You can’t beat a good digression and last month Edward Cholmondeley-Clarke gave us a world-class deviation in his talk to raise funds for the Benevolent Society of St Patrick.
His subject was Constance Lloyd, to whom he is related, and who is the wife of Oscar Wilde. She died in 1898 after a botched operation and is buried in Genoa, in the Cemetery of Staglieno. It is a fine cross of pale marble embellished with twining ivy.
In 1899 Oscar paid his only visit to his wife’s grave and described in a letter “a garden at the foot of the lovely hills that climb into the mountains that girdle Genoa. It was very tragic seeing her name carved on a tomb — her surname, my name not being mentioned, of course — I brought some flowers”. Yes, you noticed the inscription “Wife of Oscar Wilde”, so was Oscar blind? No, he didn’t see it as it was only added by a family member in 1964.
When the 1997 film, Wilde, was being shot the idea was to recreate Oscar’s visit to Staglieno but permission to film was refused. Never mind, the Cemeterio San José in Granada looks much the same and a wooden replica was made. The historical adviser must have been unaware of the 1964 addition as it is clearly visible on the copy. It was left behind after filming and remained in situ until the weather took its toll and a director of the cemetery took it into his office.
There you’d expect the story to end but the commercial company running the cemetery then made an exact replica in marble and it now stands where the film was shot. So Constance has three crosses only one of which marks her real grave.
As the maraschino cherry atop this splendid anecdote Edward recalled that Saladin, buried in a wooden sarcophagus in Damascus after his death in 1193, has a second marble sarcophagus alongside presented by Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1898. The Kaiser’s visit to the Middle East included some sightseeing at Baalbeck in present-day Lebanon. The centenary was commemorated by Chateau Musar and I have a couple of bottles bought when I was there in 2001.
