The Life, Wit, and Writing of Oscar Wilde

"I am not young enough to know everything."

"One can survive anything nowadays, except death, and live down anything except a good reputation."

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

"My Own Boy, Your sonnet is quite lovely, and it is a marvel that those red-roseleaf lips of yours should be made no less for the madness of music and song than for the madness of kissing. Your slim gilt soul walks between passion and poetry. I know Hyacinthus, whom Apollo loved so madly, was you in Greek days. Always, with undying love, Yours, OSCAR."

It seems impossible to sum up in a few words the man, the legend, the genius of Oscar Wilde.  His life is the sort of which countless books have been written, trying to describe the feeling invoked by a short quip from the lips of this amazing author.  His life is one of so much beauty and tragedy, and his memory, to my most humble way of thinking, must be one of wonderment, delight, introspection, and above all, hope. Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on the 16th of October, 1854, in Dublin, Ireland, to his adoring mother, Lady Lane Francesca Wilde, and father Sir William Wilde, Ireland's leading ear and eye surgeon.  He was properly educated at Portora Royal School, Trinity College in Dublin and Magdalen College at Oxford, after which time he began his wonderful writing career.  His works include plays like The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1983), An Ideal Husband (1895), and the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). Oscar married Constance Mary Lloyd in 1884 and they had two sons, Cyril (born in 1885) and Vyvyan (born in 1886).  Though a loving father and husband, Oscar was not a particularly faithful one.  In 1886 he met Robert Baldwin Ross, and it is supposed that with Bobby he had his first "homosexual experience." After that he began to "mark" himself by wearing a green carnation.  In 1891 Bobby introduced Oscar to Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas, and perhaps it was love at first sight. Unfortunately, Bosie's father John Sholto Douglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry, didn't approve of Bosie's "lifestyle", particularly his relationship with Oscar.  The Marquess left a note for Oscar at his club in 1895, which read "For Oscar Wilde, posing as Somdomite."  Oscar sued Queensbury for libel and lost.  The accusations led to two more trials, of which Oscar became the defendant.  On the 25th of May, 1895, Oscar was convicted of sodomy and "gross indecency", and sentenced to two years hard labor at Reading Gaol.  Oscar was forced to sell his household property, his wife died in 1898 without recognition of the marriage on her tombstone, his health never recovered, and he was forced to live in exile on the Continent under the assumed name of Sebastian Melmoth.  He died in a cheap hotel in Paris on the 30th of November, 1900, of cerebral meningitis following an ear infection.  Thus one of the world's greatest playwrights might have passed into obscurity.  Today he is remembered as a brilliant writer, a biting social critic, and a martyr for homosexuality.  I personally will remember him for his intelligence, quick wit, and devotion to the beauty of the written word.

"I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent engagement."

"To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable."

"A cynic is a person who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. "

"What purple valleys of despair one goes through! Fortunately there is one person in the world to love."

"Bosie has insisted on dropping here for sandwiches. He is quite like a narcissus -- so white and gold.... Bosie is so tired; he lies like a hyacinth on the sofa, and I worship him."

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months." "Fashionable is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear. "

"To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance." "The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it."

"Public opinion exists only where there are no ideas." "One should read everything. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read."

"Dearest of all Boys, You are the divine thing I want, the thing of grace and beauty; but I don't know how to do it. Your own, OSCAR"

"Yet each man kills the thing he loves By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!"

Talk with me about Oscar Wilde!

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

Name: Sebastian Melmoth Email: rosebudchik@hotmail.com

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