Oscar Wilde, Dublin's Famous, and Infamous, Son

I have been a fan of Oscar Wilde since I saw the 1952 version of The Importance of Being Earnest with Michael Redgrave and Joan Greenwood; I can't imagine improving upon it. The stage version at the National Theatre last year completely missed the point. There was nothing subtle or understated about it, rather it was an over-the-top mess. But I digress...

I learned a bit more about Oscar Wilde when I visited his childhood home in Merrion Square. Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde is considered to be the greatest playwright of the Victorian era. His life, however, was more dramatic still. He was born to Jane Elgee and Sir William Wilde.

Sir William Wilde ran his own hospital, St Mark's Ophthalmic Hospital for Diseases of the Eye and Ear, in Dublin and was appointed as "Ocultist-in-ordinary" for Queen Victoria. He was awarded a knighthood, but this was as much for his work on the Irish census as his medical career. He had three children by Jane as well as three others from two previous liaisons. Later in life his reputation suffered when he was sued by a patient, Mary Travers, saying that he had raped patients while they were under anesthesia. The Wilde House says that Mary and William had been having an affair and that her suit was brought because she was "a woman scorned."

Jane was poet, writer, and translator and for almost two decades ran a highly successful weekly salon at which artists, musicians, poets, politicians and philosophers would gather to share ideas and entertain each other. She wrote poems and editorials for the radical newspaper The Nation under the pen name Speranza and was a hero to the Irish people during the Great Famine and for decades afterwards. In fact, in a poll held in 1891 by a Dublin magazine, she was voted the Greatest Living Irish Woman.

Jane and William allowed their sons to attend the weekly salons where they were exposed to ideas that would certainly influence Oscar.

The room in which the weekly salons were held

He was clearly a precocious child

and there's little doubt that he was a genius. He attended Trinity College and later Oxford University. While at Magdalen College, Oxford, Wilde became well known for his role in the aesthetic and decadent movements. He wore his hair long and openly scorned "manly" sports, though he occasionally boxed, and decorated his rooms with peacock feathers, lilies, sunflowers, blue china and other objets d'art. He entertained lavishly and once remarked to some friends, "I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china."

After Oxford he was rather at loose ends and moved to London where he was, by all accounts, a darling of society. At the time aesthetism was sufficiently in vogue to be parodied by Gilbert and Sullivan in their musical Patience. In fact, they paid Wilde to tour the US and Canada and lecture about it. This was, of course, so that when Patience toured the US, the Americans would get the joke. Wilde's tour was a huge success, lasting nearly a year, though he was not universally praised. In fact, several US publications called him nothing short of a fraud.

He returned to the UK where he worked as a journalist and editor. He married Constance Lloyd, daughter of a wealthy solicitor, and fathered two children. He quickly tired of the business of journalism and, after meeting Robert Ross, a journalist, art critic and art dealer, he was "initiated into homosexual sex" while his marriage was unraveling. He wrote fiction and essays but his genius wasn't acknowledged until the publication of his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Wilde moved to Paris where he was received into the top literary salons and where he was inspired to write the play Salome. It was published in France in 1893 and the next year in London with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley.

• 

• 

This was the start of Wilde's career as a playwright and it gave him the perfect avenue to criticize Victorian society. Salome was followed by Lady Windemere's Fan, his first major success. It toured for a year and earned him the modern equivalent of around $750,000. This was followed by A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and, his final play, The Importance of Being Earnest.

In 1891, Wilde had met Lord Alfred Douglas, "Bosie" to his friends, and they began a tempestuous affair. If Wilde was relatively indiscreet, even flamboyant, in the way he acted, Douglas was reckless. Wilde indulged Douglas' every whim: material, artistic, or sexual. Lord Alfred's father was the Marquess of Queensbury known for his brutish manner and the development of the rules of boxing, known as the Queensbury rules. He was horrified by his son's affair with Wilde and threatened that if he ever caught Wilde with his son in a public restaurant, he would thrash him. Encouraged by Lord Alfred and against the advice of his friends, Wilde sued Queensberry for defamatory libel. The trial did not go well. When the defense threatened to call as witnesses some of the young male prostitues patronized by Wilde, the suit against Queensbury was dropped. The damage, however, had been done and in 1895, Wilde was arrested for Gross Indecency, found guilty and sentenced to two years hard labor. While in Wandsworth prison, Wilde collapsed; his right eardrum was ruptured during the fall. It was ironic that, had his father still been alive, he could probably have successfully treated it. After his release from prison he spent his final years in exile and poverty and died in Paris in 1900.

None of Wilde's later life is addressed at the Wilde House museum which is a surprisingly bare place. It serves as the home of the American College, Dublin, and several of the empty rooms serve as lecture halls.

William Wilde's surgery:

The dining room:

Oscar Wilde's childhood room:

A stained glass window illustrating "The Happy Prince" based on one of Wilde's children's books:

As a museum, I'm not sure I'd recommend it. The introductory film shown at the house is quite interesting and, if one is a die hard Wilde fan, it's certainly a touchstone, but I think I could have been just as content visiting the wonderful sculpture of Wilde, just across the street

or enjoying some of the many Wilde witicisms on pub walls.