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Updated: June 23, 2025
As for his corruption, which I spoke of above, it's a very pretty piece of wickedness, but it strikes me as a purely intellectual matter. I imagine him never to have had any real senses. He may have been unclean; morally, he's not very tidy now; but he never can have been what the French call a viveur. He's too delicate, he's of a feminine turn; and what woman was ever a viveur?
There were some officers on their way to rejoin their units, a bevy of tarts from Marseille, a rich Mahommedan merchant, returning from Mecca, some strolling players, a Montenegran prince, a great joker this, who did impersonations.... Not one of these people was sea-sick and they spent the time drinking champagne with the captain of the Zouave, a fat "Bon viveur" from Marseille, who had an establishment there and another in Algiers, and who rejoiced in the name of Barbassou.
It was not as a middle-aged bon viveur, nor as an elderly hypochondriac, that he began his medical studies, but in the heyday of youth, and quite seriously, too. The explanation brings with it light on some other of his interests as well.
"Poor Raoul! and what of my other cousin, the beau Marquis? Several months ago his Legitimist faith seemed vacillating he talked to me very fairly about the duties a Frenchman owed to France, and hinted that he should place his sword at the command of Napoleon III. I have not yet heard of him as a soldat de France I hear a great deal of him as a viveur de Paris."
They sought the short paragraphs in which were related, in detail, the doings of the demi-monde, the last supper given by some well-known viveur, the details of some large party in such and such a fashionable club, the result of a shooting match, or of a fencing match between celebrated fencers!
It could never be the face of an artist; it is the face of a viveur kindly, pleased and pleasing, protected from excess and upheld in contentment by the shifting versatility of his desires. For a single desire is more rightly to be called a lust; but there is health in a variety, where one may balance and control another. The whole world, town or country, was to Pepys a garden of Armida.
He wanted first editions of the poets; had a liking for old furniture and old silver, for fine pictures, Eastern carpets and Renascence bronzes; in fine, he had all the artist's desires as well as those of the poet and "viveur". He was constantly in dire need of cash and did not hesitate to borrow fifty pounds from anyone who would lend it to him.
So it is, too, with certain exaggerations of design characteristic rather of the period than the man notably with the two figures to the left of the foreground. The Christ in His meekness is too little divine, too heavy and inert; the Pontius Pilate not inappropriately reproduces the features of the worldling and viveur Aretino.
Oscar Wilde was extravagant in almost every possible way. He wished to be well-fed, well-dressed, well-wined, and prodigal of "tips." He wanted first editions of the poets; had a liking for old furniture and old silver, for fine pictures, Eastern carpets and Renascence bronzes; in fine, he had all the artist's desires as well as those of the poet and viveur.
He was too much of the viveur, too fond of his club, his poker parties and little midnight suppers with fair ladies. Once the novelty of marriage had worn off, he would return to the old life and then there would be the devil to pay. The wife would find it out, there would be a row, with court proceedings, alimony and all the rest of it. Or perhaps she would suffer and say nothing, as so many do.
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