The Fall of the House of Wilde (10 page)

6

Flirtations, Father Figures and Femmes Fatales

Jane caught the attention of many men, one of whom was the novelist William Carleton. They met shortly after Jane had come to public attention in the 1848 rebellion. What we know about the relationship comes mainly from Jane's correspondence with Hilson, to whom she sent Carleton's letters, hoping perhaps to arouse his jealousy. Carleton stood high in Ireland's literary circles, and Jane was obviously flattered to have the attention of this literary luminary. Born in 1794, Carleton was twenty-seven years Jane's senior. The Carleton family was itself a populous community of fourteen children, trying to survive on the proceeds from their tenant farm in county Tyrone. Like many poor boys, Carleton received instruction at a hedge school (so called because of their rural setting) from Catholic priests who organised a curriculum that bespoke their ambition to raise devout men.

Profoundly inspired by religion, Carleton thought of joining the priesthood, before spurning Catholic doctrine. Rural Ireland had nurtured in him a hatred of violence, a strong tendency to identify with its victims, and a belief that succumbing to the dictates of the Catholic priesthood was a tyranny no worse than that of the rapacious landlords. On the strength of his own experience he wrote a controversial letter in 1826 to the then home secretary, Sir Robert Peel, urging him against Catholic emancipation, offering to provide evidence of Daniel O'Connell's involvement in agrarian crime. To Peel, who was an outspoken opponent of emancipation, he vilified the Catholic priests and schoolteachers for their tyrannical rule over their flock.

Carleton's
Traits and Stories of Irish Peasantry
, published in 1830, made Dublin sit up and take notice. His unsparing criticism and occasional exaggeration of the Irish character won him as many enemies as friends. He saw himself, as he put it in his 1834 preface to
Tales of Ireland
, as the ‘historian of their habits and manners, their feelings, their prejudices, their superstitions, and their crimes'. Carleton turned Protestant. But he continued to write stories exposing the sham in all creeds. His search for the underside of human character made him the writer partisans could not tolerate. Snubs certainly came from the Catholic priesthood, who had no use for Carleton's unsparing view of Ireland. Despite the diligence with which he produced books, Carleton remained poor until the state awarded him a pension of £200 in 1849, granted by Lord John Russell, prime minister at the time, in response to a petition by a handful of Dublin patrons. He continued to produce work until a few years before he died in 1869.
¹

Hilson disapproved of Jane's friendship with Carleton. He thought Carleton, a married man, had been too familiar in his correspondence with Jane and overstepped the boundaries of decorum. Jane protested, saying it was simply Carleton's artistic way of putting things.

You have misjudged my friend Carleton or judged too literally – one must not paraphrase a Poet into the prose of everyday life. I do not attach the meaning to his phrases which you see in them – if I did I would then feel with you on the subject, but these phrases I read merely as phrases – a poetical passionate Nature will call simple admiration by some extravagant hyperbole and Carleton is one who it seems to me cannot help throwing the fire of his nature into every word he writes, if he were colder he would not be the genius he is. I perfectly feel this when reading his letters and attach no importance to his professions which, from another, might seem serious.

Indeed, Jane thought Carleton's correspondence was worthy of preservation. She had in fact told Carleton she ‘would some day publish his letters'.

Hilson would stand for none of this nonsense. As far as he was concerned, Jane did not respect family values, and worse, given her class, she should not be on such familiar terms with what he called ‘this great Peasant'. To which Jane had this to say in response: ‘Now pray understand me. I allow no latitude in feeling, the moral code is as stern and unyielding for genius as for all . . . Believe me, not one of his domestic feelings have grown cold for knowing me.' And on the issue of class:

You say too that ‘from his position in life he ought never to have written to me'. Is it from
you
I hear such a sentiment – you with all your noble philosophy, your free, untrammelled mind and your Carlyle inspirations – why – in my philosophy, Carleton the peasant born stands higher, far higher in the scale of nobility than I, the Lady of gentle blood and privileged by birth and position to mix in the first circles in my native country. I think that Carleton honours
me
by his acquaintance . . .

Intellect, not birth, conferred superiority in Jane's universe. Jane upheld a world where poetic genius stood at the centre, deserving the respect society confers on social rank, which for Jane was but a false mantle cloaking the true order of merit.

Nevertheless, she still wanted to stand high in Hilson's regard, judging by the epilogue of regrets into which she slipped.

I esteem your candour, your kindness and your good sense most highly, even perhaps gratefully, and your opinions will influence me in my future conduct, as my judgement in these matters may be weak and prejudiced and I would rather kill myself than run the chance of casting a shadow over the peace and repose of any heart that lies within the circle of a trusting domestic love – will you ever pardon me for writing all this on a matter purely personal? I fear you will fling me into the fire, note acquaintanceship and all.
²

Jane was not interested in stealing Carleton from his wife. She delighted in her sexual magnetism, and loved to beguile literary and intellectual greats. Older men, especially, paid her homage. Jane's need to be adored by older men may have been bound up with the absence of a father, as her own had left home when she was a baby, and died when she was three. Similarly, her refusal to subscribe to the patriarchal social order probably owed itself to the same origin.

Jane wrote to keep herself. The first work she translated was a German novel,
Sidonia von Borcke
, published in 1847, written by J. W. Meinhold, a Lutheran pastor. Jane's translation,
Sidonia the Sorceress
, came out in 1849. The novel was inspired by the real life of Sidonia von Bork, a seductress and serial murderer, burned in Germany as a witch in 1620.

Denied entry into the reigning ducal family of Pomerania, Sidonia takes revenge by whetting the sexual appetite of her suitors, only to ruthlessly cut them off, relishing the depths of the despair into which they sink. She then poisons them, and finally destroys the reigning ducal family of Pomerania. Meinhold's novel plunges into an excess of evil and then out again into a Christian moral world of redemption as Sidonia is punished.

Meinhold's novel was not the trashy sensationalism of mid-nineteenth-century fiction: it was written for an age distrustful of elevating humanity. It needs to be read alongside other mid-century works – such as the poetry of Baudelaire or Flaubert's
Madame Bovary
 – for in its theme is discernible a change in direction: towards a spirit of harshness. Meinhold's Sidonia is as cold and bloodless as an object, partly because he paints her with scientific detachment. More than one critic compared the reading of
Sidonia
to viewing pictures in a gallery, which explains why the book appealed to the imagination of visual artists. The Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti first read Jane's translation of
Sidonia the Sorceress
in 1851 and pronounced it a masterpiece. Edmund Gosse, reviewing the 1926 edition for the
Sunday Times
, said Rossetti ‘had a positive passion for “Sidonia the Sorceress,” referring to it and quoting from it incessantly, until it inoculated the whole Pre-Raphaelite circle with something of his own enthusiasm'.
³
Edward Burne-Jones painted Sidonia von Bork in 1860; Walter Pater dwelt upon the book's artistic merits; Charlotte Brontë's heroine in
Villette
is familiar with its theme, while Swinburne read it at the same time as he discovered the Marquis de Sade.

The character of Sidonia marks a move towards the femme fatale figure, popular with the writers of the late nineteenth-century Decadent movement, whose cool demeanour drives a wedge between sex and emotion. Sidonia is an angel who wears boots, who uses beauty to wield power. The book influenced the late-century female archetype of woman as vampire, common in Decadent poetry and painting. Indeed, the heroine looks back to the Romantic cult of personality and forward to the Decadent habit of substituting art for nature, of making the person a beautiful thing, a fetishistic obsession, functioning outside the moral law in an artificial world of its own, with Dorian Gray as its apogee.

Jane kept her name off the translation in 1849 and still omitted it from the second edition, published by William Morris's Kelmscott Press in 1893. Possibly she felt the need to distance herself from a book that shows how evil humans can be, but despite this she read it to her two boys at a young age. Oscar said his ‘favourite romantic reading when a boy' was
Sidonia the Sorceress
and his great-uncle's novel, Maturin's
Melmoth the Wanderer
.
⁴

In 1850, at the age of twenty-eight, Jane received the news she half anticipated but still dreaded – Hilson was to get married. She responded as follows.

Who is the sublime Semiramis that has led you captive? I should think your heart more a tender than a loving nature . . . do forgive me if I am not very enthusiastic. I shall have to wait ten years now I suppose before your ardour is sufficiently cooled down to give a rational opinion on any point literary or psychological . . . The truth is I hate men in love, the heart holds but one at a time at least in that transition state between the ‘rippling friendship' as you call it and the authorised Version of the Rubric, and I do not care to have my image only an intrusive guest. One thing amused me in your eulogy. You said she has no ambition – so then this is the opposite of me with whom it is the strength of all feelings . . .
⁵

Was ambition in a woman distasteful to men in search of a suitable spouse? Jane once said to Hilson, ‘I always feel that there is something which I ought to be half ashamed of in the possession of a little more spiritualised nature than others. “Oh, I hate clever ladies,” is a phrase which often kills all pride in me.'
⁶

The other dart Jane suffered was her mother's death, in 1851, of which we know no details.

7

Marriage

In November 1851 all the Dublin papers carried the following announcement: ‘Married on the 12
^th
inst. at St Peter's Church by the Reverend John M. Wilde, A.M., Incumbent of Trinity Church, Northwich, William R. Wilde, Esq., F.R.C.S., to Jane Francesca, youngest daughter of the late Charles Elgee, Esq., and granddaughter of the late Archdeacon Elgee, of Wexford.'

It was a small wedding, as Jane was still in mourning for her mother. Jane's uncle, John Elgee, accompanied her. Having seen the couple depart for the Holyhead steamer, John Elgee wrote the following to Jane's sister Emily:

Everything went off remarkably well, the carriage called for me this morning a little after eight . . . as soon as Wilde came I drove to Lesson Street for Jane, and
found her ready
, so that no time was lost and at nine precisely we entered the church – a brother of the Dr's who is a clergyman residing in Cheshire was the chief priest – William ‘assisting' – We fairly stole a march on the Town, no one was expecting the affair til tomorrow, and so nobody were present save our party and the old hangers on of the church . . . Jane looked and comported herself admirably – she wore a very rich dress of Limerick lace with a very rich lace veil, a white wreath in her hair etc. – by ten we were at breakfast at the Glebe and by eleven Jane had resumed her mourning and had driven off for Kingstown.

He added a postscript in reply to a letter he had received from Emily. What he writes shows a certain ill feeling between the sisters. Emily was living in England and married to a military man. Whether Emily took issue with Jane's politics and her outspokenness is uncertain, but it is certain that she did with Jane's ego. John Elgee wrote:

I am compelled to agree with you entirely in your estimate of Jane's character and it was only coming from the wedding this morning and talking to Wright [unknown] about her that I expressed myself to the effect that whether it would be a happy marriage was problematical – my hope rested in Wilde's good sense but he will have I think [?] a major [?] ordeal to pass through – she likes him, which I think a great point – she respects him another – his intellectual and literary standing is superior to hers which is also very material, had she married a man of inferior mind he would have dwindled down into insignificance or their struggle for superiority would have been terrific – Jane has some heart, she has good impulses, but the love of self is the prominent feature of her character – as to caring for either of us, I don't believe our fortunes give her a thought – however, I don't want to see open war between you and them – I did not wish to hurt Wilde's feelings therefore I have agitated myself and I hope successfully to bring matters between you to a decent state of intercourse.
¹

Did John Elsee know William had three illegitimate children? The first, Henry Wilson, was born in 1838 when William was overseas, and his mother remains unknown. Henry was thirteen when William married and was commonly referred to as his nephew. William paid for Henry's education and medical training – he too would become an ophthalmologist and join William's practice. Throughout Henry's life, William was on familiar terms with his family. William also had two illegitimate daughters – Emily, born in 1847, and Mary, born in 1849 – before William and Jane married. William's eldest brother, Reverend Ralph Wilde, took them on as wards, and the identity of their mother, or mothers, is unknown. It is not known how involved William was in their lives, or what Jane knew of all this when she married William.