To which one might add…feathers.

© John Cooper, 2025.

[Realists among us may wish to know that the real Oscar Wilde did meet the real Buffalo Bill (William Cody)—see below for various documents including Constance Wilde’s invitation and follow-up note to him.]

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NOT RELATED—The scholarly Wilde West:

Novak, Daniel A. “Performing the ‘Wilde West’: Victorian Afterlives, Sexual Performance, and the American West.” Victorian Studies 54, no. 3 (2012): 451–63. Published: Indiana University Press. Link.

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Footnotes:

1. Court and Society Review, March 23, 1887. (Anon.)
   The American invasion in question was the 1887 British tour of ‘Buffalo Bill’s Wilde West’ show. Wilde, who shared a love of the American West, concluded this quotation by saying: “This is what Buffalo Bill is going to bring to London; and we have no doubt that London will fully appreciate his show.” ↩︎
2. This idea echoes Wilde’s own fiction in his Newdigate Prize winning poem ‘Ravenna’ when he says of his train arrival in that city:
   I rode at will; the moist glad air was sweet,
   The white road rang beneath my horse’s feet, ↩︎
3. “The Do-Badder” is also the title of an episode of Gunsmoke: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0594425/ ↩︎
4. Opening line of James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922): STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. ↩︎
5. cf. Gribsby: a deleted character in the original four act version of The Importance of Being Earnest.
   cf. Griggsville: a rural town in Illinois that Wilde referenced as Grigsville to humorous effect in his lecture ‘Impressions of America.’ ↩︎
6. See article: Indecent Postures. ↩︎
7. Michael Seeney, ‘The Fictional Career Of Oscar Wilde’, The Wildean No. 9 (July 1996). 39-50. ↩︎

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