Na man does, that's his

Edward Chancellor

MOTHER OF OSCAR: THE LIFE OF JANE FRANCESCA WILDE by Joy Melville John Murray, £19.99, pp. 308 Oscar Wilde claimed in De Profundis that his mother 'intellectually ranks with Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and historical- ly with Madame Roland'. Lord Alfred Douglas was later to say that it was a

touching trait of poor Oscar's character that he always had an altogether exaggerated idea of his mother's mental powers and social standing.

Of the two comments, Douglas' was proba- bly closer to the truth, however motivated he may have been by bile. But Wilde, when lecturing in San Francisco to Irish immi- grants, attested his loyalty without compro- mising his critical position:

Of the quality of Speranza's [Lady Wilde's] poems I, perhaps, should not speak, for criticism is disarmed before love, but I am content to abide by the verdict of the nation which has so welcomed her genius and understood her song.

Born in 1822 to a middle-class Protestant family in Dublin, Jane Elgee was to discover her nationalist and poetic passions simultaneously. W. B. Yeats claims (in a story corroborated by Oscar) that at the age of 24 she witnessed from the windows of her sitting-room the great funeral procession of the poet Thomas Davis:

She was so struck to find so many honouring a poet, and one she had never heard of, that she turned Nationalist and wrote those ener- getic rhymes my generation read in its youth.

This literary politicisation appeared fortu- itously in the troubled times of the 1840s when Ireland was beginning to suffer the ravages of the Famine.

Writing under the pseudonym of Speran- za, Jane contributed a number of poems to The Nation from 1846 to 1848. These became increasingly militant in tone (We'll conquer! We'll conquer! No tears for the slain,/ God's angels will smile on their death-hour of pain') and culminated in the prose leader in the issue of 29 July 1848, entitled :Theta Alea Est' (the Die is Cast). This passionate call for liberation was the immediate cause of the suppression of The Nation and the foundation of Speranza's lasting fame in the pantheon of Irish nationalist literati (so lasting, indeed, that when Oscar visited America three decades later he was known as 'Speranza's son').

The political crisis passed and mother- hood became Jane's preoccupation, follow- ing her marriage to the celebrated eye-surgeon, Sir William Wilde. Her nationalism and poetic output declined (as she jokingly put it 'Alas! the Fates are cruel/ Behold Speranza making gruel!'). Miss Melville freely admits that Jane's `romanticised nationalism and her love of rousing sentiment' showed 'little political awareness or commonsense'. While never rejecting her previous stance, she eschewed republicanism and militant Fenianism and was shocked by the Phoenix Park murders of 1882. In 1883 she wrote to Sir Charles Duffy:

Our Irish nationality is such a beautiful legend — such a fairy dream — and this is all to end. It is the horrible reality of Phoenix Park.

Her poetry, when severed from the political moment, became subject to dispassionate criticism, and by 1864 the Dublin Review was referring to her

peculiar and powerful but monotonous rhythm, which seems to pulsate in the ear with the even, strident note of a Hindoo drum.

The Athenaeum was even less sympathetic, describing her

grandiloquent generalities, tricked out with imposing but not striking metaphors of highly-coloured phrases.

An Irish McGonagall, Speranza today would be of interest only to students of Irish literary nationalism, were it not for her giving birth to Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde, Through the pages of this book one begins to sense the influence of his mother on Oscar. Wilde inherited her passionate bohemianism (`I want excitement . . . this orthodox creeping is too tame for me'). He shared her aestheticism and belief in beauty; only Wilde's mother could have written: Reason can do little against the force of ' Sony — I already have a fare.'

beauty; the first impulse, the irresistible instinct of a man's nature, is homage to phys- ical beauty.

Both Jane and William Wilde were eloquent speakers and Jane held salons both in Dublin and later in London. She enjoyed shocking people with her reckless talk, telling a young Oxford friend of Oscar's that when he was her age he would know that 'there is only one thing in the world worth living for and that ,is sin'. Despite all this posturing (another trick inherited by her son), she was never involved personally in scandal and when other members of her family suffered for their weaknesses she bore their misfortunes with fortitude.

Indeed, this biography reawakens inter- est in the tragedy of the life of Oscar Wilde by setting it within the context of his fami- ly's scandals and misfortunes. In 1864 a for- mer patient and confidante of Sir William, Mary Travers, sued Jane for libel and claimed in court that Sir William had chloroformed and raped her. The accusa- tion bears surprising similarity to David Mamet's recent play Oleanna, while Travers' bizarre behaviour before the case presaged Queensberry's hounding of Wilde in the 1890s. Jane stood by her husband despite his philandering, and although Travers won the case she was awarded a nominal farthing in damages. Shortly after- wards, Jane's only daughter Isola died (aged nine) and Sir William's two illegiti- mate daughters perished when their dress- es caught fire at a dance. Sir William, a broken man, followed his daughters in 1876 and Jane moved to London to set up house with her beloved but idle son, Willy (described by the New York Times as the `laziest man that ever went around in shoe leather').

Jane revelled in Oscar's success and he, in turn, supported her through continual financial difficulties. When Oscar's nemesis came she urged him not to flee:

If you stay, even if you go to prison, you will always be my son, it will make no difference to my affection, but if you go, I will never speak to you again.

She died in February 1896 during Oscar's imprisonment. Within five years she was followed by Constance (April 1898), Willy (April 1899) and Oscar himself (November 1900).

In the wake of Ellmann's biography it did not appear likely that Joy Melville would add much to our understanding of Oscar's life, but by shifting the focus away from him (and the repulsive Bosie) and concentrating on his mother, she shows us a new Oscar, more understandable and sympathetic. The Athenaeum's obituary of Speranza recalls the character of her notorious son: Under the mask of brilliant display and bohemian recklessness lay a deep and loyal soul and a kindly and sympathetic nature.