Life and Confessions of Oscar Wilde
Life and Confessions of Oscar WildeINTRODUCTIONCHAPTER ICHAPTER IICHAPTER IIICHAPTER IVCHAPTER VCHAPTER VICHAPTER VIICHAPTER VIIICHAPTER IXCHAPTER XCHAPTER XICHAPTER XIICHAPTER XIIICHAPTER XIVCHAPTER XVCHAPTER XVIFOOTNOTESCopyright
Life and Confessions of Oscar Wilde
FRANK HARRIS
INTRODUCTION
I was advised on all hands not to write this book, and some English
friends who have read it urge me not to publish it.
"You will be accused of selecting the subject," they say, "because
sexual viciousness appeals to you, and your method of treatment
lays you open to attack.
"You criticise and condemn the English conception of justice, and
English legal methods: you even question the impartiality of
English judges, and throw an unpleasant light on English juries and
the English public—all of which is not only unpopular but will
convince the unthinking that you are a presumptuous, or at least an
outlandish, person with too good a conceit of himself and
altogether too free a tongue."
I should be more than human or less if these arguments did not give
me pause. I would do nothing willingly to alienate the few who are
still friendly to me. But the motives driving me are too strong for
such personal considerations. I might say with the Latin:
"Non me tua fervida terrent,
Dicta, ferox: Di me terrent, et Jupiter hostis."
Even this would be only a part of the truth. Youth it seems to me
should always be prudent, for youth has much to lose: but I am come
to that time of life when a man can afford to be bold, may even
dare to be himself and write the best in him, heedless of knaves
and fools or of anything this world may do. The voyage for me is
almost over: I am in sight of port: like a good shipman, I have
already sent down the lofty spars and housed the captious canvas in
preparation for the long anchorage: I have little now to
fear.
And the immortals are with me in my design. Greek tragedy treated
of far more horrible and revolting themes, such as the banquet of
Thyestes: and Dante did not shrink from describing the unnatural
meal of Ugolino. The best modern critics approve my choice. "All
depends on the subject," says Matthew Arnold, talking of great
literature: "choose a fitting action—a great and significant
action—penetrate yourself with the feeling of the situation: this
done, everything else will follow; for expression is subordinate
and secondary."
Socrates was found guilty of corrupting the young and was put to
death for the offence. His accusation and punishment constitute
surely a great and significant action such as Matthew Arnold
declared was alone of the highest and most permanent literary
value.
The action involved in the rise and ruin of Oscar Wilde is of the
same kind and of enduring interest to humanity. Critics may say
that Wilde is a smaller person than Socrates, less significant in
many ways: but even if this were true, it would not alter the
artist's position; the great portraits of the world are not of
Napoleon or Dante. The differences between men are not important in
comparison with their inherent likeness. To depict the mortal so
that he takes on immortality—that is the task of the artist.
There are special reasons, too, why I should handle this story.
Oscar Wilde was a friend of mine for many years: I could not help
prizing him to the very end: he was always to me a charming,
soul-animating influence. He was dreadfully punished by men utterly
his inferiors: ruined, outlawed, persecuted till Death itself came
as a deliverance. His sentence impeaches his judges. The whole
story is charged with tragic pathos and unforgettable lessons. I
have waited for more than ten years hoping that some one would
write about him in this spirit and leave me free to do other
things, but nothing such as I propose has yet appeared.
Oscar Wilde was greater as a talker, in my opinion, than as a
writer, and no fame is more quickly evanescent. If I do not tell
his story and paint his portrait, it seems unlikely that anyone
else will do it.
English "strachery" may accuse me of attacking morality: the
accusation is worse than absurd. The very foundations of this old
world are moral: the charred ember itself floats about in space,
moves and has its being in obedience to inexorable law. The thinker
may define morality: the reformer may try to bring our notions of
it into nearer accord with the fact: human love and pity may seek
to soften its occasional injustices and mitigate its intolerable
harshness: but that is all the freedom we mortals enjoy, all the
breathing-space allotted to us.
In this book the reader will find the figure of the
Prometheus-artist clamped, so to speak, with bands of steel to the
huge granitic cliff of English puritanism. No account was taken of
his manifold virtues and graces: no credit given him for his
extraordinary achievements: he was hounded out of life because his
sins were not the sins of the English middle-class. The culprit was
in much nobler and better than his judges.
Here are all the elements of pity and sorrow and fear that are
required in great tragedy.
The artist who finds in Oscar Wilde a great and provocative subject
for his art needs no argument to justify his choice. If the picture
is a great and living portrait, the moralist will be satisfied: the
dark shadows must all be there, as well as the high lights, and the
effect must be to increase our tolerance and intensify our
pity.
If on the other hand the portrait is ill-drawn or ill-painted, all
the reasoning in the world and the praise of all the sycophants
will not save the picture from contempt and the artist from
censure.
There is one measure by which intention as apart from
accomplishment can be judged, and one only: "If you think the book
well done," says Pascal, "and on re-reading find it strong; be
assured that the man who wrote it, wrote it on his knees." No book
could have been written more reverently than this book of
mine.
CHAPTER I
On the 12th of December, 1864, Dublin society was abuzz with
excitement. A tidbit of scandal which had long been rolled on the
tongue in semi-privacy was to be discussed in open court, and all
women and a good many men were agog with curiosity and
expectation.
The story itself was highly spiced and all the actors in it well
known.
A famous doctor and oculist, recently knighted for his
achievements, was the real defendant. He was married to a woman
with a great literary reputation as a poet and writer who was
idolized by the populace for her passionate advocacy of Ireland's
claim to self-government; "Speranza" was regarded by the Irish
people as a sort of Irish Muse.
The young lady bringing the action was the daughter of the
professor of medical jurisprudence at Trinity College, who was also
the chief at Marsh's library.
It was said that this Miss Travers, a pretty girl just out of her
teens, had been seduced by Dr. Sir William Wilde while under his
care as a patient. Some went so far as to say that chloroform had
been used, and that the girl had been violated.
The doctor was represented as a sort of Minotaur: lustful stories
were invented and repeated with breathless delight; on all faces,
the joy of malicious curiosity and envious denigration.
The interest taken in the case was extraordinary: the excitement
beyond comparison; the first talents of the Bar were engaged on
both sides; Serjeant Armstrong led for the plaintiff, helped by the
famous Mr. Butt, Q.C., and Mr. Heron, Q.C., who were in turn backed
by Mr. Hamill and Mr. Quinn; while Serjeant Sullivan was for the
defendant, supported by Mr. Sidney, Q.C., and Mr. Morris, Q.C., and
aided by Mr. John Curran and Mr. Purcell.
The Court of Common Pleas was the stage; Chief Justice Monahan
presiding with a special jury. The trial was expected to last a
week, and not only the Court but the approaches to it were
crowded.
To judge by the scandalous reports, the case should have been a
criminal case, should have been conducted by the Attorney-General
against Sir William Wilde; but that was not the way it presented
itself. The action was not even brought directly by Miss Travers or
by her father, Dr. Travers, against Sir William Wilde for rape or
criminal assault, or seduction. It was a civil action brought by
Miss Travers, who claimed £2,000 damages for a libel written by
Lady Wilde to her father, Dr. Travers. The letter complained of ran
as follows:—
Tower, Bray, May 6th.
Sir, you may not be aware of the disreputable conduct of your
daughter at Bray where she consorts with all the low newspaper boys
in the place, employing them to disseminate offensive placards in
which my name is given, and also tracts in which she makes it
appear that she has had an intrigue with Sir William Wilde. If she
chooses to disgrace herself, it is not my affair, but as her object
in insulting me is in the hope of extorting money for which she has
several times applied to Sir William Wilde with threats of more
annoyance if not given, I think it right to inform you, as no
threat of additional insult shall ever extort money from our hands.
The wages of disgrace she has so basely treated for and demanded
shall never be given her.
Jane F. Wilde.
To Dr. Travers.
The summons and plaint charged that this letter written to the
father of the plaintiff by Lady Wilde was a libel reflecting on the
character and chastity of Miss Travers, and as Lady Wilde was a
married woman, her husband Sir William Wilde was joined in the
action as a co-defendant for conformity.
The defences set up were:—
First, a plea of "No libel": secondly, that the letter did not bear
the defamatory sense imputed by the plaint: thirdly, a denial of
the publication, and, fourthly, a plea of privilege. This last was
evidently the real defence and was grounded upon facts which
afforded some justification of Lady Wilde's bitter letter.
It was admitted that for a year or more Miss Travers had done her
uttermost to annoy both Sir William Wilde and his wife in every
possible way. The trouble began, the defence stated, by Miss
Travers fancying that she was slighted by Lady Wilde. She thereupon
published a scandalous pamphlet under the title of "Florence Boyle
Price, a Warning; by Speranza," with the evident intention of
causing the public to believe that the booklet was the composition
of Lady Wilde under the assumed name of Florence Boyle Price. In
this pamphlet Miss Travers asserted that a person she called Dr.
Quilp had made an attempt on her virtue. She put the charge mildly.
"It is sad," she wrote, "to think that in the nineteenth century a
lady must not venture into a physician's study without being
accompanied by a bodyguard to protect her."
Miss Travers admitted that Dr. Quilp was intended for Sir William
Wilde; indeed she identified Dr. Quilp with the newly made knight
in a dozen different ways. She went so far as to describe his
appearance. She declared that he had "an animal, sinister
expression about his mouth which was coarse and vulgar in the
extreme: the large protruding under lip was most unpleasant. Nor
did the upper part of his face redeem the lower part. His eyes were
small and round, mean and prying in expression. There was no
candour in the doctor's countenance, where one looked for candour."
Dr. Quilp's quarrel with his victim, it appeared, was that she was
"unnaturally passionless."
The publication of such a pamphlet was calculated to injure both
Sir William and Lady Wilde in public esteem, and Miss Travers was
not content to let the matter rest there. She drew attention to the
pamphlet by letters to the papers, and on one occasion, when Sir
William Wilde was giving a lecture to the Young Men's Christian
Association at the Metropolitan Hall, she caused large placards to
be exhibited in the neighbourhood having upon them in large letters
the words "Sir William Wilde and Speranza." She employed one of the
persons bearing a placard to go about ringing a large hand bell
which she, herself, had given to him for the purpose. She even
published doggerel verses in the Dublin Weekly Advertiser, and
signed them "Speranza," which annoyed Lady Wilde intensely. One
read thus:—
Your progeny is quite a pest
To those who hate such "critters";
Some sport I'll have, or I'm blest
I'll fry the Wilde breed in the West
Then you can call them Fritters.
She wrote letters to Saunders Newsletter, and even reviewed a book
of Lady Wilde's entitled "The First Temptation," and called it a
"blasphemous production." Moreover, when Lady Wilde was staying at
Bray, Miss Travers sent boys to offer the pamphlet for sale to the
servants in her house. In fine Miss Travers showed a keen feminine
ingenuity and pertinacity in persecution worthy of a nobler
motive.
But the defence did not rely on such annoyance as sufficient
provocation for Lady Wilde's libellous letter. The plea went on to
state that Miss Travers had applied to Sir William Wilde for money
again and again, and accompanied these applications with threats of
worse pen-pricks if the requests were not acceded to. It was under
these circumstances, according to Lady Wilde, that she wrote the
letter complained of to Dr. Travers and enclosed it in a sealed
envelope. She wished to get Dr. Travers to use his parental
influence to stop Miss Travers from further disgracing herself and
insulting and annoying Sir William and Lady Wilde.
The defence carried the war into the enemy's camp by thus
suggesting that Miss Travers was blackmailing Sir William and Lady
Wilde.
The attack in the hands of Serjeant Armstrong was still more deadly
and convincing. He rose early on the Monday afternoon and declared
at the beginning that the case was so painful that he would have
preferred not to have been engaged in it—a hypocritical statement
which deceived no one, and was just as conventional-false as his
wig. But with this exception the story he told was extraordinarily
clear and gripping.
Some ten years before, Miss Travers, then a young girl of nineteen,
was suffering from partial deafness, and was recommended by her own
doctor to go to Dr. Wilde, who was the chief oculist and aurist in
Dublin. Miss Travers went to Dr. Wilde, who treated her
successfully. Dr. Wilde would accept no fees from her, stating at
the outset that as she was the daughter of a brother-physician, he
thought it an honour to be of use to her. Serjeant Armstrong
assured his hearers that in spite of Miss Travers' beauty he
believed that at first Dr. Wilde took nothing but a benevolent
interest in the girl. Even when his professional services ceased to
be necessary, Dr. Wilde continued his friendship. He wrote Miss
Travers innumerable letters: he advised her as to her reading and
sent her books and tickets for places of amusement: he even
insisted that she should be better dressed, and pressed money upon
her to buy bonnets and clothes and frequently invited her to his
house for dinners and parties. The friendship went on in this
sentimental kindly way for some five or six years till 1860.
The wily Serjeant knew enough about human nature to feel that it
was necessary to discover some dramatic incident to change
benevolent sympathy into passion, and he certainly found what he
wanted.
Miss Travers, it appeared, had been burnt low down on her neck when
a child: the cicatrice could still be seen, though it was gradually
disappearing. When her ears were being examined by Dr. Wilde, it
was customary for her to kneel on a hassock before him, and he thus
discovered this burn on her neck. After her hearing improved he
still continued to examine the cicatrice from time to time,
pretending to note the speed with which it was disappearing. Some
time in '60 or '61 Miss Travers had a corn on the sole of her foot
which gave her some pain. Dr. Wilde did her the honour of paring
the corn with his own hands and painting it with iodine. The
cunning Serjeant could not help saying with some confusion, natural
or assumed, "that it would have been just as well—at least there
are men of such temperament that it would be dangerous to have such
a manipulation going on." The spectators in the court smiled,
feeling that in "manipulation" the Serjeant had found the most
neatly suggestive word.
Naturally at this point Serjeant Sullivan interfered in order to
stem the rising tide of interest and to blunt the point of the
accusation. Sir William Wilde, he said, was not the man to shrink
from any investigation: but he was only in the case formally and he
could not meet the allegations, which therefore were "one-sided and
unfair" and so forth and so on.
After the necessary pause, Serjeant Armstrong plucked his wig
straight and proceeded to read letters of Dr. Wilde to Miss Travers
at this time, in which he tells her not to put too much iodine on
her foot, but to rest it for a few days in a slipper and keep it in
a horizontal position while reading a pleasant book. If she would
send in, he would try and send her one.
"I have now," concluded the Serjeant, like an actor carefully
preparing his effect, "traced this friendly intimacy down to a
point where it begins to be dangerous: I do not wish to aggravate
the gravity of the charge in the slightest by any rhetoric or by an
unconscious over-statement; you shall therefore, gentlemen of the
jury, hear from Miss Travers herself what took place between her
and Dr. Wilde and what she complains of."
Miss Travers then went into the witness-box. Though thin and past
her first youth, she was still pretty in a conventional way, with
regular features and dark eyes. She was examined by Mr. Butt, Q.C.
After confirming point by point what Serjeant Armstrong had said,
she went on to tell the jury that in the summer of '62 she had
thought of going to Australia, where her two brothers lived, who
wanted her to come out to them. Dr. Wilde lent her £40 to go, but
told her she must say it was £20 or her father might think the sum
too large. She missed the ship in London and came back. She was
anxious to impress on the jury the fact that she had repaid Dr.
Wilde, that she had always repaid whatever he had lent her.
She went on to relate how one day Dr. Wilde had got her in a
kneeling position at his feet, when he took her in his arms,
declaring that he would not let her go until she called him
William. Miss Travers refused to do this, and took umbrage at the
embracing and ceased to visit at his house: but Dr. Wilde protested
extravagantly that he had meant nothing wrong, and begged her to
forgive him and gradually brought about a reconciliation which was
consummated by pressing invitations to parties and by a loan of two
or three pounds for a dress, which loan, like the others, had been
carefully repaid.
The excitement in the court was becoming breathless. It was felt
that the details were cumulative; the doctor was besieging the
fortress in proper form. The story of embracings, reconciliations
and loans all prepared the public for the great scene.
The girl went on, now answering questions, now telling bits of the
story in her own way, Mr. Butt, the great advocate, taking care
that it should all be consecutive and clear with a due crescendo of
interest. In October, 1862, it appeared Lady Wilde was not in the
house at Merrion Square, but was away at Bray, as one of the
children had not been well, and she thought the sea air would
benefit him. Dr. Wilde was alone in the house. Miss Travers called
and was admitted into Dr. Wilde's study. He put her on her knees
before him and bared her neck, pretending to examine the burn; he
fondled her too much and pressed her to him: she took offence and
tried to draw away. Somehow or other his hand got entangled in a
chain at her neck. She called out to him, "You are suffocating me,"
and tried to rise: but he cried out like a madman: "I will, I want
to," and pressed what seemed to be a handkerchief over her face.
She declared that she lost consciousness.
When she came to herself she found Dr. Wilde frantically imploring
her to come to her senses, while dabbing water on her face, and
offering her wine to drink.
"If you don't drink," he cried, "I'll pour it over you."
For some time, she said, she scarcely realized where she was or
what had occurred, though she heard him talking. But gradually
consciousness came back to her, and though she would not open her
eyes she understood what he was saying. He talked
frantically:
"Do be reasonable, and all will be right.... I am in your power ...
spare me, oh, spare me ... strike me if you like. I wish to God I
could hate you, but I can't. I swore I would never touch your hand
again. Attend to me and do what I tell you. Have faith and
confidence in me and you may remedy the past and go to Australia.
Think of the talk this may give rise to. Keep up appearances for
your own sake...."
He then took her up-stairs to a bedroom and made her drink some
wine and lie down for some time. She afterwards left the house; she
hardly knew how; he accompanied her to the door, she thought; but
could not be certain; she was half dazed.
The judge here interposed with the crucial question:
"Did you know that you had been violated?"
The audience waited breathlessly; after a short pause Miss Travers
replied:
"Yes."
Then it was true, the worst was true. The audience, excited to the
highest pitch, caught breath with malevolent delight. But the
thrills were not exhausted. Miss Travers next told how in Dr.
Wilde's study one evening she had been vexed at some slight, and at
once took four pennyworth of laudanum which she had bought. Dr.
Wilde hurried her round to the house of Dr. Walsh, a physician in
the neighbourhood, who gave her an antidote. Dr. Wilde was
dreadfully frightened lest something should get out....
She admitted at once that she had sometimes asked Dr. Wilde for
money: she thought nothing of it as she had again and again repaid
him the monies which he had lent her.
Miss Travers' examination in chief had been intensely interesting.
The fashionable ladies had heard all they had hoped to hear, and it
was noticed that they were not so eager to get seats in the court
from this time on, though the room was still crowded.
The cross-examination of Miss Travers was at least as interesting
to the student of human nature as the examination in chief had
been, for in her story of what took place on that 14th of October,
weaknesses and discrepancies of memory were discovered and at
length improbabilities and contradictions in the narrative
itself.
First of all it was elicited that she could not be certain of the
day; it might have been the 15th or the 16th: it was Friday the
14th, she thought.... It was a great event to her; the most awful
event in her whole life; yet she could not remember the day for
certain.
"Did you tell anyone of what had taken place?"
"No."
"Not even your father?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I did not wish to give him pain."
"But you went back to Dr. Wilde's study after the awful
assault?"
"Yes."
"You went again and again, did you not?"
"Yes."
"Did he ever attempt to repeat the offence?"
"Yes."
The audience was thunderstruck; the plot was deepening. Miss
Travers went on to say that the Doctor was rude to her again; she
did not know his intention; he took hold of her and tried to fondle
her; but she would not have it.
"After the second offence you went back?"
"Yes."
"Did he ever repeat it again?"
"Yes."
Miss Travers said that once again Dr. Wilde had been rude to
her.
"Yet you returned again?"
"Yes."
"And you took money from this man who had violated you against your
will?"
"Yes."
"You asked him for money?"
"Yes."
"This is the first time you have told about this second and third
assault, is it not?"
"Yes," the witness admitted.
So far all that Miss Travers had said hung together and seemed
eminently credible; but when she was questioned about the
chloroform and the handkerchief she became confused. At the outset
she admitted that the handkerchief might have been a rag. She was
not certain it was a rag. It was something she saw the doctor throw
into the fire when she came to her senses.
"Had he kept it in his hands, then, all the time you were
unconscious?"
"I don't know."
"Just to show it to you?"
The witness was silent.
When she was examined as to her knowledge of chloroform, she broke
down hopelessly. She did not know the smell of it; could not
describe it; did not know whether it burnt or not; could not in
fact swear that it was chloroform Dr. Wilde had used; would not
swear that it was anything; believed that it was chloroform or
something like it because she lost consciousness. That was her only
reason for saying that chloroform had been given to her.
Again the judge interposed with the probing question:
"Did you say anything about chloroform in your pamphlet?"
"No," the witness murmured.
It was manifest that the strong current of feeling in favour of
Miss Travers had begun to ebb. The story was a toothsome morsel
still: but it was regretfully admitted that the charge of rape had
not been pushed home. It was felt to be disappointing, too, that
the chief prosecuting witness should have damaged her own
case.
It was now the turn of the defence, and some thought the pendulum
might swing back again.
Lady Wilde was called and received an enthusiastic reception. The
ordinary Irishman was willing to show at any time that he believed
in his Muse, and was prepared to do more than cheer for one who had
fought with her pen for "Oireland" in the Nation side by side with
Tom Davis.
Lady Wilde gave her evidence emphatically, but was too bitter to be
a persuasive witness. It was tried to prove from her letter that
she believed that Miss Travers had had an intrigue with Sir William
Wilde, but she would not have it. She did not for a moment believe
in her husband's guilt. Miss Travers wished to make it appear, she
said, that she had an intrigue with Sir William Wilde, but in her
opinion it was utterly untrue. Sir William Wilde was above
suspicion. There was not a particle of truth in the accusation; her
husband would never so demean himself.
Lady Wilde's disdainful speeches seemed to persuade the populace,
but had small effect on the jury, and still less on the
judge.
When she was asked if she hated Miss Travers, she replied that she
did not hate anyone, but she had to admit that she disliked Miss
Travers' methods of action.
"Why did you not answer Miss Travers when she wrote telling you of
your husband's attempt on her virtue?"
"I took no interest in the matter," was the astounding reply.
The defence made an even worse mistake than this. When the time
came, Sir William Wilde was not called.
In his speech for Miss Travers, Mr. Butt made the most of this
omission. He declared that the refusal of Sir William Wilde to go
into the witness box was an admission of guilt; an admission that
Miss Travers' story of her betrayal was true and could not be
contradicted. But the refusal of Sir William Wilde to go into the
box was not, he insisted, the worst point in the defence. He
reminded the jury that he had asked Lady Wilde why she had not
answered Miss Travers when she wrote to her. He recalled Lady
Wilde's reply:
"I took no interest in the matter."
Every woman would be interested in such a thing, he declared, even
a stranger; but Lady Wilde hated her husband's victim and took no
interest in her seduction beyond writing a bitter, vindictive and
libellous letter to the girl's father....
The speech was regarded as a masterpiece and enhanced the already
great reputation of the man who was afterwards to become the Home
Rule Leader.
It only remained for the judge to sum up, for everyone was getting
impatient to hear the verdict. Chief Justice Monahan made a short,
impartial speech, throwing the dry, white light of truth upon the
conflicting and passionate statements. First of all, he said, it
was difficult to believe in the story of rape whether with or
without chloroform. If the girl had been violated she would be
expected to cry out at the time, or at least to complain to her
father as soon as she reached home. Had it been a criminal trial,
he pointed out, no one would have believed this part of Miss
Travers' story. When you find a girl does not cry out at the time
and does not complain afterwards, and returns to the house to meet
further rudeness, it must be presumed that she consented to the
seduction.
But was there a seduction? The girl asserted that there was guilty
intimacy, and Sir William Wilde had not contradicted her. It was
said that he was only formally a defendant; but he was the real
defendant and he could have gone into the box if he had liked and
given his version of what took place and contradicted Miss Travers
in whole or in part.
"It is for you, gentlemen of the jury, to draw your own conclusions
from his omission to do what one would have thought would be an
honourable man's first impulse and duty."
Finally it was for the jury to consider whether the letter was a
libel and if so what the amount of damages should be.
His Lordship recalled the jury at Mr. Butt's request to say that in
assessing damages they might also take into consideration the fact
that the defence was practically a justification of the libel. The
fair-mindedness of the judge was conspicuous from first to last,
and was worthy of the high traditions of the Irish Bench.
After deliberating for a couple of hours the jury brought in a
verdict which had a certain humour in it. They awarded to Miss
Travers a farthing damages and intimated that the farthing should
carry costs. In other words they rated Miss Travers' virtue at the
very lowest coin of the realm, while insisting that Sir William
Wilde should pay a couple of thousands of pounds in costs for
having seduced her.
It was generally felt that the verdict did substantial justice;
though the jury, led away by patriotic sympathy with Lady Wilde,
the true "Speranza," had been a little hard on Miss Travers. No one
doubted that Sir William Wilde had seduced his patient. He had, it
appeared, an unholy reputation, and the girl's admission that he
had accused her of being "unnaturally passionless" was accepted as
the true key of the enigma. This was why he had drawn away from the
girl, after seducing her. And it was not unnatural under the
circumstances that she should become vindictive and
revengeful.
Such inferences as these, I drew from the comments of the Irish
papers at the time; but naturally I wished if possible to hear some
trustworthy contemporary on the matter. Fortunately such testimony
was forthcoming.
A Fellow of Trinity, who was then a young man, embodied the best
opinion of the time in an excellent pithy letter. He wrote to me
that the trial simply established, what every one believed, that
"Sir William Wilde was a pithecoid person of extraordinary
sensuality and cowardice (funking the witness-box left him without
a defender!) and that his wife was a highfalutin' pretentious
creature whose pride was as extravagant as her reputation founded
on second-rate verse-making.... Even when a young woman she used to
keep her rooms in Merrion Square in semi-darkness; she laid the
paint on too thick for any ordinary light, and she gave herself
besides all manner of airs."
This incisive judgment of an able and fairly impartial contemporary
observer[2] corroborates, I think, the inferences which one would
naturally draw from the newspaper accounts of the trial. It seems
to me that both combine to give a realistic photograph, so to
speak, of Sir William and Lady Wilde. An artist, however, would
lean to a more kindly picture. Trying to see the personages as they
saw themselves he would balance the doctor's excessive sensuality
and lack of self-control by dwelling on the fact that his energy
and perseverance and intimate adaptation to his surroundings had
brought him in middle age to the chief place in his profession, and
if Lady Wilde was abnormally vain, a verse-maker and not a poet,
she was still a talented woman of considerable reading and manifold
artistic sympathies.
Such were the father and mother of Oscar Wilde.
CHAPTER II
The Wildes had three children, two sons and a daughter. The first
son was born in 1852, a year after the marriage, and was christened
after his father William Charles Kingsbury Wills. The second son
was born two years later, in 1854 and the names given to him seem
to reveal the Nationalist sympathies and pride of his mother. He
was christened Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde; but he appears
to have suffered from the pompous string only in extreme youth. At
school he concealed the "Fingal," as a young man he found it
advisable to omit the "O'Flahertie."
In childhood and early boyhood Oscar was not considered as quick or
engaging or handsome as his brother, Willie. Both boys had the
benefit of the best schooling of the time. They were sent as
boarders to the Portora School at Enniskillen, one of the four
Royal schools of Ireland. Oscar went to Portora in 1864 at the age
of nine, a couple of years after his brother. He remained at the
school for seven years and left it on winning an Exhibition for
Trinity College, Dublin, when he was just seventeen.
The facts hitherto collected and published about Oscar as a
schoolboy are sadly meagre and insignificant. Fortunately for my
readers I have received from Sir Edward Sullivan, who was a
contemporary of Oscar both at school and college, an exceedingly
vivid and interesting pen-picture of the lad, one of those
astounding masterpieces of portraiture only to be produced by the
plastic sympathies of boyhood and the intimate intercourse of years
lived in common. It is love alone which in later life can achieve
such a miracle of representment. I am very glad to be allowed to
publish this realistic miniature, in the very words of the
author.
"I first met Oscar Wilde in the early part of 1868 at Portora Royal
School. He was thirteen or fourteen years of age. His long straight
fair hair was a striking feature of his appearance. He was then, as
he remained for some years after, extremely boyish in nature, very
mobile, almost restless when out of the schoolroom. Yet he took no
part in the school games at any time. Now and then he would be seen
in one of the school boats on Loch Erne: yet he was a poor hand at
an oar.
"Even as a schoolboy he was an excellent talker: his descriptive
power being far above the average, and his humorous exaggerations
of school occurrences always highly amusing.
"A favourite place for the boys to sit and gossip in the late
afternoon in winter time was round a stove which stood in 'The
Stone Hall.' Here Oscar was at his best; although his brother
Willie was perhaps in those days even better than he was at telling
a story.
"Oscar would frequently vary the entertainment by giving us
extremely quaint illustrations of holy people in stained-glass
attitudes: his power of twisting his limbs into weird contortions
being very great. (I am told that Sir William Wilde, his father,
possessed the same power.) It must not be thought, however, that
there was any suggestion of irreverence in the exhibition.
"At one of these gatherings, about the year 1870, I remember a
discussion taking place about an ecclesiastical prosecution that
made a considerable stir at the time. Oscar was present, and full
of the mysterious nature of the Court of Arches; he told us there
was nothing he would like better in after life than to be the hero
of such a cause celèbre and to go down to posterity as the
defendant in such a case as 'Regina versus Wilde!'
"At school he was almost always called 'Oscar'—but he had a
nick-name, 'Grey-crow,' which the boys would call him when they
wished to annoy him, and which he resented greatly. It was derived
in some mysterious way from the name of an island in the Upper Loch
Erne, within easy reach of the school by boat.
"It was some little time before he left Portora that the boys got
to know of his full name, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde.
Just at the close of his school career he won the 'Carpenter' Greek
Testament Prize,—and on presentation day was called up to the dais
by Dr. Steele, by all his names—much to Oscar's annoyance; for a
great deal of schoolboy chaff followed.
"He was always generous, kindly, good-tempered. I remember he and
myself were on one occasion mounted as opposing jockeys on the
backs of two bigger boys in what we called a 'tournament,' held in
one of the class-rooms. Oscar and his horse were thrown, and the
result was a broken arm for Wilde. Knowing that it was an accident,
he did not let it make any difference in our friendship.
"He had, I think, no very special chums while at school. I was
perhaps as friendly with him all through as anybody, though his
junior in class by a year....
"Willie Wilde was never very familiar with him, treating him
always, in those days, as a younger brother....
"When in the head class together, we with two other boys were in
the town of Enniskillen one afternoon, and formed part of an
audience who were listening to a street orator. One of us, for the
fun of the thing, got near the speaker and with a stick knocked his
hat off and then ran for home followed by the other three. Several
of the listeners, resenting the impertinence, gave chase, and Oscar
in his hurry collided with an aged cripple and threw him down—a
fact which was duly reported to the boys when we got safely back.
Oscar was afterwards heard telling how he found his way barred by
an angry giant with whom he fought through many rounds and whom he
eventually left for dead in the road after accomplishing prodigies
of valour on his redoubtable opponent. Romantic imagination was
strong in him even in those schoolboy days; but there was always
something in his telling of such a tale to suggest that he felt his
hearers were not really being taken in; it was merely the romancing
indulged in so humorously by the two principal male characters in
'The Importance of Being Earnest.'...
"He never took any interest in mathematics either at school or
college. He laughed at science and never had a good word for a
mathematical or science master, but there was nothing spiteful or
malignant in anything he said against them; or indeed against
anybody.
"The romances that impressed him most when at school were
Disraeli's novels. He spoke slightingly of Dickens as a
novelist....
"The classics absorbed almost his whole attention in his later
school days, and the flowing beauty of his oral translations in
class, whether of Thucydides, Plato or Virgil, was a thing not
easily to be forgotten."
This photograph, so to speak, of Oscar as a schoolboy is
astonishingly clear and lifelike; but I have another portrait of
him from another contemporary, who has since made for himself a
high name as a scholar at Trinity, which, while confirming the
general traits sketched by Sir Edward Sullivan, takes somewhat more
notice of certain mental qualities which came later to the
fruiting.
This observer who does not wish his name given, writes:
"Oscar had a pungent wit, and nearly all the nicknames in the
school were given by him. He was very good on the literary side of
scholarship, with a special leaning to poetry....
"We noticed that he always liked to have editions of the classics
that were of stately size with large print.... He was more careful
in his dress than any other boy.
"He was a wide reader and read very fast indeed; how much he
assimilated I never could make out. He was poor at music.