The Fall of the House of Wilde (17 page)

William, as usual, was in Jane's words, ‘very busy just now. I think he has a building mania.'
¹⁷
Once the houses in Bray were completed, William built another house in the west of Ireland, having purchased his grandparents' estate on Lough Corrib in County Mayo in 1862. The Fynn estate was a costly acquisition, even for William, who had developed a large and international clientele, and Jane contributed £1,500, her dowry, to bring this dream to fruition. William believed the land harboured the remains of one of the earliest traces of life in Ireland, the ancient battle of Magh Tuireadh, supposed to have occurred in 3303
BC
. Thus did he build a house near the historical tower, which he believed signalled the site of the ancient battle, and called it Moytura. He designed the house himself, a practice quite common in a country where the line between architect and contractor had been hazy since the great boom in country-house building began in the 1720s. Publications like John Payne's
Twelve Designs of Country-houses
(1757) did much to foster a spirit of tradition and conformity in design, and William's house was no exception to this pattern. Perched on top of a hill, two storeys tall, the house appears taller for the isolated position, and for the drive of a mile and a half it takes to reach it. Once there, one can see the peak of Benlevy in the distance and Lough Corrib in front. The house is a conspicuous landmark to boaters on the lough, made more noticeable by the historical tower, marked with a flagstaff, standing close by.

As children, Willie and Oscar accompanied their father on archaeological explorations. Among much else, these were occasions of learning and sensual enlargement. William brought ancient culture back to life by sharing with the boys the rich growth of speculation clothing Celtic megaliths, bare, ruined churches and deserted abbeys, some of which was fanciful, especially in the early days of Celtic archaeology. That certain stones can embody cryptic messages was a concept that charmed Oscar enough to want to pursue archaeology as a career. When in 1879 he enquired into the possibility of an archaeological studentship at Oxford, he tried to advance his application by referring to the experience he had gained from his father. He wrote to A. H. Sayce, then professor of comparative philology at Oxford, ‘I think it would suit me very well – as I have done a good deal of travelling already – and from my boyhood have been accustomed, through my Father, to visiting and reporting on ancient sites, taking rubbings and measurements and all the technique of
open air
archaeologica – it is of course a subject of intense interest to me.'
¹⁸
Willie illustrated the ruins for his father. Evidence of these can be found in the book William would publish in 1867,
Lough Corrib
.

Life had treated the Wildes well. William was at the top of his profession, internationally respected, Jane was a celebrated hostess and writer, and the children were adored. They switched houses for a change of scene and travelled when it suited them. The children knew nothing of the rigours of school or the pain of material want. But could it last?

12

1864: The End of Bliss

In February 1864 Willie and Oscar were sent to board at Portora Royal School at Enniskillen, about a hundred miles north-west of Dublin. Willie was eleven and already had one year's experience of school life at St Columba's College, on the outskirts of Dublin. Oscar was nine when he began formal education. The choice of Portora Royal School may have been influenced by William Frederick Wakeman, who was the art master, and a friend of the Wildes. William had commissioned Wakeman to illustrate
The Catalogue of Irish Antiquities
, and his own book,
The Beauties of the Boyne and the Blackwater.
In 1870, Wakeman dedicated his book on Lough Erne to Jane. If Wakeman had swayed their decision with regard to Portora, less explicable was their decision to send the boys to school midway through the school year, in February – it may well have been because of gossip then circulating in the press about the Wildes, to which we will return.

Portora Royal stood on the summit of a hill and this vantage point offered an instant encapsulation of Ireland's embattled history – with its ruined castle, round tower and monastic ruins. Founded at the time of the British plantations in the seventeenth century (when land was confiscated from its Irish owners and granted to the English), like most public schools, it aimed to mould boys to serve Empire, Church and State. The school took about a hundred boarders and fifty day pupils. (It includes among its alumni Samuel Beckett.) The grounds of about sixty acres run along Lough Erne, where the boys were allowed to bathe, skate and row.

Oscar was remembered as a particularly bad rower. One of the earliest biographies about him – published in 1916 and written by an Irish journalist and friend of Oscar, Frank Harris – speaks of Oscar at school as bookish, dreamy and dismissive of sports. Willie, on the other hand, ‘knew all about football and cricket', according to Oscar, but whether he played with the same enthusiasm is not known. In any case, Oscar was not a team player, nor did he develop the close comradely bonds that often help boarders to survive. ‘He had . . . no very special chums while at school.' Nor were Willie and Oscar close. ‘Willie Wilde was never very familiar with [Oscar], treating him always, in those days, as a younger brother . . .'
¹
One alumnus spoke of Oscar as ‘somewhat reserved and distant in his manners'. Oscar was known to give ‘nick-names which used to stick to his victims, but they did not rankle as there was always a gaiety and no malice about them'. The image of Willie playing the piano to a gathering of younger boys was what stood out in another's memory. Willie was described as ‘clever, erratic, and full of vitality', though somewhat ‘boastful'. One memoirist spoke of his kindness to younger boys – an uncommon trait in a culture in which respect for seniority was vigorously encouraged and where bullying was often tolerated.
²

Most of all, Oscar was remembered for the stories he told. The boys would stand around a stove in what was called the Stone Hall, while Oscar extemporised. On one occasion, when the group was discussing an ecclesiastical prosecution in the Court of Arches, the court of appeal of the archbishop of Canterbury, Oscar apparently announced that ‘there was nothing he would like better in after life than to be the hero of such a
cause célèbre
and to go down to posterity as the defendant in such a case as “Regina Versus Wilde”'.
³
Espousing notoriety on a global stage while still imprisoned in a child's world, Oscar was obviously hell-bent on capturing an audience at all costs, and may have been playing for attention at the expense of rivals who were starring on the sports field.

The school curriculum would have put its seventeenth-century founders at ease. Despite the secularising ethos of its headmaster, Rev. William Steele – who opened the school to Catholic boys – religious instruction played a dominant role. The King James Bible loomed large in the curriculum and had to be memorised. This worked to Oscar's advantage. At school he was famed for being able to read rapidly and retain what he had read. He received a prize for scripture – a copy of Joseph Butler's
The Analogy of Religion.
Although he would later include this book on a list he advised people ‘not to read',
⁴
the prophetic timbre and the artful conflation of fantasy and reality of the King James Bible would in time enrich his writings. English figured hardly at all in the list of subjects for which prizes were rewarded at the commencement of each year. History at Portora was given the gloss expected of a regime bent on concealing the fate of Catholics under a pall of white lilies – it centred on the dignity of Empire. However, the school cautiously allowed the modern world to infiltrate the curriculum, as Steele promoted science, a subject Oscar fared badly in, as he did in mathematics. For most of their school years, Willie outshone Oscar. Oscar himself acknowledged that he ‘had nothing like the reputation of my brother Willie . . . The head master was always holding my brother Willie up to me as an example, but even he admitted that in my last year at Portora I had made astounding progress. I laid the foundation there of whatever classical scholarship I possess.'
⁵

All other subjects trailed in status compared to the Classics. One historian of pedagogy explains how Classics were taught. One would be asked to write an oration that would ‘put noble words in the mouths of great personages . . . The subject who spoke was always a great one: king, emperor, saint, savant, or poet. And what did these personages say? To be sure, nothing one might have happened to hear in everyday life but, rather, sturdy aphorisms,' on such matters as ‘renouncing the empire'.
⁶
Oscar loved this task; he liked to imagine, in his words, ‘what I should have done had I been Alexander, or how I'd have played King in Athens, had I been Alcibiades'.
⁷
To want to emulate Alexander the Great might have entertained the imagination of many an ambitious boy; more unusual is his identification with Alcibiades, the Athenian statesman, orator and general. Was it Alcibiades' aristocratic dashing Don Juan charm, a charm that made him one of Socrates' forbidden pleasures? Or his Byronic daring? Or his seductive lisp, reputed to have persuaded his attentive listeners? It was Plutarch who said that Alcibiades walked like one dissolved in luxury, letting his robes trail behind him on the ground. Many, his former teacher Socrates certainly, were in awe of Alcibiades. He and Alexander allowed Oscar to entertain the fantasy of immortality.

Men without Classics were considered intellectual parvenus. Whatever the qualities of a successful industrialist or merchant, they were of a lower caste if they lacked rhetorical musculature honed through the Classics. Latin separated the upper class from the lower. Greek marked the distinction more emphatically. An important body of opinion held, as Thomas Macaulay did in his 1848
History of England
, that an age devoid of eminent statesmen who could not read Sophocles and Plato in the original was an age in decline.

One letter from Portora survives, written by Oscar to his mother in 1868. It begins ‘Darling Mama' and shows an uncommon level of warmth and courtesy. ‘The hamper came today, and I never got such a jolly surprise, many thanks for it, it was more than kind of you to think of it.' He sends his ‘love to Papa' and writes, ‘you may imagine my delight this morning when I got Papa's letter saying he had sent a hamper'. The letter also includes a sketch of two actors in costume dancing gleefully about a hamper while a third looks on long-faced. As further testimony of his dislike of sport, Oscar tells his mother he ‘went down to the horrid regatta on Thursday last'. He also shows interest in his mother's work, asking for a copy of the
National Review
, where a poem of hers had recently been published, and wants to know whether she had heard from the publisher in Glasgow. He obviously shared his mother's sense of humour, as he asks her ‘have you written to Aunt Warren on the green notepaper?'
⁸
As a unionist, Aunt Emily Warren disapproved of Jane's nationalist stance, and her writing in green was a way of goading her sister – presumably it was a family joke.

Years later Oscar tried to exorcise school from his memory, admitting to having attended the institution for about a year, though in fact he survived seven. The closeted and disciplined life of school would have come as a rude awakening to Willie and Oscar, brought up with a liberal ethos. Home life from now on was limited to two six-week vacations in summer and winter.

With the boys away at school, Merrion Square was a quieter place. William and Jane wanted Lotten to come and spend time with them. On 18 March 1864 Jane wrote:

Could you not come during the summer for July or August – & stay till October. I shall have a room ready for you in Merrion Square whenever you come. Bring some volumes of your best Swedish poets and read them to me – Atterbom and Tegnér. – That would be charming. I am forgetting my Swedish. I have no time to open a book scarcely – but you will arouse my mental energies – Now do come – You may do just as you like in our house – read whom you like & take breakfast in bed & be entirely
sans gêne
 – I never come down out of my room till 1 or 2 – Then we can go out [?] and enjoy ourselves – & always a pleasant friend worth talking to drops in to dine – I wish Thekla [Thekla Knos, Swedish author] would come here. What a pleasant party we would all make to Connemara.
⁹

Lotten did not come, nor did Jane and William stop inviting her. Jane's letter shows Merrion Square was a relaxed home, a place where privacy was respected and where callers were always welcome.

Jane had been writing less over the years. The previous year, in 1863, she finally completed her translation from German of
The First Temptation or Eritis sicut Deus
, written by Wilhelmine Friederike Gottliebe Canz. It was not well received. The problem was not the translation, which was praised, but the subject matter. The book is a philosophical romance on the theme of temptation. Robert, the principal character, renounces God to live for pleasure. He urges his wife, Elizabeth, to follow suit. She complies, only for Robert to come under the sway of a courtesan. Robert silences Elizabeth by locking her up and proceeds to marry the courtesan. Nothing will now stop Robert, who thinks he has the world at his command. He falls for the trap of hubris and, not surprisingly, is soon undone. But it takes three volumes to deliver its moral lesson. The
Athenaeum
, on 20 June 1863, wrote: ‘This work is extremely well translated, but few readers will have the patience to wade through three thick volumes of German philosophy and its practical application to the different characters . . . all the characters go more or less mad and the reader will find himself inclined to follow their example.'