Twenty-one things about Oscar Wilde

Wilde is probably the most-read English writer in Russia. The plays are still in repertoire, the lines still in circulation. He believed that life should be lived on a generous scale, and he lived it that way.

1. 1.Oscar Wilde was born in the autumn of 1854 in Dublin. He followed his father, who wrote books on Irish traditions. William Wilde was also a doctor by training — he founded a clinic for the poor and treated patients without charge. The mother wrote too. Her poetry collections were popular among Irish readers.
2. 2.Oscar had a particular kind of upbringing and a particular kind of mind, possibly inherited from his mother. He loved to pass fiction off as truth. At one point he forged documents to make himself two years younger.
3. 3.He had a sister and a brother. The sister died of meningitis at ten. Wilde often resented the older brother because they looked alike. When Oscar became famous, he asked his brother William to grow a beard so they would not be confused.
4. 4.For a long time Oscar was taught at home, and in that period he learned two foreign languages — German and French. At nine he entered the Royal Portora School and became, by reputation, the best parodist in the school's history. He almost never studied formally; he could read a long novel in half an hour and then retell it convincingly in his own words. He finished with a gold medal and was a favourite of several teachers.
5. 5.He continued at Trinity College, where his talent for the classical languages emerged. He also became taken with aestheticism — beauty above all. The dress sense and the self-ironic style that defined him later were already taking shape.
6. 6.In 1874 he went on to Magdalen College, Oxford, and became known as the most fastidious student there. Tweed suits, fine hats — he was working out a style that would set him apart from his year. Even on a desert island, he once said, he would change clothes twice a day.

1. 1.Many considered Oscar mentally unwell because of his preferences. He disliked the typical men's sports, wore his hair long and always kept flowers in his room. A group of contemporaries once grabbed him and dragged him up a hill. He brushed himself off and announced, "Thank you. The view from this hill really is splendid."
2. 2.For all the slight build, he was strong. He boxed. When four men forced their way into his room, he handled them on his own. The attackers were not small and were known to be brutal.
3. 3.After Oxford he settled in London. Society liked the young, sharp Irishman with a clever answer for everything. He came to know Lillie Langtry, then married, and the friendship continued. He later helped her become a celebrated actress.
4. 4.To make a name, he toured Europe lecturing. The young aesthete usually went over well. Local press sometimes turned hostile, and on a few occasions he had to slip away from crowds waiting at the venue door.
5. 5.Back home he met Constance Lloyd and fell hard for the daughter of a well-known Irish barrister. Asked why he married so quickly, he answered, "Constance speaks so little. I adore her." He also expected his wife to wear bright and unusual clothes, to her considerable inconvenience. The society women decided Constance had no taste.
6. 6.A year into the marriage the feelings cooled. Wilde wrote in his diary that his wife had grown heavy and that it displeased him. Despite that the couple had two sons, for whom he wrote fairy tales. With children at home he was hired as editor of Woman's World, where his pieces on raising children, alongside culture and politics, brought him notice.
7. 7.In America Wilde revised his idea of how to dress. European papers had a quiet laugh at the former dandy. Punch ran a mock advertisement for a closing-down sale of lilies, sunflowers, feathers and wigs, with an incomprehensible volume of verse. He had taken to a Roman-style short cut and had taken his barber to a museum to settle the precise period.
8. 8.The Picture of Dorian Gray appeared in 1890. Critics and editors objected to what they read as immorality. To get it into print took the better part of a year and dozens of letters to newspapers arguing that morality and art are not the same thing.

1. 1.From 1891 fame arrived. Plays appeared in quick succession, London accepted him, and the press began calling him an original and complete dramatist of the moment. New people came into his life.
2. 2.One of them was Alfred Douglas — spoiled, attractive, ruinous. Wilde was effectively in love with him and denied him nothing. The household expenses alarmed Constance; Oscar maintained that the spending was necessary for his work. Douglas made a point of showing the world that they were more than friends. His father, a marquess, drove the prosecution that put Wilde in prison for two years.
3. 3.Two years of hard labour broke him. Poor food, heavy work, sleeplessness, illness. A warder disliked him and punished him for the slightest infraction. He fell at work and damaged an eardrum, which is what eventually killed him.
4. 4.During the prison years everyone — friends and family — drifted away. Douglas was living comfortably abroad, selling Wilde's gifts. He even wrote to him in prison: "You are no longer on a pedestal, so I am not interested in you." Only Constance did not abandon him. She visited him twice.
5. 5.He was released in 1897 and went straight to France. His wife did not follow but kept sending money. Douglas turned up; Wilde later said the visit was about money, and when the money ran out the visit ended in anger.
6. 6.In France he changed his name to Sebastian Melmoth and published under that name. He kept advocating for better conditions for prisoners, and some of his proposals later took shape in law.
7. 7.In the autumn of 1900 he died of meningitis traced to the damaged ear. He was buried in Père Lachaise in Paris, his grave marked by a large winged sphinx after one of his works. In the 20th century a rumour spread that a kiss on the headstone would bring love and happiness. Lipstick built up to the point where the grave was enclosed in glass in 2011 — and the glass is now thoroughly marked as well.