They never became close friends and met on only a handful of occasions, mostly by chance rather than arrangement. Yet, they were wildly different in both temperament and inclination, and, as a result, they developed no more than an uneasy and rather distant relationship. Together, they were recognised as the first Irish playwrights in decades to make an impact on the London stage Both inventive men who remained dogged in their questioning of the status quo. Both of a similar age: Wilde was less than two years older than Shaw. Both Dubliners, born within twenty minutes walk of each other. Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw had much in common. OSCAR WILDE AND GEORGE BERNARD SHAW FOR THE SHAW SOCIETY I have reproduced my script here (warning, it’s a long one!) Shaw features in my book Wilde’s Women but I added much more detail for the occasion. I was delighted with the very warm welcome I received when I addressed the Shaw Society on links between Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw in London last week. **Horst Schroeder, Additions and corrections to Richard Ellmann’s Oscar Wilde (Braunschweig Selbstverl, 2002), p.216 Also, Anna de Brémont confirms her presence in Oscar Wilde and his Mother. *From ‘Robert Ross Gives a New Version of the Last Days of Oscar Wilde’, New York Times, 13 March 1910. You can read a profile of Aldrich and an excerpt by following this link or for more information follow the link that Simon has provided below. She wrote about her encounters with Wilde in ‘The burial of a fallen poet,’ an excerpt from her autobiographical Confessions of a Breadwinner. I am indebted to Simon Phillips (see his comment below) for clarifying that Mildred Aldrich was the fifth veiled woman in attendance. Wilde’s remains were transferred to Père Lachaise in July 1909. He writes that while Wilde’s coffin was being lowered, Douglas almost fell into the grave. According to Wilde’s biographer Richard Ellmann there was an ‘unpleasant scene’ at the graveside that he speculates may have been ‘some jockeying for the role of principal mourner’. ‘those who had shown kindness to him during or after his imprisonment’Īmong them Ada Leverson and Adela Schuster. Lord Alfred Douglas interrupted a shooting holiday in Scotland to turn up as chief mourner. ‘A tribute to his literary achievements and distinction’ Robbie Ross identified four of these women*: American journalist, novelist, poet and singer Anna de Brémont and her maid Mme Stuart Merrill, wife of the American symbolist poet who had raised a petition for Oscar’s release and ‘an old servant girl of Oscar Wilde’s wife’. Richard Ellmann identified the fifth as a Miriam Aldrich, although Horst Schroeder disputes this (the woman was Mildred Aldrich – see update below).** At the head of Oscar’s coffin, Ross placed a wreath of laurels inscribed Cuthbert Dunne at the church of Saint-Germain-des- Prés in the presence of fifty-six people, among them ‘five ladies in deep mourning’. Oscar Wilde was buried at Bagneux cemetery at 9am on 3 December 1900.
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