Oscar Wilde is reputed to have gazed at the wallpaper in his room in his last hours, and to have observed wryly. In 1963 “The Birmingham Post” of England printed the following version of the anecdote: 7 ‘It is killing me’, he moaned, adding with a sigh of resignation as if he had already succumbed ‘one of us had to go.’ In 1962 biographer Hesketh Pearson published “Lives of the Wits”, and the chapter about Oscar Wilde contained the following: 6Īt times he thrust his hand into his mouth to prevent himself from crying aloud in agony, and once he took it out to speak bitterly of his bedroom wallpaper.
In 1954 “The Sphere” newspaper of London printed a slightly different version of the remark: 5Īmong famous last words, not officially credited but widely circulated, were the words of Oscar Wilde- “My wallpaper is killing me-one of us must go.” Wallpaper does indeed vary in appeal from the sublime to the unspeakable. “This wallpaper is killing me one of us must go.”-Oscar Wilde, when on his deathbed 50 years ago to-day. In 1950 the “Liverpool Echo” of England published the following short item within a section titled “Echoes and Gossip of the Day”: 4 His propaganda of art was not lost, for his very eccentricities, his abuse and ridicule by the Press, spread the gospel among the people. This is what Oscar Wilde did for the great mass of the people-the artisans, the mechanics and even the labourers. The useful is combined with the beautiful. To-day, the horse-hair covered furniture, the ugly wall-paper and coarse stone-ware china, the decorative fly-papers, the glaringly defective house architecture with its ungainly lines and grotesque angles, has disappeared. the impression which Oscar Wilde made on the taste of the American in the matter of home decoration, was a lasting one. She did not mention the wallpaper tale, but she did discuss Wilde’s taste and its effect on home décor in the U.S.: 3 In 1911 writer Anna de Brémont published a memoir about “Oscar Wilde and His Mother”. He was in great poverty, often without money for food, and declared that it was his wallpaper that was killing him. He died in great agony, thrusting his hand into his mouth to stop his cries. Says he had met at Maud Gonne’s place last night a friend of Oscar Wilde who told him a strange heroic story about Wilde. An entry dated 1928 referred to a letter she had received two decades earlier in 1908 from the well-known Irish poet William Butler Yeats: 2Ĭame upon a letter from Paris, December 1908, from W. Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.Īnother fascinating piece of indirect evidence for the wallpaper tale appeared in the personal journal of the influential Irish literary figure Lady Gregory. “ - You see, my dear child, he said to me, there is a duel to the death between me and my wallpaper. And he who had been the aesthete of the London gentry, suffered horribly from this misery symbolized for him by the appalling “modern-style” wallpaper with chocolate flowers on a blue background. He lived in a miserable furnished room at the Hotel d’Alsace on rue des Beaux-Arts. « - Voyez-vous, ma chère enfant, me disait-il, il y a un duel à mort entre moi et mon papier de tenture.
Et lui qui avait été l’esthète de la gentry londonienne, souffrait horriblement de cette misère symbolisée pour lui dans l’épouvantable papier « modern-style » à fleurs chocolat sur fond bleu. Il vivait dans une misérable chambre meublée, à l’hôtel d’Alsace, rue des Beaux-Arts.
The original French text is followed by one possible English translation. Pratz told Saix about the hotel room that Wilde stayed in during his last days. Writer Léon Guillot de Saix interviewed Pratz and others for an article titled “Souvenirs Inédits Sur Oscar Wilde” (“Unpublished Memories About Oscar Wilde”) which he published in the weekly periodical “L’Européen” of Paris in 1929. Quote Investigator: Journalist and novelist Claire de Pratz became friends with Oscar Wilde during his final period in Paris. In this anecdote accurate? Would you please explore this topic? (3) My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. According to legend he said something similar to the following while on his deathbed. His shabby accommodations in Paris did not meet his aesthetic standards. Oscar Wilde? Claire de Pratz? Léon Guillot de Saix? Lady Gregory? William Butler Yeats? Hesketh Pearson? Philippe Jullian? Violet Wyndham? Apocryphal?ĭear Quote Investigator: Near the end of Oscar Wilde’s life he was debt-ridden and ill.
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