Oscar Wilde, a playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet was born on October 16th 1854 in Dublin Ireland; the second child of Sir William Wilde and his wife Jane Oscar’s love of poetry was instilled in him at an early age through his mother who had written poetry for the revolutionary Young Irelanders under the pseudonym Speranza.
An outstanding student Wilde excelled at school, college and then at Magdalen College in London. Here he suffered a crisis of faith, giving serious thought to converting to Catholocism after an audience with Pope Pius IX in Rome. At the last moment he changed his mind and on the day of his baptism instead sent Father Bowden a bunch of altar lilies instead although he remained fascinated by the Catholic faith for the rest of his life.
Famously decadent, described as having the gait of an elephant with a voice that was according to Lillie Langtry “round and soft, and full of variety and expression,” Oscar cut a dapper if controversial figure and his relationship with Bosie only served to ostracise him further from his family and ‘polite society’ until in May 1895 Wilde was imprisoned for the crime of gross indecency and sentenced to two years’ hard labour. Whilst in Wandsworth Wilde’s health deteriorated and he never fully recovered.
The author of many great literary works here we celebrate the life of the man who boasted of being able to dine out on his conversational skills alone with 10 Wilde quotes from Oscar.
“I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.”
“The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast…”
“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much”
“There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
“How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being?”
“The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.”
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
Never recovering his health after his incarceration Oscar spent his last three years in impoverished exile and in November of 1900 developed cerebral meningitis, on the 29th of that month was conditionally baptised into the Catholic Church by Fr Cuthbert Dunne and died the next day.
Every bookshelf should contain at least one Oscar Wilde novel and if yours is lacking you can rectify that by looking through his bibliography.
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Last time I looked Magdalen College was inOxford not London!
I always liked the statement, that a gentleman would never take a bus!