The parallel that exists between the end of Oscar Wilde’s glittering career and his father’s, William Wilde, is striking.
Oscar Wilde brought his lover’s father, the Marquess of
Queensbury, to court in a libel action in 1895. Homosexuality was illegal at
the time , so Wilde was on a hiding to nothing when Queensbury brought rent
boys into court to bear witness to Wilde’s homosexual activities. The libel case was lost, and later Wilde was arrested on charges
of gross indecency. He was found guilty and sentenced to two years hard labour.
Released in 1897, he soon after moved to Paris where he died penniless in 1900,
aged just 46 years.
Thirty one years earlier, his remarkably
gifted father, William Wilde, was also embroiled in a
libel case, which led him to give up a career in which he had achieved international acclaim and a knighthood.
A patient, Mary
Travers , with whom he had been involved, later embarked on a campaign to
discredit him; in a pamphlet she wrote and circulated, she characterised him as
Dr Quilp, who raped his patient while she was under the influence of chloroform.
When Lady Wilde complained to Travers’ father, Mary Travers brought a libel case
against her. Travers won the case but was awarded damages amounting to one farthing.
The financial cost to the Wildes was large, but the damage to his reputation
was much more serious. The scandal was the talk of the town. He retired from
his medical practice, (he was Ireland’s leading occulist),and removed himself
from Dublin society to the west of Ireland.
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