According to biographer Michèle Mendelssohn, Wilde was the subject of anti-Irish caricature and was portrayed as a monkey, a blackface performer and a Christy's Minstrel throughout his career. ""Harper's Weekly" put a sunflower-worshipping monkey dressed as Wilde on the front of the January 1882 issue. The magazine didn't let its reputation for quality impede its expression of what are now considered odious ethnic and racial ideologies. The drawing stimulated other American maligners and, in England, had a full-page reprint in the "Lady's Pictorial". ... When the "National Republican" discussed Wilde, it was to explain 'a few items as to the animal's pedigree.' And on 22 January 1882 the "Washington Post" illustrated the Wild Man of Borneo alongside Oscar Wilde of England and asked 'How far is it from this to this?'" Though his press reception was hostile, Wilde was well received in diverse settings across America; he drank whiskey with miners in Leadville, Colorado, and was fêted at the most fashionable salons in many cities he visited.