On a recent road trip across the West I found myself passing through Leadville, Colorado, elevation 10,152 feet—the highest incorporated city in the U.S. Now a quiet little burg inhabited mostly by mountain climbers, cross-country skiers, and hipsters, Leadville still shows traces of what it must have been in its heyday during the 1880s, when it was a bustling silver mining center with a population of 40,000, the second largest city in the state after Denver. The nightlife of nineteenth-century Leadville, with its numerous bars and its “French” section of town boasting a legion of prostitutes, has dwindled to a few bedraggled watering holes, including a well-preserved saloon with memorabilia celebrating famous inhabitants like Doc Holliday, the Unsinkable Molly Brown, and Baby Doe Tabor.
I was astounded when a local history buff in the saloon informed me that in 1882 the twenty-seven-year-old Oscar Wilde had paid a visit to Leadville, lecturing in the Tabor Opera House on modern aesthetics. What madness was this? Why on earth would the rough miners and gunmen of Leadville care about “The House Beautiful,” Wilde’s standard lecture on his American tour? What could they have made of the egregious fop with his flowing locks, bearing his signature lilies and sunflowers? More interestingly, perhaps, what did Wilde make of Leadville? How did its particular beauty—bleak, wind-swept, but undeniable—accord with his highly civilized, highly European aesthetic theories?
The answer is provided in Roy Morris Jr.’s enlightening and entertaining new book, Declaring His Genius:
