A Unique Memento WILDE (Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills), 18...

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€6,000 - €8,000

A Unique Memento

WILDE (Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills), 1854-1900, playwright, aesthete and wit.

A lock of Wilde’s Hair, presented by his son Vyvyan Holland to the distinguished Irish actor Mícheál MacLiammóir, after the first London performance in 1960 of MacLiammóir’s pioneering one-man show ‘The Importance of Being Oscar’, compiled by him from Wilde’s writings.  

Among those present on the first night was Vyvyan Holland, then aged 74.  He came backstage after the performance, said he had been deeply moved, and presented MacLiammóir with a lock of his father’s hair [the present item].

Provenance: Sold as Lot 474 in Mealy’s auction in Dublin, 4 December 2007. Purchased there by the present vendor, unopened since purchase. With a TLS from Mealy’s dated 8.2.08 confirming the item came from MacLiammoir’s estate, and was in unbroken family possession since the death of MacLiammóir and his partner Hilton Edwards.  

Presented in Mealy’s sealed custom made box, also containing a manuscript note reading ‘Piece of Oscar Wilde’s hair:  / Very important’,  in MacLiammoir’s hand.

Offered with this lot is 

- a copy of MacLiammóir’s published script, 1963;
- a selection of eight publicity photographs of MacLiammóir in various roles, from his own  collection, some inscribed to rear in his hand;
- Where Stars Walk. Typescript (carbon copy) of MacLiammóir’s unpublished play , pp. 130, ribbon bound in card covers, Edwards-MacLiammóir card attached, Gate Theatre stamp rear, a few inscriptions probably in MacLiammóir’s hand;
- A page torn from a notebook bearing a manuscript goodwill message in MacLiammóir’s hand to performers in a late 1970s Gate Theatre production, ‘Love and prayers for triumph for you all from morbid bedridden jealous MacLiammóir’, with a pencilled message on rear complaining about lack of advance publicity for the production. Possibly his last message to the theatre he loved so well.
 

Mícheál Mac Liammóir and Hilton Edwards were for many years Ireland’s best-known gay couple, at a time when active homosexuality was a breach of the law. They observed the proprieties, and were received at all levels of Irish society.

MacLiammóir apparently was born in England in 1899 as Alfred Willmore, to an Irish mother. An actor from childhood, and a member of the London Gaelic League, he came to Ireland about 1927 and became henceforth Mícheál MacLiammóir. He toured with Anew McMaster, whose wife was MacLiammóir’s sister Marjorie, and met another English actor, Hilton Edwards. They shared similar ideas on life and theatre, and launched the Dublin Gate Theatre together in 1928, bringing ‘a great sense of style and a demanding professionalism to each production’ (Boylan, Dict. I. Biog.). They had many successes and honours, in Ireland and abroad, and were made Freemen of Dublin in 1973.

In 1960, MacLiammóir’s one-man performance on the life and works of Oscar Wilde was one of the earliest essays in that genre. The first performance in Dublin was very warmly reviewed; Michael Redgrave, reading the reviews in London, phoned to arrange a West End transfer: hence the present item.

MacLiammóir continued to act for a further 17 years. He became seriously ill in 1977, and died in 1978. Edwards died in 1982.