Sir, – I was listening to Ryan Tubridy on RTÉ radio on Tuesday waxing lyrical about Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris and why not, after all it is a fascinating place to visit.
Amongst other famous people resting there, like Edith Piaf and Jim Morrison, he mentioned the fabulous Oscar Wilde and his tomb. All was going smoothly until he talked about what Ireland and France have in common and said Wilde found a safe haven in France and president Charles de Gaulle found one in Ireland.
Well, that pricked my ears. I was surprised that Tubridy could give out this kind of misinformation.
Wilde didn’t find a safe haven in France and certainly not in Paris where he was shunned by the literati and was down and out wandering the streets and ended his days in the grubby Hotel d’Alsace, lost, lonely and isolated apart from a few friends and the kindness of the hotel owner.
The only safe haven he would have wanted was one in Ireland but that was not to be as he was shunned in Ireland as he was in France.
These days, he is adored and appreciated in France and especially in Paris where his life and works are celebrated with events throughout the year.
Paris is also the home of the world’s premier Oscar Wilde society. In Dublin we don’t even have a road named after him.
As for de Gaulle, all he found in Ireland on his 1969 visit was a bed, a large one made for him on his visit to the Cashel House Hotel in Connemara, where they attached a single bed to the foot of their largest double bed and made a special large mattress to accommodate the tall Frenchman.
The one place he did find a safe haven was not in Ireland but in Britain where he stayed throughout the second World War from where he directed the French resistance.
No doubt, if Wilde was around, he would find a fitting witticism for the occasion.
– Yours, etc,
JIM YATES,
Old Bawn,
Dublin 24.