Monday 10 March 1884 was a date for the diary: Wolverhampton had never seen anything quite like it. Frock-coated townsmen, dressed in their usual dark colours and wingcollared shirts, packed the Free Library Lecture Hall alongside corseted wives. In front of them was a veritable peacock: a lecturer – fresh from a successful tour of the United States – who positively abhorred ‘dull’. Men should throw off their sombre hues and don the most joyous of colours, was his rallying cry.
That lecturer, Oscar Wilde, was practising what he preached. With flowing hair, green velvet breeches and silk stockings, he truly had his West Midlands audience glued to their seats – although whether by horror or fascination, it is difficult to say.
‘The local newspaper report on his lecture is hilarious,’ says Helen BrattWyton, senior collections and house manager at Wightwick Manor. ‘Most of it talks
