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Rue des Beaux-Arts n ° 77- Octobre-Novembre- Décembre 2021
Arthur Cravan , once called Fabian Lloyd , the nephew of Constance Wilde .)
But above all , Dolly was truly Wilde in one of the senses of Joan Schenkar ' s title . Not only did she look like her uncle , she once said : " I am more Oscar-like than he was like himself ." She sometimes called herself Oscaria and in 1930 she appeared as Oscar at the Duchesse de Clermont-Tonnerre ' s costume ball .
Oscaria was the name of the memorial volume that Natalie Barney produced for a friend , with contributions from many who loved Dolly . These did not include Vyvyan Holland , however , Oscar ' s surviving son , who seems positively to have regretted her existence - the woman , indeed the homosexual woman , who bore his father ' s name and features . This was , to be sure , before Vyvyan came to terms with his inheritance and wrote Son of Oscar Wilde ; but the measure of how far Vyvyan travelled is that when Dolly died and he was assumed ( incorrectly ) to be her heir , he sold the pictures of Sir William and Lady Wilde that Dolly had inherited from Willie Wilde .
All this Joan Schenkar recounts perched on the end of her hotel room bed , smoking small Dutch cigars called de Wilde . I ask about her style : her occasional capitalisation of the initial words of phrases like " Dull Waters of Daily Life ", her inclusion of Natalie Barney ' s recipe for Poulet Maryland , her occasional indulgence in such remarks as " she looked as full and as delicately flushed as a bouquet of white peonies , miraculously delivered from a sweeter season and a more exotic country ."
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