The Fall of the House of Wilde (18 page)

After a long interlude, Jane wrote two poems and had them published in the March 1864 issue of
Duffy's Hibernian Magazine
. With naturalism triumphant in literature, Jane offered accessible sentiments, as the titles suggest: ‘Work While It Is Called To-Day' and ‘Who Will Shew Us Any Good?' She sought the timbre and gravitas of her former voice, but her call for a leader to resurrect the country was unwelcome in 1864. Not because there was satisfaction with British rule – on the contrary – but because the call for political independence had been taken over by the Fenian Brotherhood. The Fenian newspaper, the
Irish People
, dismissed her poem saying, ‘Speranza's
Who Will Shew Us Any Good
is even more difficult to make out than her verses usually are, and we scarcely know whether we rightly understand its meaning.'
¹⁰
The founder of the Fenian Brotherhood, James Stephens, established the paper in 1863, and used it to advance Fenian objectives – the overthrow of government and the remodelling of society along socialist lines. The Fenians were an oath-bound organisation, ready to arm themselves and die for their country. They mark the beginnings of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, otherwise known as the IRA. They spoke to the artisan class – small farmers, farm labourers and schoolteachers. They would have had no time for Jane's patrician voice.

Jane was not prepared to tuck her head under her wings like a dying bird. She brought out a collected volume of her early poetry. Entitled
Poems by Speranza
, the frontispiece read ‘Dedicated to My Sons, Willie and Oscar Wilde', followed by the words,

     I made them indeed,

Speak plain the word COUNTRY. I taught them, no doubt,

That a country's a thing men should die for at need!

Whether Willie and Oscar would have been so keen to take up arms and die for country is another issue. No matter. Jane was trying to remind her readers of the spark her early work had ignited, and, importantly, of where she stood in political allegiances: in the dividing line between Crown and republic. The book drew hyperbolic praise from the
Freeman's Journal
, 8 December 1864, a paper always on Jane's side. It praised the poems for ‘the beauty of their imagery, their truthfulness to nature and the purity and simplicity of the phraseology in which our gifted countrywoman conveys her musings, her thoughts and her emotions to the reader'. The April issue of the
Dublin Review
wrote of Jane's astonishing impact on all the intellectual and political activities of Young Ireland, but criticised the poetry for its strident tone. The editor of the
Irish People
, Charles Kickham, was again openly hostile on 2 May 1864 and even went to the trouble of rewriting the verse as prose to argue it was sham poetry. Suffice to say that no matter what Jane wrote, the
Irish People
would most likely have trashed it, but the dismissal of Jane's work incited one reader to come to her defence. A man called O'Keeffe wrote to the editor that Jane's role in 1848 should be considered the measure of her esteem, that her actions were brave and deserved respect: ‘If there were any deficiencies in Lady Wilde's poems (and there are not) it is our duty to praise them still, shutting our eyes to the shortcomings. She cannot be eulogised too highly . . . Is it possible that Kickham could forget the heroic conduct of Lady Wilde on the occasion of Gavan Duffy's trial? . . . Instead of carping at her productions, we should build her a statue.'
¹¹
Whether Jane found the ‘duty to praise' her poems uplifting or disheartening, she had worse to come from the more prestigious English
Athenaeum
. The issue of 18 March 1864 inveighed against her politics and argued that ‘if Ireland had grievances, Lady Wilde did not set them forth in the manner best adapted to insure sympathy and conviction'. The magazine acknowledged her talent – ‘her verse shows energy of feeling and has lyrical sweep and variety', her poetry was proof of ‘an accomplished and vigorous mind' – but derided her style: ‘Lady Wilde is often wroth to red heat, but her coruscations seldom appear to break naturally from the thunder-cloud.'

Times were changing in Ireland – the struggle for the land was louder, Catholics were on the rise, and politics was in danger of getting more sectarian. But not just yet – William and Jane and the Protestant Ascendancy were still at the helm.

13

Honour and Ignominy

William had been standing tall in Dublin circles for some time, but he reached his zenith on 28 January 1864 when he was knighted. The government chose to honour him for the advancement he made in statistical science, specifically in connection with the Irish census. In dealing with questions of poverty, sanitation and slum conditions, William used observational science to raise humanitarian issues. William's analysis of census figures had not been uncritical of the government handling of the famine. Rather, it had adhered to Cocteau's maxim: the tact of audacity consists in knowing how far one can go too far. Sir William Carleton made an astute remark when he congratulated William: ‘You have never courted popularity yet you have had it without asking.'
¹

A ceremony was held in Dublin Castle and the knighthood awarded by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Earl of Carlisle. These were pompous affairs, where locals would gather at the gates to catch a glimpse of the silk and satin.
Saunders's News-letter
, on 29 January 1864, described Jane wearing ‘a train and corsage of richest white satin, trimmed handsomely in scarlet velvet and gold cord, jupe, richest white, satin with bouillonnes of tulle, satin ruches and a magnificent tunic of real Brussels lace lappets: ornaments, diamonds'. No doubt the irony of the ex-rebel and Republican flag-waver, now a lady of the realm, was not lost on her.

William's knighthood did not come as a surprise, judging by the press comment. The
Freeman's Journal
, on 29 January 1864, for instance, thought it his due: ‘A more popular exercise of the viceregal prerogative, nor one more acceptable to all classes in Ireland, could not possibly have been made, for no one of the medical profession has been more prominently before the public for the last twenty-five years in all useful and patriotic labours than Doctor (now Sir William) Wilde.'

The celebrations continued for months afterwards. In the summer of 1864 Jane wrote to Rosalie Olivecrona, ‘so many dinners and invitations followed on our receiving the title to congratulate us that we have lived in a whirl of dissipation – now we are quiet – all the world has left town – and I begin to think of reawakening my soul . . .'
²
Despite what Jane wrote, all was not quiet at Merrion Square.

*

The Wildes' relationship with Mary Travers is a story sensational enough for a penny dreadful novel. The original letters no longer exist, but excerpts quoted in court, and reported by newspapers, survive, allowing us to trace their relationship.

William, we recall, first met Mary Travers when he treated her as a patient in 1854. What began as an avuncular, filial friendship soon grew more loving. By the late 1850s, if not before, Mary joined him at public events. He gave her a season ticket to the Dublin Exhibition of 1859, for instance, and escorted her there many times. William took Mary, along with Jane, to the inaugural meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Dublin in 1859. He gave or advanced Mary money to purchase clothes, as he knew she was short of money. On one occasion, he wrote, as excerpted in the
Morning Post
on 16 December 1864, ‘Don't you want something . . . boots and underthings for winter?'
³
Matters grew more complicated, certainly by 1861. Mary was no longer the fey, helpless, innocent nineteen-year-old but an attractive, slim, dark-haired woman of twenty-six. William had bolstered Mary and she was blooming – and wanting more. Her dependence grew but so did her impatience. She became excessively demanding. Mary and Jane fell out. William urged them to make up. He wrote to her: ‘If Mrs Wilde asks you to dine, won't you come and be as good friends as ever?' Jane invited her to join the family for Christmas dinner in 1861, and throughout the next few months she continued to enjoy the company of the Wilde family. The question of money in the whole affair is hazy. Certainly in March 1862 William paid Mary's fare to Australia, where she intended to join her brothers. Had he been trying to get rid of Mary, and it is not clear that he was, it did not work. Mary only got as far as Liverpool before returning on the basis that someone had taken her berth. Two months later, in May 1862, she repeated the scenario, once again going to Liverpool and then returning.

Tension grew between Jane and Mary; their encounters were loaded with acrimony. There was the occasion in June 1862 when Mary entered Jane's bedroom uninvited. This breach of privacy infuriated Jane. Mary took offence. So much so that she did not dine with the Wildes again, at least according to Jane, who said, as reported by the
Dublin Evening Mail
on 15 December 1864, ‘I don't think she dined at our house afterwards.'
⁴
Then again, she cannot have been too insulted, as she planned to take the three children to chapel at Dublin Castle a few days later. She arrived too late and Jane had to take them herself. Mary saw this as an insult and, finally, it marked the end of her relations with Jane.

The disaffection bothered Mary. She protested to William that she had been frozen out of their ménage à trois: ‘I have come to the conclusion that both you and Mrs Wilde are of one mind with regard to me, and that is, to see which will insult me the most . . . to Mrs Wilde I owe no money; therefore I am not obliged to gulp down her insults . . . You will not be troubled by me again.' But Mary could not stay away. Begging for attention, Mary sent William her photograph. Jane sent it back with a curt reply: ‘Dear Miss Travers, Dr Wilde returns your photograph. Yours very truly, Jane Wilde.'
⁵
The mediation of Jane, in whom William had obviously confided, only made matters worse. Mary presumably felt betrayed.

She oscillated between injured self-defence and self-abdication. She had required love from both sides and she was now doomed to be on the outside. Whenever Jane went to their house in Bray, Mary would come around to Merrion Square. Finding herself no longer able to attract William's attention, she tried self-harming. In true theatrical style, she gulped down a bottle of laudanum. An irritated William reproached her for acting out of vengeance, saying, according to Mary, ‘everyone will say I poisoned you'. A constant theme from now on is the damage Mary can inflict on William's professional reputation. In this instance, William reacted with equanimity, and accompanied her to an apothecary for an antidote, making sure she took it.

Mary then wrote to William on the pretext that she had a corn on her foot she needed removed. And added a cryptic note, as reported by
Freeman's Journal
, 15 December 1864: ‘I will keep your nose to the grinding stone while your wife is away, and when she returns I will see her; so you had better not make a fool of me this time.'
⁶
Whatever Mary was referring to, she still thought she had some hold over William.

Being frozen out by William and Jane exasperated Mary. In July 1863, she published this announcement in a newspaper: ‘July 21
^st
, suddenly at the residence of her father, Williamstown, Mary Josephine, eldest daughter of Robert Travers MA, MD, FRQUPI.' No mention was made of the word death, but a symbol in the form of a coffin appeared at the end of the notice. She sent it to Jane at Bray and to William at Moytura. She got no response. This obviously aggravated Mary, for she called to see Jane at Merrion Square on 13 August. Jane declined to meet her.

Rebuffed by Jane, her loss became doubly bitter when William lashed out at her with imputations of venality. Mary responded by writing to Jane, as reported by
Freeman's Journal
on 16 December 1864: ‘Mrs Wilde – In some of the letters your husband sent me last week he alluded to the circumstances of the coffin, and the notice of my death that you received. He afterwards told me that the coffin meant a threat. Why anyone should think of sending you a threat in connection with my name I cannot understand. Your husband badgered me in such a manner with regard to it that I conceived it due to myself to call and ask what your reason could be for supposing you could receive a threat on my account . . . He blazed at me when you left the house. His abusive language shall not pass unnoticed. M. J. Travers.'
⁷
Jane's cool detachment and William's slap in the face pushed her over the edge and she now determined to destroy the Wildes' reputation, no matter the cost to herself. She opened her wounds in public.

She wrote a pamphlet,
Florence Boyle Price; or A Warning
, and published it under the name of Speranza – a histrionic mockery of William and Jane. All taboos of medical professionalism are flouted by Dr Quilp (William), a misfit of a doctor, who uses chloroform to numb his patient, Florence Boyle, into unconsciousness in order to force himself upon her. This shady doctor has ‘a decidedly animal and sinister expression about the mouth, which was coarse and vulgar in the extreme, while his under-lip hung and protruded most unpleasantly. The upper part of his face did not redeem the lower part; his eyes were round and small – they were mean and prying and above all, they struck me as being deficient in an expression I expected to find gracing a doctor's countenance.' Mary's image of William oozes revulsion. She writes as if there is a strong taste of poison in her mouth, as though she is vomiting out hate. Jane got off lightly by comparison. ‘Mrs Quilp was an odd sort of undomestic woman. She spent the greater portion of her life in bed and except on state occasions, she was never visible to visitors.'
⁸