1988 07 16 Wilde's Grave, NME

Desecrating Wildly

"How could they do this to Oscar Wilde's grave?" Len Brown asks of Morrissey, but finds his genitals reduced to paperweights. (Oscar's that is...)

“So we go inside and we gravely read the stones/ All those people all those lives/ Where are they now?”. Oh, what a grey day in Paris’ Pere-Lachaise cemetery, last resting place for top dead French people like Piaf, Proust, Moliere, Modigliani and the headless Danton. But the real attractions are eternal tourists in this beautiful boneyard-international megastars such as Chopin, Gertrude Stein, Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde.

Doors’ addicts will already be familiar with the grim condition of the Lizard King’s grave. The presence of Morrison's leathery bones has long been a source of irritation and embarrassment to cemetery officials; they've even erased his name from graveyard maps to reduce the number of hippy pilgrims. But still they come, to sit moist-eyed on surrounding slabs, to lay wreaths, to replace the roses in a relevant bottle of tequila. Now Jim’s bust has been stolen, the unmarked stone lies face down in the mud, and some cornball’s scribbled “This is the end, beautiful friend”! A sad, shabby scene.

We’re moved on towards Wilde's massive memorial, sculpted by acclaimed artist (and Beatles producer!- Ed) Jacob Epstein. No one, I assured myself, would dare desecrate Oscar’s grave. But what’s this! “ There is a light that will never go out"!?! "Keats and Yeats are on your side/While Wilde is on mine"!?! What’s the world coming to? You didn’t get Chopin groupies writing, in pianist envy, “You were top of the chops, Freddie"! or Edith Piaf fans scratching, “Unregrettable, that’s what you are”!

How could any self-disrespecting Smiths' fan do such a thing? Surely Morrissey would not approve?

“The graffiti?”

Have you seen it?

“No, but my mother went to the grave earlier this year and she jumped back in horror and pride at what's happened. Though I must admit it wasn’t completely blemish free before.”

Aren’t you shocked?

“Naturally I’m very very pleased. I don’t mind the fact that it’s been desecrated and so forth because it isn’t a particularly attractive grave. It's just a big slab really.”

But it’s an Epstein!

“Yeeees... what exactly's been written on it?”

Well, for a start, "There is a light that never goes out”...

“Really, that's lovely.”

And someone’s also written “I love Morrissey" and “Manchester Forever”.

“Oh you shouldn’t have done that, Len."

But you wouldn’t want to see Wilde's grave disintegrate the way Jim Morrison's has?

“No, but it won’t. I remember seeing pictures of Patti Smith on Jim Morrison’s grave, but it never really meant anything to me the Morrison/Doors story. Definitely a different man from Oscar.”

So no rapped knuckles from the Mozzer for all you desecraters out there, but what does the artworld make of the scribbling on Epstein’s masterpiece?

“Are you saying that someone's actually been inscribing Smiths’ lyrics on the tomb?” exclaimed leading Wilde and Epstein authority Simon Wilson of the Tate Gallery. “The tomb is an important work of art and I think, on the whole, one should deplore any graffiti being put on the thing. On the other hand I quite like the idea of someone seriously linking up the world of serious rock music with Wilde. I’d agree with Morrissey that Wilde might have been interested.”

Wilson, who owns two of Epstein’s original preliminary sketches for the monument, also pointed out that Wilde's tomb - rather like its internee - has had a controversial and chequered life.

“The cemetery authorities insisted on a fig leaf being put on it not long after it was put there in 1909. That was later removed. But it was vandalised again in the '50s, when most of the genitals got knocked off. There are various theories about who did it and we did attempt to trace the broken bits. Apparently they were initially preserved by the supervisor of the cemetery as a paperweight. Yes, he used Oscar’s balls as a paperweight!”

Balls or no balls, Oscar hasn’t had much rest since he turned his toes up on November 30, 1900. He was originally buried at Bagneux and only uprooted to Pere-Lachaise and Epstein's tomb in 1909. Since then he's been fuelling controversy with every play, every pronouncement and continues to attract hordes of visitors to his pad in Paris. And on his tomb, from The Ballad Of Reading Gaol, the words: "For his mourners will be outcast men/And outcasts always mourn".

So, O outcast Morrissey of Manchester, you don’t feel responsible in any way for the desecration of Wilde's grave?

“I think it's a great tribute to Oscar and it’s a great tribute to The Smiths and to me. I think if anybody can feel any inclination to write any funny words on a tombstone it’s a great compliment to the body enclosed. I mean, how many people will sketch on your grave?"

Someone will probably urinate on it.

“If you’re very, very lucky.”