Oscar’s hotel in Paris

Oscar Wilde moved into a hotel in Paris in February 1898 for what turned out to be the final 18 months of his life. The then 44-year-old Dubliner had been released from Reading jail the previous summer after serving a prison sentence of two years hard labour. That was the British Crown’s punishment for Oscar’s homosexuality. The Wilde scandal had rocked English society to the core. After his release, Oscar, disgraced, hated and ostracised, had to change his name and leave the country. Under the disguise of Sebastian Melmouth, he fled to France.

Today, the place in which Wilde took refuge on the Rue Des Beaux Arts is called L’Hotel. It is now a unique and beautiful boutique establishment in St Germain-des-Prés, the chicest part of the Left Bank.

L’Hotel, which has only 20 bedrooms, is a piece of art in itself and is decorated throughout with elegant French Empire style décor; sumptuous fabrics and details cover every surface. But despite the opulence, there is an atmosphere of quiet reserve. The staff are friendly and down to earth and guests are left to your own devices to wander the place in total relaxation.

(The entrance to L’Hotel on Rue Des Beaux Arts, Paris)

Today it is possible to stay in a room 16, a shrine to Wilde. During Oscar’s time, this was a low grade hotel and the décor back then left a lot to be desired. Wilde famously said of it: “The wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has to go.”

Oscar would probably approve of the modern colour scheme. The ‘Oscar Wilde room’ is now decorated with impressive emerald green and golden peacock wallpaper. The room’s French windows open up to a small private garden, where you can sit and enjoy a glass of wine. 

The ground floor bar, called Wilde’s Lounge, displays photos of many of the celebrities, who have stayed at L’Hotel over the years; Johnny Depp, Keanu Reeves, Mick Jagger, Sean Penn, and the English model and actress Jane Birkin.

In fact, it was after Birkin met the French singer Serge Gainsbourg in the late 60s that they moved in to Wilde’s former bedroom and stayed there, legend has it, for a three-month love in.

The hotel has an excellent restaurant with an adjacent garden, again beautifully decorated. It was in this small space at the back that Oscar would sit reading and drinking. In the basement, today’s guests can use a small swimming pool as well as a steam room and a spa. Every Thursday in the hotel bar there’s a free jazz band for cocktail hour.

 

 

(Bedroom 16 in L’Hotel, the Oscar Wilde room).

The streets around L’Hotel are packed with interesting bars, small art galleries, antique shops and high quality, yet affordable restaurants. Just around the corner is the legendary café Les Deux Magots. It was a favourite haunt of Wilde’s and it sits facing the church from which he was buried after his deathbed conversion to Catholicism.

In the 1920s, Les Deux Magots was frequented by his Irish compatriot James Joyce, who drank there with F Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and the young Earnest Hemmingway.

You could not ask for a more perfectly situated hotel from which to explore the city. Five minutes’ walk north across the river from L’Hotel you’ll come to the Louvre. If you head west along the Seine for ten minutes you’ll come to the Musee D’Orsay. If you stroll east along the river for 16 minutes you’ll come to Notre Dame and if you walk south from the hotel you’ll be at the Luxembourg Gardens in less than ten minutes.

During Wilde’s time in Paris, he would cross the Seine every night and walk past the Louvre, to have an aperitif at the Café de la Régence, which is still there today on the Rue Saint-Honoré. Another of his favourite haunts was Café de la Paix at L’Opera, one of many of the city’s literary hang-outs. He was also a frequent visitor to the Moulin Rouge in Montmartre. One of his drinking partners during “The Roaring Nineties” was the painter Henri de Toulouse Lautrec.

 

(Oscar Wilde by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec)

Oscar was at this time consuming huge amounts of alcohol due to the fact that he was in constant pain from an abscess in his ear. One grizzly fact attached to the bedroom at L’Hotel is that here, Oscar endured two operations on his ear. A few months later he succumbed to his illnesses and died on November 30, 1900. He was just 46 years old.

Oscar Wilde’s tomb is now the most visited in Père Lachaise cemetery. It sits near the graves of singer Edith Piaf, Irish designer and architect Eileen Gray and Oscar’s great friend, the French actress Sarah Bernhardt. Jim Morrison of The Doors is also buried there.

During the 1990s, visitors began the ritual of kissing Oscar’s tomb and its magnificent sculpture, by the American artist Jacob Epstein, became covered in lipstick, the oils of which began damaging the stone. The Office of Public Works in Ireland came to the rescue and the tomb is now considered an Irish monument abroad. The lipstick was removed, and a glass barrier erected to protect the structure.

(Photo by Lorna Mauney-Brodek)

By Martin Burns (above), creative director Oscar Wilde House, in room 16 at L’Hotel

 

See www.l-hotel.com for more details.