There is a popular phrase on the Internet attributed to the Irish writer that everything good that is produced in England first appeared in other countries. We decided to check if he said anything like that.
The full statement goes like this: “England produces only three good things: tea, whiskey and my books. But it turned out that the tea was Chinese, the whiskey was Scottish, and I was Irish. In other words, the only good thing about England is what is taken from other countries.” In the vast majority of cases this quote meets in the form of a picture with a portrait of the writer and text above it. Such images can be found on entertaining And information portals, social networks (“VKontakte", Facebook*, X, Telegram), on blogging platforms And forums.
Almost all Russian-language publications found by “Verified” containing this quote appeared in May 2024, but in other languages they met on the Internet and earlier. Usually this was also a picture consisting of a portrait of Wilde and the phrase itself. The most common such image was originally supplied text in Spanish, which, apparently, was then replaced by translations into other languages, including Russian. Even the design is the same - for example, under the quote the years of the writer’s life are indicated. In many foreign language publications there is no clarification: “In other words, the only thing good in England is what is taken from other countries.”
However, the first two sentences in the Spanish-language posts that appeared before the rest differ significantly from source to source, for example:
“Los ingleses tienen tres cosas de las que mostrarse orgullosos: el té, el whiskey y un escritor como yo. Pero resulta que el té es chino; "El whiskey, escocés y yo soy irlandés"
“Inglaterra solo produce tres cosas buenas: el té, el whiskey y mis libros. Pero resulta que el té es chino, el whiskey es escocés y yo soy irlandés"
This, however, is not surprising, given that even if Wilde said something similar, he clearly did not do it in Spanish, and literary translations in such cases can vary. It is much stranger that in English, the language in which he wrote the vast majority of his works, there is no single version. Among the formulations we came across are the following:
“England only produces three good things: tea, whiskey and my books. But really the tea is Chinese, the whiskey is Scottish and I am Irish. In other words, the only good things England have those taken from other countries"
“England is famous with 3 things: tea, whiskey and a very famous writer. The problem is that the tea is Chinese, the whiskey is Scottish and I am Irish"
From this we can conclude that either Wilde repeated the same thought several times in different words, or the quote was retold so many times that it was significantly distorted, if not completely made up.
Since Wilde's death in 1900, his works have been collected, carefully studied and largely digitized by libraries, universities and museums around the world. Among them is an electronic archive Trinity College in Dublin, where the writer himself once studied, and now a significant part of his heritage is kept, a collection of Wilde’s works in Morgan Library and Museum (USA) and New York Public Library, archives Celtic literature University College Cork (Ireland). None of these “Verified” resources could find the quote you were looking for. A search in the Google Books database and on the website led to similar results. Oscar Wilde Online, where an extensive collection of the writer’s works is collected - plays, poems, prose and journalism.
There is no quote on the British website either Oscar Wilde Society - a non-profit organization created in 1990 to study and popularize Wilde’s personality and work. "Verified" asked members of the public to comment on whether they knew anything about the citation sought. The organization's press officer, Darcy Sullivan, said that, according to their information, this phrase did not belong to Wilde.
The earliest case of attribution of the verified phrase to an Irish writer that Verified was able to find was a publication in a Spanish popular science magazine Historia y Vida in the February 2015 issue. The note says that this is how the writer answered the journalist’s question what three things England can be proud of. It is noteworthy that the story was placed in the section Anécdotas, that is, unverifiable or not fully confirmed stories (in this case, it is not without reason that the name of Wilde’s interlocutor and the year when the interview took place are not indicated). The fact that the story was published in a Spanish edition explains why it was in this language that the statement became so widespread.
Thus, there is not a single piece of convincing evidence that Wilde ever said anything like that. The wording of the statement in English, in which Wilde mainly wrote, differs significantly, which usually indicates a translation of the original source from another language. The earliest publication of the statement that “Verified” discovered appeared in 2015 in one of the Spanish publications. This explains both the widespread distribution of the quote specifically in the Spanish-language segment of the Web, and the differences in the English language wording, since, apparently, this is really a translation. The Oscar Wilde Society also claims that the writer never said the phrase about three good things that are produced in England.
*Russian authorities think the company Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Facebook, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.
Cover photo: Alfred Ellis & Walery, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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