So this whole procedure had been set in motion for Oscar Wilde’s famous house in Tite Street, in honor of the centenary of Wilde’s birth (1854), and Vyvyan Holland had written to Beerbohm in Italy in 1953 asking him to preside over the traditional plaque-unveiling ceremony, to take place the following year. Then there is a long process, involving the submission of a complicated proposal to the Blue Plaques Team, then another hurdle in the panel review, a final detailed review by a historian, and finally, if you make the cut, consents are sought and granted by the building owner. In order to be eligible to have a blue plaque put on the building in which you strove, suffered, were born or died, you must either have been dead for twenty years, or have passed the centenary of your birth, “whichever is earlier.” There are over 850 plaques extant, of nearly a thousand total (the rest were on buildings since lost or demolished.) The first one commemorated Lord Byron’s birthplace in Holles Street. The London blue plaque scheme began in 1866. Sterling! They must be some of the most expensive dwellings (per square foot) on earth. Nowadays these houses are worth upwards of £15 million. John Singer Sargent lived in this street, and Augustus John, and Whistler. 16.) It’s a terrifically famous street in Chelsea, long one of London’s most fashionable neighborhoods. This is the plaque Beerbohm meant, which may still be seen at 34, Tite Street (formerly no. “I wish very much I could have the honour of unveiling the plaque, but I am too old to travel.” So begins the tangled story of the Tite Street memorial. Nearly forty years later, in a different world entirely, on September 14th, 1953, Beerbohm wrote to Holland again (this time from the Villino Chiaro, his house in Rapallo) expressing his regrets once more. ![]() ![]() Beerbohm’s letters are particularly beautiful to look at and handle - in addition to writing, he was a well-known caricaturist, with a precise, delicate line - he wrote in a round pleasant hand, on the fine paper people once used for letter-writing. There are a few other letters between Beerbohm and Holland in the Ransom Center’s collection in Austin, all written in the warm but slightly formal tone still in use between grown children and their parents’ friends. “Beerbohm was quick and clever: Wilde taught him to be languid and preposterous,” writes Richard Ellmann, Wilde’s biographer. ![]() Whereat he stroked his chin and, looking at me over his spectacles, said “Well, Sir, what would you say to William IV?īeerbohm, the author of the celestial Zuleika Dobson, was then 42, and Holland 27.īeerbohm had first met Wilde while still at school at Charterhouse his older brother, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, produced one of Wilde’s plays. ![]() I asked the old man in the shop to tell me the date of them. The glasses are (you will be relieved to hear) of British manufacture, but I can’t tell you just when they were made. It has the advantage of being easily breakable if you don’t like it. Beerbohm sent his regrets for not having been able to attend the wedding, together with a present. In 1914 Max Beerbohm wrote to Vyvyan Holland, the younger son of Oscar and Constance Wilde, on the occasion of Holland’s wedding.
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