Handcuffed, standing on a train platform in the rain on his way to Reading Gaol after being convicted of gross indecency, Oscar Wilde, Victorian wit and author of “The Importance of Being Earnest,” muttered, “If the queen can’t treat her prisoners any better than this, she doesn’t deserve to have any.”
Maybe that’s why when he was released two years later in 1897, the Irish-born writer left England, ending up finally in Paris, ill, broke and shunned. More than a century later I end up at the same Right Bank hotel, the modest Hotel Louvre Marsollier Opera, where Wilde spent his next-to-last days until he was kicked out for not paying his bill.
Sitting in my seventh-floor room, the original wood beams running across the ceiling, I grow curious to visit more of the writer’s haunts. With his flair for the original and taste for hedonism, could there be any better partner in crime?
My first stop is Wilde’s last, the vast Pere Lachaise cemetery where he rests in the company of Colette, Chopin, Proust and Jim Morrison. Located in eastern Paris, Pere Lachaise is a gray atmospheric world of its own. Strange phone-booth-sized tombs with peaked roofs vie for space with mournful statues, and amiable cats meow for attention atop weathered slabs of stone. Wandering under a silvery winter sky, I finally find Wilde in Division 89.
His tomb is a huge stone block accompanied by a faintly Sphinx-like winged deity, whose once prominent private part has long disappeared. Unlike other tombs, content to receive flowers, Wilde’s is smothered in lipstick kisses (taupe being a particularly favored shade). Briefly, I consider joining the Oscar Wilde bandwagon and smooching the stone myself, then reject the idea. As Wilde said, “Everything popular is wrong.”
Deciding a cafe would be an appropriate next stop, I head to one of Wilde’s hangouts, the Cafe de la Paix on the Place de l’Opera. Part of the InterContinental Le Grand Hotel, it was built in 1862 during the reign of Napoleon III to reflect the glory of the Second Empire. Cowed by the well-groomed Parisians and lavish surroundings, I scuttle under the ornate gilt ceiling with its blue sky frescoes and take a table on the enclosed terrace.
Budget-wise, my intention is to stick to a $10 cup of tea, but with Wilde whispering into my ear like a devil on my shoulder that “self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity,” I order a $15 soft chocolate cake. Moist, filled with caramel, it’s topped with chocolate, cream and a flake of gold leaf. Digging in, I feel an instant kinship with Wilde, who said he could resist everything except temptation.
While I’m scraping gold leaf off my plate and licking my fork, a handsome young man in a black turtleneck and camouflage pants winds his way through the cafe and approaches my table. I catch the words permettez and invite but not much else. Realizing I’ve understood nothing he’s said, he switches to English.
“I saw you from the street and came in to say, you are beautiful,” he says. “Only that.” He turns and leaves.
Not deterred by the fact that once he’d seen me up close, he’d beat a hasty retreat, I’m filled with a Parisian-fueled bonhomie. Of course I’m not the first person in history to appreciate the attention of beautiful young men. Wilde did too. In fact, it was his affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, 16 years his junior, that caused his downfall after Douglas’ father, the marquis of Queensbury, called Wilde a sodomite. Wilde sued the marquis for libel and lost, which led to Wilde’s own ill-fated court case and subsequent prison term.
In 1900 the marquis died, leaving Douglas a fortune. Here, in the sumptuous Cafe de la Paix, a debt-ridden Wilde asked Douglas if he could have an income from the inheritance. Douglas refused and accused Wilde of wheedling like an old whore.
By now, ejected from the Louvre Marsollier, Wilde was living on the Left Bank at the seedy L’Hotel d’Alsace on the rue des Beaux Arts. I’m not sure he’d recognize it today. Now it’s the intimate four-star L’Hotel, the red marble pillars and muted leopard print carpet more luxe than shabby chic. At the desk I ask the clerk if it’s true that the wallpaper in Wilde’s old room, No. 16, is a replica of the original.
“Oh, no,” replied the woman. “It is from his dining room in London. Because then this was a very bad hotel.”
Bad or not, that wallpaper has a place in history. Not long before his death at the age of 46, some say from syphilis, some say meningitis, he fought his final battle. “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death,” he said. “One or the other of us has to go.”
Sadly, the wallpaper won.
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The three-star Hotel Louvre Marsollier Opera is at 13 rue Marsollier; 011-33-1-42-96-68-14; www.hotellouvremarsollier .com.
The four-star L’Hotel is at 13 rue des Beaux Arts; 011-33-(0)-1-44-41-99-00; www.l-hotel.com.
IN THE WEB EDITION
For the location of more final resting spots, go to chicagotribune.com/famousgraves
