Rue des Beaux-Arts is a short, quiet street on the Left Bank, lined with galleries a few steps from the Seine. At number 13 there's a small, elegant hotel simply called L'Hôtel. In 1900 it was a modest place called the Hôtel d'Alsace, and in one of its rooms, Oscar Wilde spent the last part of his life.
From London to Paris
The author of The Picture of Dorian Gray had once been the most celebrated wit in London. After his imprisonment in 1895, he left England for good. He lived his last years in France under an assumed name, Sebastian Melmoth, poor, in fragile health, and far from the brilliant life he'd known.
He died at the Hôtel d'Alsace on 30 November 1900, at the age of forty-six. He is said to have joked, near the end, that he and the wallpaper of his room were fighting a duel to the death, and that one of them had to go. Whether he said it exactly that way or not, the line sounds like him: elegant until the last moment.
A slow walk through Wilde's last Paris
1. Start at rue des Beaux-Arts. Stand outside number 13 for a moment. Imagine the room, the wallpaper, the light coming through the window. 2. Walk to the Seine. A few steps away, the Pont des Arts crosses to the Louvre. Wilde loved beauty above everything; this view would have pleased him. 3. Visit a bookshop on the way. Find a copy of Dorian Gray and read the first page standing up. 4. End at Père-Lachaise. Wilde's tomb, a winged figure carved by the sculptor Jacob Epstein, stands in the cemetery in eastern Paris. It's now protected behind glass.
What his story asks of us
Wilde wrote that we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. His last years were hard, and yet he never stopped seeking beauty and wit. There's something in that worth carrying: the choice to notice beautiful things, even when life isn't.
Letters for the stargazers
If you love stories that live between literature, art and Paris, the Letter & Magazine subscription brings one to your mailbox every month, with a postcard, a meditation and a story about art, plus a seasonal issue of "(meditating) On Art". Written for people who are still looking at the stars.
Remember to take as much time as you need, and meet me at the next one.
Love, Evi