Truly Wilde: The Unsettling Story of Dolly Wilde, Oscar's Unusual Niece by Joan Schenkar

Author:Joan Schenkar
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2010-01-05T04:47:00+00:00

Many of Dolly's friends, having spent a lifetime criticising her for not doing what they felt she was born to do, which was write, found that putting words on paper, especially words about Dolly, was more difficult than not. Could it have been all those appointments that Dolly failed to keep, or postponed, or cancelled, or was late to, coming back to retard this sole record of Dolly's life? Or was it the thought of Dolly dead that was so impossible to understand? All the charm of Dolly's youth and vitality - and the writers' youth and vitality as well - seems bound up in the memoirs. But there is surely some irritation in the tardiness of some of the contributions - and there must have been quite a bit of time spent on what not to say about Dolly. Oscaria is as much marked by what was left out of it as by what was put in.

Alice Toklas got off with a few lines, albeit a few good ones.

Gertrude and I did want to do a few words in appreciation of Dolly's youth and her so lovable qualities. But how to give them her joyous spontaneity? For in spite of the war she had an almost mythical pristine freshness in 19 16 - that, alas, later became a bit tarnished, though she never really completely lost it.3

Gertrude Stein's recorded summation was pithier: `Well, she certainly hadn't a fair run for money.'

Rosamond Harcourt-Smith said that all Dolly's `fictional instincts' turned every conversation towards a higher truth and gave a sharper point to life.

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