Oscar Wilde Saved from Adoring Fans in Paris

The unveiling on Nov. 30, 2011 of Oscar Wilde’s newly restored tomb in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris was the occasion to pay tribute to the life, talent, celebrity, downfall and death of the great 19th-century Irish writer. We take this opportunity to revisit the turbulent history of the tomb itself, thanks to Sheila Pratschke, Director of the Irish Cultural Center in Paris.
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When Oscar Wilde died in Paris 1900 at the age of 46, he was penniless and bankrupt and all his friends could do was to offer him un enterrement de 6me classe (a sixth class burial) at Bagneux, suburb of Paris. During the next few years his friend and literary executor, Robert Ross, managed, through the sale of Wilde’s works (particularly De Profundis, his long letter from prison to Alfred Douglas), to annul Wilde’s bankruptcy and to purchase a burial plot ‘in perpetuity’ within the city, in Paris’s famed Père Lachaise cemetery.

The following year, Mrs Helen Carew, a friend of Robert Ross and who had known Wilde in his heyday, anonymously offered £2000 to erect a monument by the young and controversial sculptor Jacob Epstein on Wilde’s new resting place in Père Lachaise.

The commission, a flying angel with Assyrian overtones, was executed and finally unveiled in 1914. Apart from the appearance of a few graffiti in the 1950s and the hacking off of the angel’s private parts by person or persons unknown sometime in the early 1960s, the monument survived relatively unscathed until 1985. It was then that the graffiti started to increase exponentially in number.

The expense of regular cleaning prompted the descendants of Wilde and Ross (whose ashes were placed in the tomb in 1950) to seek listing for the tomb as a French Historic Monument, in the hope that classification would, to some extent, deter those who were defacing it.

In 1995, after a thorough cleaning and resoration thanks to the generosity of the Irish government, the Monuments Historiques included it on their ‘Liste Supplementaire’ (the equivalent of about Grade II* in the UK) and suggested that an application be made at once to apply for a full status. This was accorded two years later, almost as a matter of course. Wilde’s tomb in Père Lachaise is now a fully classified French Historic Monument – a Grade I listed structure.

Since about 1999, the graffiti have been replaced by a far more worrying phenomenon – the placing of lipstick kisses on the stone. The grease base of the lipstick penetrates the stone and long after the colouring pigments have faded, a grease ‘shadow’ is still visible. A bronze plaque at the base of the tomb since the early 1990s asking visitors in English and French to “respect the memory of Oscar Wilde and do not deface this tomb…” no longer has any effect at all. ‘Kissing Oscar’s tomb’ on the Paris tourist circuit has become a cult pastime, the continuity of which is proving impossible to break.

From a technical point of view the tomb is close to being irreparably damaged; each cleaning has degraded some of the stone surface and rendered it more porous and has subsequently necessitated a more drastic cleaning.

Now, once again, the Irish have come to the rescue and have funded a radical cleaning and ‘de-greasing’ of the tomb, as well as a glass barrier which will surround it to prevent the lipstick-kissing fans from causing further damage.

The renovation and protection of the tomb was celebrated in Père Lachaise on 30 November, the 111th anniversary of Wilde’s death, in the presence of the Irish Minister of State at the Dept. of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Mr. Dinny McGinley TD, the Irish Ambassador and high-ranking French officials, and Merlin Holland, Wilde’s grandson. The actor Rupert Everett, who has played in film adaptations of Wilde’s plays  The Importance of Being Earnest and The Ideal Husband, was special guest of honour at the event.

It is hoped that the event will draw attention to the problem and will make those who visit Wilde’s tomb from now on aware of the damage their predecessors have caused and appeal to their sense of respect.

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The information above was provided by Sheila Pratschke, Director of the Centre Culturel Irlandais, 5 rue des Irlandais in the 5th arrondissement of Paris.

The France Revisited article “Spotlight on the National and Religious Cultural Centers of Paris” includes information about the Irish Cultural Center.

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Which is your favorite tomb or who is your favority celebrity buried at Pere Lachaise? Write your answer below and tell why?