Mr. Oscar O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin on October 15, 1856. His father, Sir William R. Wilde, was an eminent surgeon, and a man of literary tastes and great archæological learning.
In 1851 Sir William (then Mr.) Wilde married a granddaughter of Archdeacon Elgee, of Wexford, a lady well known in literary circles in Dublin as having written many poems which were published in the Nation newspaper at the time of the political excitement in 1848. They appeared over the nom de plume “Speranza,” and were afterwards published in a collected form, entitled “Poems by Speranza.”
Mr. Oscar Wilde early developed talents such as might have been expected in the son of highly gifted parents. Having spent about a year at Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, Mr. Wilde studied for a year at Trinity College, Dublin, where he obtained a classical scholarship at the early age of sixteen, and in 1874, won the Berkeley Gold Medal for Greek, the topic selected for that year being the Greek Comic Poets. Thence he went to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he obtained a first scholarship.
He soon began to show his taste for art and china, and before he had been at Oxford very long, his rooms were the show of the college, and of the university too. He was fortunate enough to obtain the best situated rooms in the college, on what is called the kitchen staircase, having a lovely view over the river Cherwell and the beautiful Magdalen walks, and Magdalen bridge. His rooms were three in number, and the walls were entirely panelled. The two sitting rooms were connected by an arch, where folding doors had at one time stood. His blue china was supposed by connoisseurs to be very valuable and fine, and there was plenty of it. He was hospitable, and on Sunday nights after “Common Room,” his rooms were generally the scene of conviviality, where undergraduates of all descriptions and tastes were to be met, drinking punch, or a B. and S. with their cigars. It was at one of these entertainments that he made his well-known remark, “Oh, that I could live up to my blue china!”
Besides minor scholarships, he took the Newdigate, a prize for English verse, in 1878, and a first in Literis Humanioribus, after which he took his degree.
During this period he produced a number of poems, these were published, some in The Month, others in the Catholic Monitor, and the Irish Monthly. A number of his short poems also appeared in Kottabos, a small magazine written by members of Trinity College, Dublin.
The first number of Mr. Edmund Yates’s Time, April 1879, contained a short poem by Oscar Wilde, entitled “The Conqueror of Time,” and to the July number he contributed “The New Helen.” Some of the foregoing poems, with others not previously published, appeared in a volume, entitled “Poems” by Oscar Wilde, published in 1881 by David Bogue, which speedily ran through several editions.
When referring to this volume in “The Æsthetic Movement in England” mention was made of Mr. Wilde’s exquisite little poem
REQUIESCAT.
Tread lightly, she is near,