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Massachusetts
Music Hall
Tuesday, January 31, 1882
The English Renaissance
Newspaper report
The Paterson Weekly Press, Feb 2, 1882, 2
This was the lecture when about 60 Harvard freshmen occupied the front rows dressed to imitate their aesthetic lecturer. Wilde, having changed his costume before coming on stage, looked around the hall and said: "Save me from my disciples!" (Harvard Crimson, Feb 1, 1882).
Michèle Mendelssohn posits that Wilde and his management had orchestrated this stunt by the students to redress the damage to Wilde reputation being perpetrated by those with a vested interest in his being used as a figure of ridicule.
Making Oscar Wilde, OUP Oxford (2018) p. 112.
Music Hall
Music Hall Place, off Winter Street, Boston, MA (now 1 Hamilton Place off Tremont Street)
Built: 1852
Closed: 1900, converted for vaudeville use as the Orpheum Theatre
Substantially rebuilt: 1915 as a movie theater (The Orpheum), Thomas W. Lamb, architect
Building extant
Vendome Hotel
SW corner of Commonwealth Avenue and Dartmouth Street, Boston, MA
Built: 1871 (William G. Preston, architect)
Sold: 1879
Expanded: 1881-82 (J.F. Ober, architect)
Sold: 1971, renovated
Partially destroyed (fire): June 17, 1972*. Subsequently rebuilt
Extant as an office and condominium complex
* In terms of loss of life, the Vendome fire is the worst fire-fighting disaster in Boston history. Nine fire-fighters died when a 40-by-45 foot section of wall collapsed burying a ladder truck (Ladder 15) and seventeen firefighters beneath a two-story pile of debris.
Oscar Wilde In America | © John Cooper, 2025
