Riches to Rags: the Wilde Stories

Oscar Wilde, Constance Wilde, and one of their sons.

If you've ever been broke, you are probably familiar with the way that it makes you feel, like there's something wrong with you, and the world despises you. Academically, we know this isn't true. Not having money isn't a character fault in and of itself. As the saying goes: "You can't control what happens to, but you can control how you deal with what happens to you."

The Wilde Family make an interesting case study in this phenomena when we look at the lives and misfortunes of Speranza and her two sons, Willie and Oscar Wilde. Each lost a fortune, and each dealt with it differently, with different consequences.

Speranza

Speranza was Dublin's most popular socialite. Her husband was knighted. She lived in the best house. She had the most interesting guests, and the best parties. She loved culture, history, art, and Ireland. Her fortune dried up when she and her husband got caught up in a scandal, the details of which are still controversial. Her husband soon died, leaving her with little money.

In response, she packed up her house, and moved to smaller quarters in London, where she could continue to pursue her art. She did what she could to continue to support her family. She got a little support from her sons for a while, but their lives weren't going well either. She kept trying, until she was too old to try anymore. She continued to host her famous salons, and the most interesting people continued to attend.

Her son, Willie, was an alcoholic though, and alcoholics tend to drag their loved ones down with them, which Willie did. Speranza died in a room full of empty gin bottles, and Willie blamed his brother.

Willie Wilde

Willie also made a noble effort to prevent himself from descending into rags. A few years after he went bankrupt, he married the richest woman in America. That didn't go so well because of his drinking, and he wound up living with his mother, and claiming to take care of her. As you know, from Speranza's story, he didn't do a very good job of that.

After his mother died, he had to find a new place to live. He sold off most of his brother's belongings. He sold his wife's wedding ring. Eventually he died from alcoholism, and few of the wonderfully successful people he once called friends ever mentioned him in their memoirs. The newspaper he was a lead reporter for, at one time, barely mentioned his passing.

Oscar, on the other hand, continually tried to make everyone happy. In a way, that's how he got his money. He became a celebrity before he did anything, just because people liked him so much. His wife had money, which was helpful, and he was good at earning his own money, which he promptly spent on his friends and lovers.

Oscar Wilde's downfall was very public. He went from being a darling to being a demon, and he definitely felt terrible about the impact that this had on all the people he cared about. Oscar realized that we never suffer in isolation, but our suffering impacts everybody around us. His imprisonment, and the backlash against him, hurt his family, his friends, and his business associates. For this, he expressed his remorse.

When Oscar was released from prison, he was broke, worse off than his brother or mother had ever been, but the love that he gave to other people came back to him. His good friends did what they could to help support him, and, though he never really recovered from the losses he sustained at that time in his life, he is remembered with fondness because of the love he spread.

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The Importance of Being Oscar Wilde's Mother

Lady Jane Francesca Agnes Wilde (1821-1896), better known as "Speranza," was the youngest child of four in Wexford Ireland. She was an Irish nationalist some Italian roots, though she put stereotypes about that heritage to rest by being over six feet tall and devoting herself to the love of Ireland. She was a poet and her contemporaries considered her a national treasure because wrote about freedom for the people of Ireland, but as time went on tastes and politics would change, so that the younger Irish revolutionaries weren't as able to relate to her work.

She fell in love with and married William Wilde, a scrawny and often disheveled-looking man, who must have looked even smaller standing next to his larger-than-life wife; it was said that she was extremely tall and overweight, “walked like a ship at sea, the sails filled with wind.” For this, she was subject to abuse throughout her life, but developed a strong talent for putting people in their place and would defend the people she loved as well as she defended Ireland.

Sometimes, I think intelligent outcasts are the most important people the development of creativity and culture within any particular group. Henry VIII made big sleeves fashionable for men because preexisting fashions didn't suit his growing figure. Speranza dressed like gypsy, even when she could afford the fashions of her day, and wore cheap costume jewelry, sometimes made of pieces of older broken costume jewelry. The odd biographer suggests that she favoured darkness because it concealed certain physical features that made her insecure; but, according to her, she liked dark rooms lit by candles because it encouraged "bawdy talk."

These dark spaces in her house, which notable always had all of its shutters shut, were decorated with books and artifacts collected during William Wilde's archeological journeys to Egypt and by Speranza herself, who enjoyed busts and paintings from ancient Greece and Rome.

If being "the Irish Poetess" of her day weren't fame enough, she became a famous entertainer, hosting popular salons at her home in Dublin and later in London. She got know many of the most famous creatives and revolutionaries, especially feminists and the political types, that set foot in whatever city she happened to be in, which makes it hard to believe that she was all that shy about being out in the open and walking in the light. When asked how she managed to attract such interesting people, Speranza replied, "By interesting them, of course!"

In addition to the two daughters William Wilde had outside of his marriage, Speranza had two sons and a daughter. Her daughter died in childhood; her firstborn was named for her husband and would always be her favourite, even when he grew up to be a lecherous alcoholic; and her other son was Oscar Wilde. Because of her, the boys were well-educated before they even started school, though some acquaintances, like Lord Alfred Douglas, suggested she might not have provided the most wholesome environment for the boys, due to the types of people she kept around and the types of things they would discuss.

Ostensibly, "respectable people" were forbidden from her home because they were usually so uninteresting. Many of their friends attributed Oscar Wilde's wit to his mother.

Things took a turn for the unfortunate, when William Wilde Sr. was knighted. Speranza believed this misfortune came because fortune and fame attract the maliciousness of jealousy. A Dublin man, whose daughter was a patient of Sir William Wilde, the oculist, claimed Sir Wilde was sexually inappropriate in his conduct toward the young lady and would seek legal action. Speranza must have flown into a rage and wrote a nasty letter to the man, for which they were eventually sued and lost most of their wealth. It was about this time that both of Sir Wilde's daughters burned to death in a fire due to the restrictive nature of their fashionable clothes.

Sir Wilde died not long after and Speranza moved to London with both of her sons. In her reduced circumstances, she relied on the financial assistance of both her boys and earned a modest living as a journalist. She finished the work that she began years ago with her husband and published Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms and Superstitions of Ireland (1888). Oscar began making a name for himself and Speranza continued to hope that both her boys would find their place in parliament. Her favorite son wasn't doing as well as Oscar though.

In London, Speranza became active in the fight for women's legal rights; specifically, the right for a woman to retain her wealth in marriage. She was part of a successful act to support these rights, but, as luck would have it, she needed to find a wealthy wife for her favorite son. The marriage lasted less than a year and Willie came home penniless. Even after he took a second wife, Willie would live with his mother to the end of her days. Many famous people still came to her salons, but she was heard at one such event saying that her life had been reduced to "the importance of being Oscar's mother."

I believe that Speranza died of a broken heart, when Oscar Wilde went to prison. When the trials started, she didn't believe they would imprison her son and wouldn't hear of him fleeing the country. He was, after all, "an Irish-born gentleman." The official cause of death was bronchitis, but her health deteriorated rapidly after Oscar's conviction. Even her requests to visit with him were denied.

Oscar's wife, came back to London from Europe, to break the news of his mother's death to Oscar personally, so that he wouldn't take it too hard.

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Dear Mr. Morgan

The latest news about writers in London in the 1890s comes in the form of a forgotten letter by Oscar Wilde to an unknown Mr. Morgan. The advice in the letter (what has been shared so far) can be taken several ways, but I like to relate to my predecessors from across the sea.

The letter advises Mr. Morgan:

The best work in literature is always done by those who do not depend on it for their daily bread—and the highest form of literature, Poetry, brings no wealth to the singer… Make some sacrifice for your art and you will be repaid—but ask of art to sacrifice herself for you and a bitter disappointment may come to you.

This is the kind of advice I would have given, during my last days as a staff writer for a magazine when my daughter was small. It reminds me of the small sense of tragedy in needing to do what you always wanted to do. A short while later, I met a poet and confessed that I used to write. "What happened?" he asked. "I started working in journalism," was my reply.

Oscar Wilde indeed came to depend on the income that he earned through writing. Many of his surviving letters inquire of his publishers about advances. Many of his wife's letters ask her family for money. They were by no means poor in their time, but Oscar Wilde was true to his words:

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

Sometimes, I can really relate to the Wildes.

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Vampires or Bust

With more writers opting to self-publish every year, I thought it might be encouraging to know that one of the greatest published his best work at great personal risk.

When publishing Dracula, in 1897, Bram Stoker borrowed a "substantial amount" of money from his good friend, Hall Caine. The novel wasn't much of a success, during the author's lifetime, but it helped his widow to live comfortably. It also left a lasting impression on literature and film.

To me, this serves as a reminder that, if you feel compelled to create art, you should create art and don't waste any time worrying about whether it was worth it.

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