In his dark comedy of 1893,A Woman of No Importance,Oscar Wilde has Mrs Arbuthnot,a respectable woman with a secret past,remark knowingly: A kiss may ruin a human life. It can also,apparently,ruin the stone blocks of a tomb. Recently,descendants of Wilde,the Irish dramatist who died here in 1900,decided to have his immense gravestone cleansed of a vast accumulation of lipstick markings from kisses left by admirers,who for years have been defacing,and some say eroding,the memorial in hilly Père Lachaise Cemetery here. But the decision meant not only cleaning the stone,a flying nude angel by the sculptor Jacob Epstein,who was inspired by the British Museums Assyrian figures,but also erecting a seven-foot plate glass wall to keep ardent admirers at a distance. Family members and some friends have welcomed the step. The writer Merlin Holland,Wildes grandson,said the message was clear. Were not saying,Go away, but rather,Try to behave sensibly, he said. The criticism was quick in coming. On her blog,A Love Letter From London, an architectural historian named Lisa Marie wrote that the continued devotion of Oscar Wildes fans more than 100 years after his death,represented by those lipstick marks,enhanced the impact of Epsteins bold,modern memorial,making it an even more fitting monument to a great decadent and aesthete. Cleaning them off,and putting the tomb behind a barrier seems to be missing the point. A half dozen or so readers replied,all agreeing. A drooled and kissed over tomb is as much history as the man whos resting there, wrote a blogger who calls herself Superheidi. Marie responded,adding: I wonder how I would feel about lots of people kissing my ancestors graves. I think Id be chuffed! In the late 1990s,the number of visitors to Wildes tomb rose appreciably,as it became a place of pilgrimage. Holland said the flood of visitors was unleashed by a combination of things. There was Wilde,the 1997 film starring Stephen Fry,the centenary of Wildes death in 2000,but also an extensive exhibit at the British Library that year. For years,visitors to the tomb had limited themselves to leaving graffiti or little notes. But then,Holland said,he felt helpless as the number of pink and red kiss marks accumulated. Polite requests were simply ignored. First,a sign I put up was pinched, said Holland,66,whose grandmother - Wildes wife changed the family name to avoid public scorn after Wilde was sent to prison for homosexuality. Wilde left London for Paris in 1897 but never regained the creative impetus that yielded powerful verse and plays like Lady Windermeres Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest. He died penniless,of meningitis,at 46 in the Hotel dAlsace,but not before remarking,with characteristic wit,I am dying as I have lived beyond my means. Friends put up the money to buy the plot at Père Lachaise and had him buried there with a monument by the young Epstein,which survived intact until the 1960s when its outsize genitals were smashed off in an act of vandalism. (It is rumoured the cemetery director used them as a paperweight.) Negotiations with the French authorities and the Irish government led to the tombs restoration. The cost of the work was perhaps 40,000 to 50,000 euros, Holland said. The glass wall leaves even supporters of the project with a sense of unease. Were not happy,of course,with the partition,with the glass screen, said Sheila Pratschke,director of the Irish Cultural Institute in Paris,which helped arrange the tombs restoration. But its more aesthetically pleasing than I expected, she said. The glass was already spotted with kisses,and flowers and notes were strewn at the tombs foot and inside. One paraphrased Wilde: You taught me that wisdom can come only with winter. JOHN TAGLIABUE
