An Irishman's Diary

I HOPE that kiss-proof screen around Oscar Wilde’s tomb fares better than another barrier, erected a few years ago in the same cemetery, and also aimed at protecting a grave from affectionate defacement. In that case, it was the resting place of Victor Noir, a near-neighbour of Wilde’s in Père Lachaise, who – like the Irishman – had first been buried in more modest surroundings elsewhere before being upgraded to a plot in Paris’s most prestigious necropolis.

The pair had little else in common, and it’s hard to know which of them would have been more surprised at their posthumous promotion and romantic cults. But of the two, Wilde at least had more time to reflect about posterity. By contrast, Noir – an apprentice journalist, whose real name was Yvan Salmon – expired both suddenly and violently, shot dead by a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1870, at the age of 21.

A bronze sculpture on the grave portrays him as he fell, complete with top hat cast to one side. And perhaps the sculptor was a little too faithful to naturalistic detail, because in the intervening years, the statue has inspired a custom even more personal than the kisses planted on Wilde’s monument. Namely that, not content with planting a rose in the hat, or other conventional tributes, many visitors – female ones usually – consider their visit incomplete until they have also rubbed the manly protuberance in Noir’s trousers.

The habit is said to improve fortunes in love or fertility, or both. But in any case, the habit is so popular that the statue’s crotch has been gradually polished back to its original bronze colour, making it (ahem) stand out even more from the rest of the sculpture, which is green from oxidisation.

Back in 2004, the cemetery had finally had enough of this indignity. So a fence was introduced to deter the practice, along with a sign threatening prosecution against those found guilty of graffiti or “indecent rubbing”. But they take their civil liberties seriously in France. Hence, first there was a mock protest. Then the fence was removed in earnest. And now, once again, the grave-rubbers are free to do their worst.

ALTHOUGHnothing in his life or death quite justified the nature of this posthumous cult, Noir was understandably a hero to French republicans. It was suggested during the murder trial that he had been less a journalist than a journalistic bodyguard, or heavy-man, who actively provoked the Prince Pierre Napoleon into an act of self-defence. Either way, he had been caught up in a row between others.

The newspaper for which he worked, La Marseillaise, was at the time supporting attacks made by other left-wing papers on the Bonaparte dynasty, including the then Emperor, Napoleon III. As the emperor's brother, Pierre Bonaparte, took it personally and wrote to the publisher, inviting him to visit his (the prince's) home address on the Rue d'Auteuil where, as he promised: "you will not be told I'm out." This was, in short, a challenge to a duel. And it was to arrange the terms of the duel that Noir and another representative were sent to Rue d'Autueil, guns in pockets. But normal procedure in such cases was for the arrangements to be made between seconds of both parties. Consequently, the haughty prince refused to deal with the publisher's "underlings" and the fatal row ensued.

The shooting caused a sensation in France. Some 100,000 joined Noir’s funeral procession, professed attendance at which subsequently became a badge of honour for republican candidates. And the prince’s trial – held a safe distance from Paris, in Tours – was reported all over Europe, up to an including the controversial acquittal.

A special correspondent for The Irish Timeswas among many who suspected a miscarriage of justice, although in a wonderfully eccentric report, his outrage at the verdict took second place to his relief at escaping Tours. Thus, after a telegraphed dispatch announcing the verdict, his more considered account began: "The exodus from Tours last night was enormous. Everyone who possibly could bolted out of that miserable place and the last discussion [of] the cause célèbretook place in the train which was bringing us all to Paris in the frightfully cold night. What a night! What cold for the end of March!"

Only then did the correspondent get to the verdict: “Prince Peter came away too. The telegraph has informed your readers this morning of that fortunate person’s acquittal. I can further inform you that he is again completely domiciled today at Auteuil, and firing pistols out of his drawing-room windows, probably to warn gentlemen of the press not to take his future invitations in earnest.” Later, the reporter suggested that a compromise verdict of “guilt with provocation” would have better served both justice and “the brutal prince himself”.

For as he added, Napoleon’s friends feared “either that he will be provoked and slain by [associates] of the man he shot, or that he will himself, through his ungovernable temper, commit another – we must not call it a crime when a French prince shoots a man – but another piece of sport upon human game which will not be so easily borne.”

In the event, neither fear was justified. The acquitted man survived another 11 years and died, aged 65, of natural causes. The family regime had been overthrown in the meantime, however, and a republic restored. So the prince is said to have lived his last years in obscurity: something from which – at least compared with Victor Noir – he has not since emerged.