Island Life Magazine Ltd October/November 2008 | Page 39

FEATURE

expecting and,
seemingly
charmed by
the poet, he
observed that
“his rather
long hair
which he
still affects
was rather becoming than
otherwise.”
The Advertiser was altogether
more scathing. After half an
hour of listening to Oscar’s
“conceited nothings,” the
reporter concluded that the
lecture was “just a string of
namby pamby notions,” and
that the utterances might have
come from the mouths of
“milliners’ girls.” Perhaps his
personal taste was affronted
when Oscar complained of
‘being obliged to stand on a
crimson carpet with a pattern
of harsh lines all over it.’ The
journalist did however concede
that Wilde had a naturally
pleasant voice.
While he was on the Island,
Oscar found time to have
his photograph taken at the
studio of Hughes and Mullins
in Union Street Ryde. Mr
Hughes had died very recently
and it was Gustav Mullins
who now ran the show. Oscar,
sporting a white suit, with a
cane and a fedora, was already
showing signs of corpulence.
During his visit he may have
visited Bembridge and there,
perhaps met Cecily Cardew

life

who
had a cottage at the very end
of Lane End. When he came
to write The Importance of
Being Ernest, Cecily Cardew
appears as a strong willed
woman out to get her man.
Had he just borrowed the name
or something of the woman’s
character as well?
At the time he was here,
Oscar Wilde was not yet a
father or a super star. His
dramatic rise and fall was still
to come. Perhaps like Icarus
he later flew too close to the
sun and his wings melted.
So, for a brief period, one
of the most quoted of our
playwrights spent time on
the Island. Throughout his
life he fought against the
public preconception of who
or what he should be. There
is no blue plaque to record
where he stayed so perhaps his
exhortation to: Be yourself –
everyone else is already taken!
is both good advice and an
appropriate postscript to his
visit.

www.wightfrog.com/islandlife

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