Story Of Writer's Last Shirt

Oscar Wilde's last shirt owes its survival to being in the wash when he died in Paris on November 30, 1900. Had it not been, his close friend and literary executor,sexy stretch micro dress Robert Ross, would almost certainly have disposed of it, as he did Oscar's other personal possessions of no monetary or sentimental value. It survived thanks to the Dupoirier family, who owned the H?tel d'Alsace, where Wilde was a long-term resident. A few items that had belonged to Oscar surfaced later, and Jean Dupoirier kept them as mementos. There were the shirt,school girl bra two trunks of books and magazines, a pile of rough jottings that Dupoirier burned, an umbrella that he subsequently lost,side lace up corset booty shorts and finally, a set of false teeth.

When the French.memorated the fiftieth anniversary of Wilde's death, the organizing.mittee invited my father, Vyvyan, to be present. He, who had a horror of such events, saying they made him feel like a performing monkey, refused and sent my mother in his place. At the H?tel d'Alsace, she met Dupoirier's daughter, who offered her both the shirt and the dentures; my mother accepted the shirt but turned down the teeth as being too gruesome. Had it been my father, I know he would have taken neither, so the shirt has survived quite against the odds. Of the dentures there is perhaps fortunately no trace.

The shirt, with attached wing collar, waffle piqué front, and single cuffs, appears tohave been an evening dress shirt. It is embroidered on the left breast with the initials "S.sexy nurse on duty costumeM.," which stood for Sebastian Melmoth, Wilde's pseudonym in exile, and with the date it was made, 1899, under the buttonholed tab designed to fasten the shirt to the trousers and prevent it "riding up." It would have been worn with a collar stud and cuff links, although such luxury, implying a suit to go with it, seems incongruous with Oscar's finances at the time. On the other hand, despite his enforced bohemian lifestyle, he still craved the.pany of those who stimulated him, who cared nothing for his disgrace and occasionally invited him to dinner,c thong swimwear for which a tenue de soirée would have been the norm.