Wilde’s charismatic web
Oscar Wilde’s Paris: Legends and Legacies
by Collette Colligan and Gregory Mackie (eds.)
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2025
$90 / 9781487541415
Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski
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There are few cities that deliver as much iconic punch as Paris, both for its impact on the popular imagination and for its artistic clout. Deeply alluring, it is also ever so slightly dangerous. Exactly the same could be said about Oscar Wilde, famed for his verbal brilliance, provocative wit, aesthetically “decadent” lifestyle, and, ultimately, infamous for his homosexuality. Obviously, any work designed to explore the association between the city and the man could easily become sensationalistic. A collection of essays entitled Oscar Wilde’s Paris: Legends and Legacies, funded in part by the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University, does indeed reveal much that is sensational—yet uses approaches that aren’t themselves even remotely sensational.
On the contrary, almost everything about this book is careful, measured, and studied. Handling a figure who, as the subtitle suggests, has been subject to speculation and hearsay—but also adulation and condemnation—this book is almost entirely based on careful screening of evidence and extensive documentation. Only one of the pieces—forthrightly—makes a point of being “counterfactual” (but in order to make a point). Although it is essentially biographical, the book differs from such biographies as Neil McKenna’s The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde (2003), a book that goes beyond documentation in order to interpret Wilde’s inner life. Instead, it consistently employs the biographical method that, for example, serves Richard Ellmann so fundamentally in his definitive and carefully researched Oscar Wilde (1988). The distinction is all the more important because, though some writers generate myths through their very reclusiveness (think: J.D. Salinger), Wilde more than just about any other writer spun such a charismatic web in the public eye that the real man could all but disappear behind the myths.
The very organization of the book reflects this care. Dividing the book into five parts, each clearly identified with an analytically-based angle, the editors, Gregory Mackie of the University of British Columbia and Collette Carrigan of the Université d’Angers, France, subdivide each of these five parts further into two essays of nearly equal length. By means of their introduction the editors further clarify the pattern of the book and, importantly, evoke the central principle echoed in different ways by the contributors: that is, as they argue, the connection between the redoubtable Wilde and the storied city is reciprocally charged. Just as Wilde’s imagination and values were penetrated by Paris, they point out, so the city itself (at least in some ways) continues to feed off the fame—and infamy—of the Irish author: “Wilde’s ghost wanders the cemeteries, hotels, and libraries in the many arrondissements of Paris, while his admirers continue to seek to be possessed by him.” This “mythic association” may well be, they point out, “commonplace,” but they work to expand on both its genesis and its “persistence.”
The first part, “Wilde City,” is based primarily on the three main periods of the relationship between writer and city. Initially entranced by the most established of Paris’ writers, artists, and society members, Wilde later found that Paris was “the springboard for a rebellious aesthetic and an erotic imagination that were constitutive for him, both in art and in life.”
Part Two, “Journalistic Advocacy,” operates in largely a countercurrent, evolving in the wake of Wilde’s calamitous incarceration in 1895 to two years of “hard labour” for “gross indecency”—importantly, in Britain. Initially judgemental about Wilde, “the Parisian journalists collectively turned the Wilde scandal into a larger outcry against oral hypocrisy and carceral injustice and, in the process, centred Paris as a site of queer advocacy and as a stage for Wilde’s eventual resurgence.”
“Archive and Anecdote,” the third part, is all the more focused on scrupulous use of evidence as “the embattled secular saint,” impoverished and doomed to die young, was increasingly immersed in a “patchwork of facts and anecdotes”—especially after his (much embellished) death. By the fourth section, “Literary Influence and Appropriation,” the real Wilde, already partly occluded by invention, drifts further into the background, as two French writers, Pierre Louÿs and Jacques d’Adelswärd Fersen, take centre stage, the first immersed in eddies of association and influence, the second a spinner of weird and wonderful imitation. Even further, by Part Five, “Legend and Legacy,” Wilde has all but sublimated out of the text: in the first of the two essays the focus is on funereal monuments and in the second on an entirely spurious correspondence. It is something of a testament to the remarkable impact of the man that even in these last sections, far removed from the scene, he could hardly feel more present.
While some might legitimately feel that this book best serves those with a specialized knowledge of and interest in Wilde, in fact there is much to fascinate even those with only a casual acquaintance, those, for example, who know Wilde chiefly through The Importance of Being Earnest or The Picture of Dorian Grey, and, possibly through reputation or extract, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” or Richard Strauss’ (faithful) operatic version of Salome. Even without much previous knowledge, readers will find that in the course of the book one work in particular, De Profundis, because of its role in Wilde’s last years in Paris, becomes familiar.
Quite apart from its treatment of Wilde, the book creates a fascinating evocation of Paris itself—especially since the celebrated versions of the Paris of The Merry Widow at one social extreme or of La Bohème at the other are very much part of Wilde’s story. Within this diverse world of creativity we become aware of such giants as Flaubert, Mallarmé, Zola, and, perhaps most remarkable for his role in Wilde’s life, Gide. Those, likewise, with only a passing acquaintance with the principles of Decadence and the Symbolists will find plenty of evocative situations, images, and incidents colouring the world of Wilde’s Paris. As Nicholas Frankel writes, “Paris needs to be understood critically for its structural position and symbolic power within the larger world of letters…as a specific field of cultural production.”
Even more central to the impact of the city in the book, of course, is the fact that Wilde himself felt Paris to be “the centre of art, the artistic capital of the world.” In these terms, and further along the rocky road of his own connection to the city, Paris was the site of “Wilde’s effort to re-establish and reassert the position he had occupied—at least in his own mind—as a literary figure….” The map of Paris that Paisley Mann provides as the basis of her chapter brings the city even more to the forefront of the book’s appeal. Her demonstrating, for example, the “vibrancy and singularity” surrounding an “outdoor table at Café de la Paix” is as vivid a part of Paris, as less salubrious places like the “Hôtel Marsollier” and it’s “evil proprietor” in the Opéra district.
Many will find that a second appeal of this collection is that it provides a sense of discovery. Nearly all of the chapters make clear that they are bringing to light either that which has been obscured by misrepresentation, or that which has been overlooked: in either case the sense of an argued position energizes even the most detail-based study. Colette Colligan, for example, in her piece on the change in journalists’ attitudes towards Wilde, states: “Because the news coverage within its wider communications milieu has been overlooked this shift has largely gone undetected until now.” Likewise, Petra Dierkes writes, “I wish to call attention to the importance of the Mercure de France’s championing of Wilde’s work in France from the 1890s to the 1920s….”
In Joseph Bristow’s chapter on “Disputed Memories” around Wilde’s deathbed, this sense of discovery takes the form of detective work, in this case, his attempts to penetrate the truth behind the “Tall tales about Wilde’s death” that “persisted for many decades afterwards.” A “pamphlet mistakenly claiming that the deceased’s body was riddled with a distinctly sexual malady” is only one of the most grisly. Somehow the fact that Bristow concludes that the full truth can never be fully known adds special poignancy: “In the end, the one matter on which we can agree is that Wilde died before his time.” For Rebecca N. Mitchell, the tale-spinning, in this case around Wilde’s famous spontaneous wit, is in some ways more problematic: she has to deal not just with taking a fine-tooth comb to the written evidence of his “tinkering” with his words, but also with the fact that the claims of serious biographers that Wilde was “always prepared with a smart and pithy one-liner” seem to be spun from a “sparsity of …the archival evidence.” One of his most famous epigrams, for example, “the only duty in life is to be as artificial as possible” elsewhere employs the words “the first duty” instead of “the only duty”—and, indeed, has several other variations.
For many, a third draw of the book will be the fact that, though each of Wilde’s three different periods of, and associations with, Paris are reflected in the book, most of the chapters are fuelled in one way or another by the wrenching drama evolving from his incarceration in Britain and subsequent treatment in Paris. Barely a page goes by without the reader feeling the brooding sorrow of Wilde’s final suffering and early death. While Bristow differs from most in dealing explicitly with the actual facts of Wilde’s death, the death is given almost equal heft in Ellen Crowell’s chapter about the funeral memorial by Jacob Epstein. The astounding impact of Wilde’s death, as she makes amply clear, was reflected even in the contentious decision to give the privately funded commission to the already controversial Jacob Epstein. The impact of his death was even more striking in the public reactions to the massive, early modernist sculpture of a stylized, winged figure evocative of ancient Assyria. Contrasting Epstein’s treatment with the sculptural approach of Wilde’s friend Ricketts, as well as documenting passionate responses of journalists and adoring public, she goes far beyond the mandate of her chapter’s title and what it suggests of the “Aesthetics of the Queer Memorial.”
A fourth and, in some ways, more surprising element of the book is the extraordinary, little-known characters whom it documents. Four in particular stand out. First, Petra Dierkes writes about a journalist who was especially staunch in Wilde’s defence: Henry-D. Davray “became a crucial collaborator and strategic advocate for Wilde.…” Not content with just journalistic support, he translated both De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol, and “topped off this intense publishing streak with his own biographical work….” Another memorable character, fellow writer Pierre Louÿs, is brought to life by Clément Dessy and Stefano Evangelista as they trace the trail of the man who initially linked his star closely with Wilde’s, only to distance himself after the public scandals. While repeatedly emphasizing that they are following sometimes elusive threads of evidence, they conclude that “Wilde and Louÿs built together a highly performative cult of beauty based on the provocative idea that artificiality and illusion could open up a path to authenticity and ‘truth.’”
Equally striking but more problematic, as Gregory Mackie shows, was the American fraudster, “a daring, queer American writer and impostor whose real name was Brett Holland.” The spurious claims of this so-called “Sylvestre Dorian” to reveal Wilde’s correspondence with Sarah Bernhardt, became even more preposterous when he went so far as to concoct a revelation of Wilde’s transgender identity. Most colourful perhaps, as Kristin Mahoney presents him, is the utterly bizarre Jacques d’Adelswärd Fersen. Not only did this charmless and apparently talentless Parisian parade an outrageously decadent lifestyle, but, in a novel, “Fersen imagines himself into a love affair with Wilde, attempting to entangle his persona with the figure upon which it is modelled, placing himself at the centre of Wilde’s tragedy.”
Looming over all of these compelling elements of the book, of course, is Wilde himself. While those who know only a little of Wilde may well want to accompany this book with one of the established biographies, even those who don’t can’t help but leave the book haunted —as much as Paris itself is—by the spectre of the poignantly-storied man.
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Theo Dombrowski grew up in Port Alberni and studied at UVic and later in Nova Scotia and London, England. With a doctorate in English literature, he returned to teach at Royal Roads, UVic, and finally Lester Pearson College in Metchosin. He also studied painting and drawing at Banff School of Fine Arts and UVic. He lives at Nanoose Bay. You can visit his website here. [Editor’s note: Theo Dombrowski has reviewed books by Patricia Bovey, David Gurr, Carla-Jean Stokes, Gail Sidone Šobat, Alan Twigg, and Ian Williams for The British Columbia Review.]
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The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie
Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
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