In 1896, two young brothers, just arrived from England, and with reinvented names, were settling into their German boarding school when they were summoned to play cricket. In the words of the younger boy, writing more than 50 years later: “My brother and I had fled from England with all of our summer and winter clothing, but until this time we had no occasion to wear our cricket flannels.”
As they prepared for the game, they were horrified to see their old names still written in name tapes on their flannels and a panic ensued to get rid of the evidence of their true, tainted identity. “I can see my brother now, in the comparative seclusion of the washing-place, frantically hacking away at the tapes with his pocket-knife.”
Those young brothers were Oscar Wilde's sons, Cyril and Vyvyan, rechristened Holland in the wake of their father's imprisonment in 1895. That frantic scramble to erase the name of Wilde was remembered in painful detail by Vyvyan Holland in his memoir Son of Oscar Wilde and is one of the most telling illustrations of the opprobrium that the name Wilde provoked at this time and for many years afterwards.
Oscar Wilde’s name was problematic in Irish public discourse and the slow process by which his family name has been gradually appropriated and reclaimed in contemporary Ireland says much about our changing sense of what Irishness can be allowed to include. As laws changed and social perceptions altered, first Wilde’s sexuality, then his Irishness and finally the vital importance of his family identity has been acknowledged.
For example, last year in Castlerea, Co Roscommon, on the 200th anniversary of William Wilde's birth, his achievements were proudly celebrated and local Wilde family graves restored. This new study of the Wilde family by Emer O'Sullivan, called The Fall of the House of Wilde, is a valuable addition to the scholarly reclamation of the Wilde name and, as Stephen Fry comments on the cover, "This is a book that reminds us how very unlikely it is that a genius will be born in a vacuum. Oscar was, O'Sullivan demonstrates, every inch his parents' child."
The focus of this book is Oscar within the context of a talented and lively family. William and Jane Wilde are key to that story, producing a son who, in his own words “awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me”.
It can be argued that they themselves were key in the awakening of the Celtic imagination at the end of the 19th century, with their innovative work as writers, scholars, folklorists and cultural historians. Emer O’Sullivan makes this link plain when she asserts that “the political and cultural campaign William and Jane fought was fought again years later, in 1916, with bloody results”.
The reputations of both Jane and William Wilde suffered with their son's disgrace. He was himself keenly aware of the impressive nature of their achievements, writing in his prison testament De Profundis: "She and my father had bequeathed me a name they had made noble and honoured, not merely in literature, art, archaeology, and science, but in the public history of my own country, in its evolution as a nation".
O’Sullivan provides a lucid account of their literary careers and the first half of the book concentrates on Jane and William’s backgrounds and their artistic and literary achievements.
Their unconventional and ultimately successful marriage and their scholarly work is presented in detail. Both are revealed as hardworking and innovative in their thinking and their writing. Their penchant for publicity, more particularly Jane's relish for dispute, came firstly with the Nation trial of 1849 and then, more spectacularly, with the Mary Travers trial of 1864, at a point when William Wilde had reached the pinnacle of his success with a knighthood from Queen Victoria.
Jane’s intemperate letter of complaint to Dr Robert Travers about his daughter Mary’s behaviour led to a writ from Mary Travers, claiming damages of £2,000 as compensation for this libel against her honour. However, Jane Wilde refused to pay and, on December 12th, 1864, the case of Travers versus Wilde opened in Dublin, to the great delight of the newspaper-reading public.
Eventually, the jury found in Mary Travers’s favour, but only awarded her one farthing for her honour. Jane was the only winner in the Travers case, perceived as the wronged wife, vexed beyond endurance by the enraged, cast-off mistress. William’s reputation did suffer in the long term as a result of this case and it is clear that Jane’s success in the courtroom influenced Oscar in his later fatal decision to sue the Marquess of Queensberry in 1895 in London.
Willie Wilde, Oscar’s older brother, is, today, the least well-known member of the family and O’Sullivan deals with the difficult and unhappy Willie with clear-eyed understanding. Starting off with as much promise as Oscar and always supported by his admiring mother, Willie Wilde soon ran into difficulty.
His first marriage, to the wealthy American newspaper owner Mrs Frank Leslie, failed because of his drinking and his infidelities. “The marriage and America offered the last glimmer of hope that he might ever change, take initiative, shape his destiny, and all those other active verbs memoirists avoid when speaking of Willie. It is more accurate to say that Willie went out to American a drinker and returned a drunkard.”
Willie’s final days, his decline, his disloyalty to his brother, his financial dependence on his mother, all make for sorry reading.
O’Sullivan shows due scepticism about the idea that Jane urged Oscar to stay and face prison, but Jane’s miserable last days in London during Oscar’s imprisonment are rendered with sympathy, as is Willie’s decline and early death. In an epilogue, O’Sullivan asserts: “Though the inhabitants of the houses fell, the Wilde name survives. It stands for what is singular, independent-minded and fearless.”
The Fall of the House of Wilde does justice to the name of Wilde.
Eibhear Walshe teaches English at University College Cork. His books include the novel The Diary of Mary Travers (Somerville Press, 2014) and Oscar's Shadow: Wilde, Homosexuality and Ireland (Cork University Press, 2012)
