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"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
(Lady Windemere's Fan)
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was arguably more famous for his
wit and sexuality than his poetry and plays. Although, when reading his
plays you sometimes get the feeling that, rather than a character saying
a line, it's more a Wilde witticism looking for a mouth to say it.
"In married life three is company and two is none."
(The Importance of Being Ernest)
Wilde did marry and have children and tried to conform to Victorian society but was arrested in 1895 for "gross acts of indecency committed with persons of the masculine sex" and was sentenced to two years hard labour. At the time, one of the few commentators to give him a fair hearing was a journalist W.T. Stead (who also did much to expose child prostitution in London). Stead wrote, "If all the persons guilty of Oscar Wilde's offences were to be clapped into gaol, there would be a very surprising exodus from Eton and Harrow, Rugby and Winchester."
"I couldn't help it. I can resist everything except temptation."
(Lady Windemere's Fan) and
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it"
(Picture of Dorian Gray)
Wilde lived his last few years debt-ridden in France amid the ruins of his vast literary reputation. He died a pauper but kept his courage and wit to the end. He died on November 30, 1900 in the Hotel d'Alcace, 13 Rue des Beaux Arts, Paris. One story of Wilde's last words is that, from his deathbed, Wilde opened his eyes, looked at the wallpaper and said…
"One of us has to go."
"Ah, well, then… I suppose that I shall have to
die beyond my means."
(When a fee for an operation was mentioned)
Wilde never wrote a formal will but while he was in Reading Gaol he made his friend, Robbie Ross, his literary executor. After Wilde's death, the London Court of Bankruptcy granted Ross its official blessing. It took six years for Ross to fulfill Wilde's last wish - the settlement of all debts owed to his French creditors.
"All women become like their mothers.
That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his."
(The Importance of Being Ernest)
"There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."
(Picture of Dorian Gray)
Wilde is buried in Pere Lachaise Cemetery near Paris, his gravestone a huge, rectangular tomb that has a postscript "This tomb, the work of Jacob Epstein, was given by a lady as memorial to her admiration of the poet". The tomb is dominated by the figure of a nude, male angel in flight, its penis partially chipped by vandals.
"A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies."
(Picture of Dorian Gray)
The epitaph on Wilde's tomb reads;
"When the Last Trumpet Sounds and We Are Crouched in our Porphyry Tombs, I Shall Turn and Whisper to You Robbie, Robbie, Let Us Pretend We Do Not Hear It."
"He hasn't an enemy in the world, and none of
his friends like him."
(On George Bernard Shaw)
"The English country gentleman galloping after a fox - the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable."
(A Woman of No Importance) "I have nothing to declare except my genius"
(Wilde on entering US Customs)
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