Dolly Wilde: The Tragic Story of Oscar Wilde’s Niece

The short period between the two world wars was a remarkable and tragic time that gave birth to equally remarkable and tragic characters who could not possibly emerge in any other era. Dorothy Wilde, known as Dolly, was one of them. She was the niece of the legendary writer Oscar Wilde. She believed that she was his lesbian reincarnation. Dolly inherited not only his looks but his talents as well, however, her self-destructive habits stood in her way.

Growing up with a celebrity in a family can be challenging. It is especially challenging, however, if your family member is a figure as intensively mythologized as Oscar Wilde, and you grow up with a face strikingly similar to that of him. Dorothy Wilde, known to friends as Dolly, was born three months after her famous uncle was imprisoned for homosexuality. Dolly never met him but grew up in his shadow which she adopted as her own. She was promised a brilliant literary career from her first days, yet she has never published a word, producing only a small collection of translated works.

She was the daughter of Oscar Wilde’s unfortunate younger brother Willie, who shared his wit and a penchant for substance abuse. Unlike his brother, Willie was incapable of managing his addictions and turned into a violent alcoholic instead of a celebrity writer. Oscar’s arrest and imprisonment put the family into dire financial straits, and, as an infant, Dolly was moved around relatives and different foster homes. She loathed discussing her childhood, only sharing one story that highlighted her habit of dipping sugar lumps into her mother’s perfume and consuming them.

Dolly Wilde’s rise to social prominence began at the age of 19. As World War I unfolded, she ran away from her London home to become an ambulance driver in France. She lived with a group of other women drivers in a commune and seemed genuinely happy despite the chaos and bloodshed that was happening around her. Driving was perhaps the only thing that brought her pure joy with minimal destructive potential. However, friends noted that her post-war driving was pretty reckless and unnecessarily fast. She could never afford a car but kept borrowing vehicles from more affluent friends throughout her entire life.

At that time, she met another driver, an heiress of an oil company called Joe Carstairs. Carstairs was a remarkable character on her own. She was a speedboat racer, known as the fastest woman on water. With tattooed arms, short hair, and a penchant for men’s attire, she gained notoriety as a womanizer. Additionally, she was the owner of a private island, where she ruled and made her own laws. After the war, Dolly and Joe settled together in Paris.

Paris Was Fatal to Her

However, this relationship did not last very long. Dolly Wilde plunged into an active social life which was filled with irresponsible decisions. She had no permanent place of residence, carrying her suitcase from one hotel room to another and frequently staying at friends’ apartments. She was constantly late to events and forgetful when it came to her arrangements. Financially, she was irresponsible and uncontrollable. Having no real understanding of money or its value, she earned little by translating her French friends’ writings into English and she relied on donations from friends.

Still, despite their generosity, she was always broke, mainly due to her destructive addictions. Like her father and uncle, she was an alcoholic. However, Dolly did not limit herself to one substance, adding cocaine and heroin to the mix. One of Dolly’s friends said that Paris was fatal to her, with its bohemian atmosphere fuelling her addictions.

Dolly’s personal life was a subject of never-ending gossip. She enjoyed the attention of both sexes and boasted marriage proposals but preferred women. The long list of her lovers included artists, poets, and actresses. Among them was the Russian-American film director Alla Nazimova, who produced and starred in the adaptation of one of Oscar Wilde’s most famous novels: Salome.

Dolly’s contemporaries often described her as someone who seemed more like a fictional character than a living functional human being. Indeed, her persona was charming, her beauty astonishing, and her life choices too absurd and doubtful to be real. Her drug-fueled social activity made her the center of almost any social gathering. Yet, most of her companions, being in similar states of intoxication, could hardly remember anything coherent after the party was over.

Dolly’s name appeared in the novels by her friends which described the lives of women of their social circles. These were educated, eccentric, and almost exclusively queer women. F. Scott Fitzgerald added her to his novel Tender is The Night as a lesbian seductress Vivienne Taube, picturing her as unpleasant and importunate. The reason for such a depiction lay in the apparent advances Dolly made toward Zelda Fitzgerald, the writer’s wife. According to a rumor, Fitzgerald already had a similar experience with another Wilde, Oscar, who flirted with him years ago, much to the writer’s annoyance.

Dolly’s Last Love and Spiraling Addiction

The last fourteen years of Dolly Wilde’s life passed in a tumultuous relationship with another celebrity, American writer Natalie Barney. In her relationships, Dolly was obsessive, bombarding subjects of her affection with dramatic and emotional letters. Natalie, on the contrary, was known among her many lovers as a cruel and dismissive master of manipulation, unable to commit to any form of monogamy. Parallel to Dolly, her partner was the famous American artist Romaine Brooks, a person of similarly notorious character. Although Brooks, too, did not limit herself to one partner, she was particularly annoyed by Dolly, who demanded extra attention with her frequent breakdowns and addictive behavior. In a particularly vile letter Brooks sent to her partner, she called Dolly a rat gnawing at the very foundation of their relationship.

Despite Natalie’s attempts to break off the affair, Dolly’s worsening condition could not allow her to leave for good. Faced with rejection, she wept and threatened to kill herself. In the early 1930s, her list of addictions expanded, with over-the-counter substances now accompanying alcohol, cocaine, and heroin. She survived at least four suicide attempts and often spiraled into days-long episodes of alcohol-induced delirium.

Soon, she was diagnosed with breast cancer but refused to undergo surgery, drowning her pain in heroin. The doctors said she needed control and discipline, but not a single one of her friends was willing to take on such responsibility. Even Natalie, tired and emotionally withdrawn, agreed only to send her money, which Dolly immediately spent on drugs.

By 1940, the untreated cancer spread to Dolly’s lungs and uterus. In pain, she made no attempts to curb her drug intake, with her friends often finding her unconscious in public spaces. Around her, the war was going on as the Nazis bombed London. On April 10, 1941, she was found dead in her rental apartment. The cause of Dolly’s death remains unknown, but it was most likely an overdose, either accidental or intentional.

Dolly Wilde’s chaotic childhood produced an even more chaotic and disorganized adult, unprepared for the realities of life. At the same time, the eternal presence of her remarkable uncle’s ghost was equally inspiring and misleading. The world’s expectations flattered her, but she did not find the strength to live up to them.

She received endless compliments on her literary talent but never published a single word. She envied her writer friends but made no attempts to write anything except short-form diary entries and elaborate overdramatic letters. It was even unclear if she actually had any literary talent or if it was simply expected of her to have it. In all her astonishing charm, she left no trace except for a few photographs and elaborate tales told by her friends and lovers. Those tales could never form the full image of the remarkable and tragic fate of Dolly Wilde.