The Oscar Wilde centenary

The plays may have been more scandalous than the author's sex life, but visitors still plant sexy kisses on his grave.

By Brent Gregston

Nov 30, 2000 | Oscar Wilde, the 20th century's most famous sexual dissident, has been dead 100 years to the day. From his deathbed in a seedy Paris hotel, he has seeped into our collective consciousness and become a contemporary celebrity almost as popular as Lady Di. More than just a gay martyr, Wilde was a subversive Superman willing to hazard everything. His lectures were camp performance art and his plays celebrated decadence, gender swapping and the "cult of the clitoris." He seems to have been the First Modern Man to emerge from the moralizing slime of the Victorian age.

Wilde's tomb in Père Lachaise has been subjected to clumsy caresses and outright mutilation since he was moved here in 1909. On the first day of this month -- All Saints Day -- his tomb was so smothered in lipstick kisses you could not read his name. This kind of sacrilege forms part of the surreal atmosphere in the Cimitière du Père Lachaise, where lust regularly stalks the dead. (The headstone of Jim Morrison is one of the top attractions in Paris but no longer the scene of orgies because of humorless attendants who are unmoved by pleas to "cancel my subscription to the resurrection.")

Quality time with the deceased Victor Noir is said to increase a woman's fertility, particularly if you touch him there. A 19th century cross between Bob Woodward and Tom Cruise, he was murdered for investigative reporting into the corruption of Napoleon III. The bronze likeness on top of his tomb, with oxidized pants partly unbuttoned, shows him as he must have looked in death at age 22 in 1870. Since then thousands of wannabe-pregnant women -- including my wife -- have fondled his shiny crotch. Passionate kissing has given a gloss to his lips and a gleam to his right big toe.

Today, however, it is Wilde who holds court in this low-rise city of the dead. When I located Wilde's tomb, I found myself floating in a stream of arrivals. The Trinity College Dublin Association was getting ready to place a big pot of lilies at Oscar's feet. "One of Oscar's wishes was to be talked about 100 years after his death" said Anne Fieleman after she set down the pot. "Here we are a hundred years later and we're talking about you, Oscar. I hope others will be talking about you a hundred years from now." An Irish priest then read aloud from Wilde's work and commented: "I think his last writings were full of hope and profoundly Christian and a wonderful meditation for me not only on death but the life that we live out towards death." He asked us to join him in prayer: "Merciful lord, turn towards us and listen to our prayers of Oscar Wilde's centenary anniversary. We ask you to open the Gates of Paradise to Oscar Wilde and we ask you to do that the same way as you opened them to the good thief in Calvary. We make this prayer through Christ our lord, amen."

Before the rest of us could nod and say "amen" a tour group arrived led by a cemetery guide who approached the angel and pointed between its legs. "This is the tomb of the famous Irish writer and homosexual Oscar Wilde," he said in French. "Notice that there is no penis. Queers (pédés) used to come here at night, get on all fours and thread the angel's member into their asses. In 1910, the cemetery guardian had the object of desire removed and it is still used as a paperweight in the office of the cemetery's director." His knowledge of Wilde exhausted, the guide moved on, leading his group to the next stiff, "Madame Piaf."

Next Page: His plays were more of a threat than Wilde the bugger

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