Oscar
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13 White, 36. Between 1859 and 1869 Steele spent £4,420 19s 4d of his own money on ‘enlargements and improvements’ to the school, according to his ‘Statement of Facts’ to the commissioners of endowed schools.
14 August 1865 notice in the Impartial Reporter, in White, 63.
15 OW, in Harris, 18.
16 Harris, 16; Sherard, Life, 103.
17 Coakley, 77; White, 23–4.
18 JFW, quoted in Melville, 104.
19 Tipper, A Critical Biography of Lady Jane Wilde, 587; White, 23.
20 Melville, 103.
21 R. Y. Tyrrell, quoted in Harris, 13. Sherard and others have doubted whether the quotation really does derive from Tyrrell, who remained a friend of the Wildes, and a regular guest at Merrion Square.
22 Lord Rathcreedan, Memories of a Long Life (1931), 52.
23 For example, they were both present at a talk given by John Butler Yeats in the lecture hall at King’s Inn on 21 November 1865 (Murphy, Prodigal Father, 45–6; Freeman’s Journal, 7 December 1869, records WRWW and Isaac Butt among the ‘distinguished’ attendees of the law students’ debating society; they were both among the fifty members elected to act on the council of the Home Rule League in February 1874.
24 Melville, 103.
25 Sherard, Life, 103.
26 Harris, 19.
27 ‘Our New York Letter’, Philadelphia Inquirer, 4 January 1882, Hofer & Scharnhorst, 18.
28 Vyvyan Holland, Son of Oscar Wilde (1954), 45.
29 Joseph Hone, George Moore (1936), 24.
30 CL, 85.
31 ‘Oscar Wilde’, Biograph and Review, 131.
32 Ross, Oscar Wilde and Ancient Greece, 15.
33 WRWW’s Lough Corrib its shores and islands, 258–9. The structure is now considered to have been an early example of a ‘sweat house’. WCKW also featured in the book: he contributed a drawing of Hag Castle.
34 ‘E.R.F’, New York Herald, 22 August 1881.
35 WRWW to LVK, in Mansén, ‘A Splendid New Picture’, 114.
36 JFW to LVK, 16 April 1867, Tipper, Kraemer, 46.
37 We can acknowledge this without going so far as Melissa Knox, who, in her Oscar Wilde: A Long and Lovely Suicide (1994) posited an incestuous attraction, if not relationship, between the two.
38 Harris, 210; ‘E.R.F’, New York Herald, 22 August 1881. None of these verses survives. His graveside poem ‘Requiescat’, although he came to view it as a memorial to his sister – with its opening stanza ‘Tread lightly, she is near / Under the snow, / Speak gently, she can hear / The daisies grow’ – was written many years later. It is dated from Avignon, which Wilde probably visited in the summer of 1875. Variant versions in the MS ‘Poems’ notebook (Philadelphia Public Library) indicate that he was working on it close to the time of the publication of Poems in 1881; they also suggest that he initially conceived it as an elegy to a dead lover, rather than to a dead sister.
39 White, 91–2.
40 Harris, 18.
41 James Glover, Jimmy Glover His Book (1911), 34; the friend was George Henry, father of the novelist George Moore. Sherard, Life, 90, also gives a version, dated to 1864, which appears to derive from George Moore. ‘Willy is all right, but Oscar is wonderful, wonderful. He can do anything.’ These accounts should be set against the less reliable claim – recorded by Arthur Ransome, 30, and echoed by Sherard in a letter to LAD, 7 March 1937 – ‘that his mother always thought that Oscar was less brilliant than her elder son’.
42 ‘Oscar Wilde’, Biograph and Review, 132.
43 JFW to LVK, 16 November 1867, in Tipper, Kramer, 49.
44 OW won Mr Robert Christian’s classical prize (shared with Herbert Beatty); the Rev. A. D. J. Robinson prize in classics (also with Beatty, along with Leslie Creery and William Lendrum), and a general lower school classics prize for his results in the preceding year’s examinations. For OW’s modest attainments in schoolboy French, see Sherard, Life, 111, and OW’s annotated copy of Voltaire’s Histoire de Charles XII; Thomas Wright, ‘Wilde the Doodle Dandy: a Scholarly Doodle’, Wildean, 47 (2015), 72–3. Sherard, Life, 92, quotes a very unreliable ‘biographical sketch’ from 1891, claiming that OW’s ‘passion’ for French literature began immediately after this childhood visit to Paris. But it is not convincing, nor corroborated by the other sources.
45 Poems by Speranza (Lady Wilde) (1870); the National Review, edited by James Godkin, started as a monthly in June 1868, and became a weekly in September 1868. No 1, vol. 3 (1 August 1868) included ‘To Ireland’ – ‘A New Poem by Speranza’ on page 60; No. 1, vol. 4, was indeed published on 5 September, though it is hard to think that OW would have been thrilled by its contents, which included articles on ‘The Last Irish Land Tragedy’, ‘Dr Pusey’s Appeal to the Wesleyans’ and the Mountains of Mourne, as well as poem by William M’Comb in memory of the Marquis of Downshire.
46 Harris, 210.
47 Sherard, Real, 177.
48 Purser to A. J. A. Symons, 28 January 1932, in Clark.
49 Purser to A. J. A. Symons, 28 January 1932, in Clark; OW, in Harris, 12.
50 Purser to A. J. A. Symons, 28 January 1932, in Clark; also ES, in Harris, 15. ‘Willie was perhaps in those days even better than [OW] was at telling a story’; Sherard, Life, 109–10; R. H. Johnstone to A. J. A. Symons, 26 July 1932, in Clark.
51 Sherard, Life, 108.
52 ES, in Harris, 16.
53 Sherard, Life, 109, quotes a contemporary: ‘He was very superior in his manner towards Willy [sic].’
54 OW, in Harris, 19, 17; the one area where OW perhaps did admit his brother’s superiority was music. Though he took music lessons throughout his school career, OW remained ‘poor’ at it.
55 Harris, 260–1.
56 For OW’s juvenile scruffiness, see R. H. Johnstone to A. J. A. Symons, 26 July 1932, in Clark: ‘He was most untidy in his person, in fact kept himself dirty’; also W. H. Drennan, another Portora contemporary: ‘Oscar Wilde was most slovenly in dress and appearance; both hands and face seemed to want a washing and his nails were always in mourning’, quoted in White, 119. There is also a fleeting vision of how OW ‘sat in soiled white ducks and elbowless jacket, in the dingy Merrion Square dining-room, and picked crab-claws in his schoolboy fingers’, quoted from Life in ‘Society Gossip’, Wrexham Advertiser, 28 January 1882, 7.
57 Purser, in Harris, 17; see also Purser, Notes on Portora (1932), in Clark: ‘He paid rather more attention to his dress than did the other boys.’
58 Sherard, Life, 109.
59 ES, in Harris, 15.
60 Sherard, Life, 109.
61 Purser, in Harris, 17; his book bill (Clark) lists book costs of £7 18s 6d to 1 February 1871; £1 15s 4d to August 1871; and £1 12s to the end of the school year.
62 Harris, 260–1.
63 OW in Harris, 18.
64 Sherard, Life, 110–11. He certainly knew these authors, and it is most likely that he read them in childhood. When he was in Holloway Prison in 1895, and in need of comfort, he asked for Stevenson’s Kidnapped and Master of Ballantrae (CL, 647). And when suggesting works for the prison library at Reading, he cited Scott, Austen and Thackeray, along with Dickens and Stevenson; Wright, 172.
65 ES, in Harris, 17.
66 Wright, 54–5.
67 OW, ‘Some Literary Ladies’ Woman’s World, January 1889
68 CL, 249; OW knew of Poe from early childhood: see Tipper, A Critical Biography of Lady Jane Wilde, 360; he considered he should have been included in any list of ‘The Best Hundred Books’, CL, 277.
69 CL, 26.
70 Mikhail, 47. OW claimed, with characteristic exaggeration, to have known Whitman’s work ‘almost from the cradle’; For Lady Wilde’s purchase of Whitman’s poem in 1868, see Tipper, A Critical Biography of Lady Jane Wilde, 360.
71 Purser, in Clark, but see also R. H. Johnstone to A. J. A. Symons, 26 July 1932, in Clark: ‘He [OW] was decidedly unpopular… and made no friends in the School. He did not join in games, which i
s a bad tray [sic] in boy’s character.’
72 ES, in Harris, 16; Purser, in Clark.
73 ES, in Harris, 16; Purser, in Clark, says ‘He had rather a quick temper, but it was not very marked.’
74 ES, in Harris, 15.
75 ES, in Harris, 16; Sherard, Real, 163, mistakenly claims that this occurred in ‘the nursery’, rather than at school.
76 Sherard, Real, 163.
77 G. B. Shaw to Frank Harris, 24 June 1930, in Dan H. Laurence, ed. Collected Letters of Bernard Shaw 1926–1950 (1988), 191; OW, in Harris, 18.
78 Harris, 18.
79 Harris, 19.
80 ES, in Harris, 15.
81 Slason Thompson, Eugene Field, a Study in Heredity and Contradiction (1901), vol. I, 213.
82 ES, in Harris, 15: ‘Even as a schoolboy he was an excellent talker’; and OW, in Harris, 28: ‘I was a great talker at school.’
83 ES, in Harris, 15.
84 ES, in Harris, 16.
85 ES, in Harris, 15. The case – because of appeals – was heard three times: on 30 April 1869; 18 November 1869 and 20 July 1870. Only the two 1869 hearings would have been in term time. For a full discussion of the case, see Dominic Janes, Visions of Queer Martyrdom (2015), chapter 2.
86 ES, in Harris, 17; Sherard, Life, 104.
87 ES, in Harris, 17.
88 Sherard, Life, 110.
89 Purser, in Harris, 17; Purser, Notes on Portora, in Clark.
90 ES, in Harris, 15–16; Sherard, Life, 104; OW claimed that he remained ‘a mere boy till I was over sixteen’ (i.e. c. 1870); see Harris, 18.
91 ES, in Harris, 15. In letter from OW and six classmates to the Portora assistant master, Rev. Benjamin Moffett, OW is the only boy to sign with his Christian name (and surname) rather than with his initials. CL, 5.
92 ES, in Harris, 16. OW was presented with a seven-volume edition of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; see Wright, 60.
93 Although Sullivan was sixteen, over a year older than Wilde, he was actually placed in the year below him. As he proved a very able student, it must be supposed that something had interrupted his early schooling.
94 Purser, in W. Steele, Portora Royal School (1891), 13.
95 Purser, Notes on Portora, in Clark.
96 He also won prizes for classics and drawing; WCKW won a drawing prize. For the general excellence of biblical knowledge at Portora, see White, 65, 77.
97 Purser, Notes on Portora, in Clark.
98 OW, in Harris, 18.
99 OW, in Harris, 19.
100 William Smith, A Smaller History of Greece (1873), 112; White, 72, lists the textbooks used at Portora.
101 OW, in Harris, 19.
102 OW, in Harris, 18; Purser, in Harris, 17; Sherard, Life, 111.
103 OW, in Harris, 18.
104 Purser, Notes on Portora, in Clark.
105 ES, in Harris, 17.
106 OW, in Harris, 19.
107 Conor Maguire, quoted in T. de Vere White, 220; see also Freeman’s Journal, 8 July 1870, ‘Fashion & Varieties’, ‘Lady Wilde, Mr Wilde, and Mr Oscar Wilde have left Merrion Square for Moytura House, Co. Mayo.’
108 Purser, in Harris, 17.
109 Sherard, Life.
110 Purser, Notes on Portora, in Clark.
111 White, 123.
112 OW, in Harris, 19.
113 JFW to LVK, 3 April 1870, Tipper, Kraemer; Louis C. Purser to A. J A. Symons, 28 Jan 1932, in Clark; in April 1870, Purser recalled him being as ‘pleasant and lively’ as ever, though ‘a little more florid perhaps and with more of the manner of a man of the world’.
114 Harris, 19–21.
Chapter 3: Foundation Scholarship
1 His entrance exam marks were: Greek, two papers: 8, 8; Latin, two papers: 8, 7; Latin composition: 4; English composition: 5; history: 8; arithmetic: 2 (Sherard, Life). There were two principal matriculations or entrance examinations each year – one at the commencement of the Michaelmas term (early October), the other in the Trinity term (April) – together with five supplementary ones. In 1871 forty-four new students matriculated on 10 October 1871, followed by a supplementary twenty-three on 21 October. There was another substantial intake in November.
2 The exam took place on 26 October: Trinity College Dublin, Calendar for 1871; Mason, 99, states that there were six other royal scholarships awarded at that time (the other ‘royal schools of Ulster’ eligible for such awards were Armagh, Cavan and Dungannon). The special exam was also sat by pupils from schools of the Erasmus Smith foundation. Portora royal scholarships were worth either £50 or £30; Portora: The School on the Hill (2008), 133. There is no indication which amount OW received, though his being listed after Purser and McDowell on the honours board might suggest the lesser amount. The costs of attending TCD included a £15 charge at entrance, followed by £8 8s each half year. This covered tuition, but not ‘rooms and commons’; Calendar, 1871.
3 WRWW received his honorary degree in 1863; he is regularly listed as being ‘on the platform’ at the meetings of the TCD Historical Society.
4 Harris, 26.
5 Harris, 24; Coakley, 136, estimates the number of students at Trinity in 1871 as ‘some 1,100’.
6 Pearson, 23; this may have occurred when Willie proposed thanks for an essay about the surplus of unmarried women in society – entitled ‘Daughter-full houses. For What?’ – at a meeting of the Philosophical Society on 5 June 1873.
7 ES, in Harris, 23.
8 Horace Wilkins, in Mikhail, 2.
9 Mason, 99, and Freeman’s Journal, 2 December 1871: OW won the composition prize for Greek verse (worth £2) in the entrance prize exams at the end of his first term, as well as a ‘premium for composition at the term lectures’.
10 Harris, 24.
11 ‘Death of Dr. R. Y. Tyrrell’; The Times, 21 September 1914, 10.
12 ‘Obituary: Robert Yelverton Tyrrell’, Hermathena, 18 (1940), xi; The Times, 21 September 1914.
13 W. B. Stanford, ‘Robert Yelverton Tyrrell’, Hermathena, 125 (1978), 16–17.
14 The Times, 21 September 1914.
15 Stanford, ‘Robert Yelverton Tyrrell’, 13.
16 The Times, 21 September 1914.
17 Stanford, ‘Robert Yelverton Tyrrell’, 10.
18 Stanford, ‘Robert Yelverton Tyrrell’, 16.
19 ‘Obituary: Robert Yelverton Tyrrell’, x; Tyrrell married Ada Shaw, the daughter of the senior fellow at TCD, on 1 August 1874.
20 ‘The Provost of Trinity’ (obituary), The Times, 1 May 1919, 10.
21 Ross, Oscar Wilde and Ancient Greece, 26–8.
22 ‘John Pentland Mahaffy’, Hermathena, 19 (1920), vii.
23 Harris, 24.
24 See register and Calendar for the role of ‘tutor’.
25 Quoted in W. B. Stanford & R. B. McDowell, Mahaffy: A Biography of an Anglo-Irishman (1971), 75.
26 Harris, 28.
27 CL, 562; JFW to OW, Tipper, Oscar, 92–3, dated 1882, but should be 1881. JFW reminded OW that Mahaffy gave ‘the first noble impulse to your intellect’.
28 Mahaffy, ‘Life of Trinity College Dublin’, The Dark Blue, i, 487–93, quoted in Coakley, 136; Mahaffy, Principles of the Art of Conversation, 1.
29 Stanford, ‘Robert Yelverton Tyrrell’, 16–17.
30 Stanford, ‘Robert Yelverton Tyrrell’, 17.
31 U. O’Connor, Oliver St John Gogarty (1981), 18.
32 W. B. Stanford & R. B. McDowell, Mahaffy: A Biography of an Anglo-Irishman (1971), 79.
33 Oliver St John Gogarty, ‘A Picture of Oscar Wilde’, Intimations (1950), 33.
34 Stanford, ‘Robert Yelverton Tyrrell’, 11–12.
35 Harris, 24.
36 Harris, 28.
37 JFW to OW [1881]; Tipper, Oscar, 92–3. Mahaffy ‘kept you out of the toils of meaner men and pleasures’.
38 Harris, 207; Stanford, ‘Robert Yelverton Tyrrell’, 16.
39 Louis Purser to A. J. A. Symons, 1932, in Clark.
40 Pearson, 22.
41 Croft-Cooke, 33. During the Michaelmas term 1871 OW attended twenty-one out of twenty-eight of Professor Abbot’s ‘science’ lectures; in Hilary term 1872 he attended two out of seventeen English literature lectures by Professor Dowden (Coakley, 137).
42 ES, in Harris, 23.
43 OW was put forward for membership on 23 November 1871 at the opening meeting of the 1871–2 session, proposed by the president and seconded by the secretary. At the same meeting WCKW was awarded the society’s second silver medal for his essay on Molière during the previous session.
44 Walter Starkie, Scholars and Gypsies (1963), 98.
45 OW, ‘Mental Photograph’ lists lawn tennis – and snipe – as his ‘favourite game’.
46 ES, in Harris, 22–3.
47 ES, in Harris, 23.
48 Hofer & Scharnhorst, 85.
49 Wilfrid Hugh Chesson, ‘A Reminiscence of 1898’, Bookman (1911), in Mikhail, 379.
50 OW’s copy dated Michaelmas 1872; see Ellmann, 31.
51 Hofer & Scharnhorst, 85.
52 OET VII, 231.
53 LAD, Oscar Wilde and Myself (1914), 209.
54 Thomas Maitland [Robert Buchanan], ‘The Fleshly School of Poetry: Mr. D. G. Rossetti’, Contemporary Review, October 1871.
55 William John Courthope, ‘The Latest Development in Poetry: Swinburne – Rossetti – Morris’, Quarterly Review, 132 (1872) 61ff.
56 CL, 13; OW bought a copy of Morris’s verse morality play Love is Enough during the Michaelmas term 1872, as soon as it appeared; Ellmann, 31, from G. F. Sims catalogue no. 79.
57 Quoted in Wright, 34; ‘Draft review of Rossetti’s Poems (1881)’ in Clark.
58 Hofer & Scharnhorst, 52; Stella Bottai, ‘Keats and the Victorians’, www.victorianweb.org.
59 CL, 157.
60 The ‘Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’ had been founded in 1848 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt, but the artistic impulse that it embodied had, by the 1860s, become focused upon Rossetti, his friends and followers; the epithet ‘Pre-Raphaelite’ was used generally to describe their work.