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In 1908 the avant-garde sculptor Jacob Epstein designed an angel for the tomb of Oscar Wilde in the cemetery of Pere Lachaise in Paris. ‘Homosexuals, artists and writers are outcasts’ reads the verse inscription. Epstein’s angel was not placed on the grave without a fight. There was a great commotion among all involved about the dimensions of its testicles. They were unusually large, it was maintained in a meeting. However, that would not have been difficult, since according to the Judaeo-
Christian norm, angels should not have any testicles at all, being sexless. The sex of the angel was probably a homage to Oscar Wilde by Epstein.
Whatever the considerations of the moralizers of Pere Lachaise may have been, a consensus soon emerged on what should be done with the angel: either castration or a chaste fig leaf. Pending a final decision it was hidden from view by a tarpaulin. Much later the angel, now once again on view naked and intact, became a place of pilgrimage for gays. So many visitors gave the balls a quick stroke that they acquired a patina, their shiny surface standing out against the matt white sculpture. Until in 1963 things went wrong. Two British ladies, who had taken offence at the angel’s balls, hatched a plan. They paid the angel a second visit armed with hammer and chisel. Looking around furtively, they chipped the balls off. The action of the prim ladies had little to do with climbing up the hierarchy. A gardener found the angel’s testicles on the ground near the grave and took them to the superintendent, who found a use for them as paperweights.