Victor Noir & Oscar Wilde: Two Strange Pilgrimages
Why is it significant?
In front of you a massive block of pale stone carries a strange winged figure, half angel, half Egyptian sphinx, flying forward with closed eyes. Around it stands a sheet of glass, and on the glass... kisses. Dozens of them.
Key Facts
| Place | Victor Noir & Oscar Wilde: Two Strange Pilgrimages |
|---|---|
| Address | Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, Division 89, 16 Rue du Repos, 75020 Paris, France |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.86180, 2.39800 |
| Part of Walk | Rebel Hill: Buttes-Chaumont, Belleville & the Secrets of Père-Lachaise in Paris |
| Generated | Generated |
In front of you a massive block of pale stone carries a strange winged figure, half angel, half Egyptian sphinx, flying forward with closed eyes. Around it stands a sheet of glass, and on the glass... kisses. Dozens of them. This is the tomb of Oscar Wilde, and it has always attracted the wrong kind of affection.
But first, did you spot the bronze man on the way? Victor Noir was a young journalist shot dead in January 1870 by Prince Pierre Bonaparte, a cousin of the emperor, during a quarrel over a duel. Around a hundred thousand people came to his funeral, and the anger fed the opposition that would soon bring down the Second Empire. His bronze effigy shows him just fallen, his hat beside him... and the sculptor gave his trousers a rather noticeable bulge. A legend grew that touching him brings fertility or love, and certain parts of the statue are now polished to a golden shine.
Oscar Wilde's end was far less glamorous than his life. After two years of hard labour in an English prison for gross indecency, the most celebrated wit of London left for France, bankrupt and broken. He died in November 1900 in a cheap hotel on the Left Bank, aged forty-six. His most famous last line, reputedly, was that either the wallpaper went or he did.
He was buried first in a modest grave outside Paris, then moved here in 1909. His friend Robert Ross commissioned this tomb from the young sculptor Jacob Epstein, and when it was unveiled the French authorities found the figure so indecent that they covered it with a tarpaulin. Decades later its private parts were knocked off by vandals. And in recent decades visitors began to cover the stone in lipstick kisses, which ate into it, until a glass barrier went up in 2011. Robert Ross's own ashes were placed inside the tomb in 1950, beside his friend.
Wilde once wrote that the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. Here, he is still talked about every single day. Now walk south-east to the eastern edge of the cemetery, to a plain old wall with a single plaque, where this walk ends.