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THE OSCHOLARS LIBRARY |
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‘The Stranger's Scoffing’. Speranza, the Hope of the Irish Nation. |
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Christine Kinealy |
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This article is based on a paper
given by Professor Kinealy at the Conference of the Canadian Association for
Irish Studies in Toronto, May 2008; and has been revised by Professor Kinealy
for publication here, for which we are extremely grateful –Editor, THE
OSCHOLARS. |
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September 2008 |
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Between January and December 1882, Oscar
Fingall O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, frequently clad in knee-breeches, coat-tails
and lace shirts, lectured throughout North America. To mark the occasion of his lecture in
Toronto, an English newspaper, which was following his tour of North America,
commented that Wilde had been ‘born in an enviable social status’; his father
was Sir William Wilde, oculist to Queen Victoria, and his mother was
Speranza, the poet.[1] Nonetheless, the early
stage of Oscar’s American tour had not gone well, with halls being only
half-filled and containing a high proportion of hecklers, while his lectures
on beauty and aesthetics had been less than enthusiastically received by the
press.[2] Moreover, from the outset
of his tour, it was clear that part of his fame and attraction rested on his
parentage, mostly notably that of his mother.[3] This was evident from the
fact that many American newspapers referred to him repeatedly as ‘Speranza’s
son’, while pointing out that she was one of the leading and most talented
poets of Young Ireland movement. [4] When he travelled to St Louis at the end of February, the
headlines in the local paper referred to him as, ‘Speranza’s Gifted Son’. [5] Inevitably, given this pedigree, he had been questioned about his
own politics by Irish-Americans.
Judiciously, Oscar Wilde, the noted aesthete, came out of the closet
and declared himself to be an Irish nationalist – and the audiences loved him
for it. |
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As the tour progressed, Irish
independence, and his mother’s role in achieving it, became a feature of
Oscar’s public pronouncements. On 10
February, when in Chicago, he described Ireland as ‘the Niobe* among
nations’.[6] While in Cincinnati, he
met descendants of Robert Emmet, the executed leader of the 1803 rebellion,
and a few days later in Milwaukee (on 5 March 1882) he praised Emmet and
stated that he was ‘strongly in sympathy with the Parnell movement’. He also predicted that more blood would
soon be shed in Ireland in the cause of independence.[7] In St Paul’s on St
Patrick’s Day Oscar was introduced to his audience with references to his
mother and praise for her patriotism.
In the preamble to his lecture, Oscar portrayed himself as following
in her footsteps politically. His subsequent lecture resulted in his best
reception since his arrival in the United States. Shortly afterwards, he
announced that, by special request, his final (of a series of ten) lecture in
San Francisco, on 5 April, would be on ‘Irish patriot poets of the nineteenth
century’.[8] The audience was larger
than usual, although the hall was not full. In his lecture, he paid special
tribute to Daniel O’Connell, William Smith O’Brien and, inevitably, his
mother.[9] He described her as having been brought up in an atmosphere of
‘alien English thought’ and went on to say: |
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Of the quality of Speranza’s poem
perhaps I 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 the song, notable for its strength and simplicity, that
ballad of my mother’s on the trial of the Brothers' Sheares in ’98, and that
passionate and lofty lyric written in the year of revolution called ‘Courage’.* I would like to linger
on her work longer, I acknowledge, but I think you all know it, and it is
enough for me to have once had the privilege of speaking about my mother to
the race she loves so well. [10] |
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He finished the lecture with two poems of
his mother’s, including one about the 1848 revolutions, which he read ‘with
much effect and feeling’.[11] The lecture was greeted
with heavy applause. Significantly, the latter part of his tour was far more
successful that the early stages of it, clearly helped by Oscar’s frequent
references to Ireland’s historical and current struggle for independence. |
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Oscar Wilde, son of Speranza, had
shamelessly exploited the renown of his mother to win acceptance and in doing
so had discovered his Irish nationalistic roots. Following the ending of his
tour of North America, Oscar never lectured on Irish politics again.[12] |
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But, who was Speranza ? Oscar’s experiences showed her to be a
woman who, in her own lifetime, had achieved transatlantic fame as a poet and
a patriot, despite never having visited the United States. In addition to her political credentials, Speranza
was also a talented prose writer, an outspoken feminist, a pioneering
folk-lorist, a gifted linguist, a devoted mother and had been a loyal wife to
her errant, but now deceased, husband, William. Her various pen-names, John Fanshawe Ellis,
Speranza, Lady Jane Wilde, provide an insight into her multi-faceted
personality and talents. However, she was born simply Jane Elgee, probably in
1821 (although she maintained it to be in 1826). Her family was conservative,
middle-class, Anglicans who supported the union with Britain. Her involvement
with radical, nationalist politics, therefore, not only crossed gender
boundaries, but also transposed familial expectations. |
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Jane became involved with the Nation newspaper,
and thus with Young Ireland, in 1845.[13] She was then aged either 19 or 24. She was part of an influx of
radical writers that included Thomas Francis Meagher and John Mitchel. At
this stage, the group of young intellectuals, collectively known as Young
Ireland, was still part of Daniel O’Connell’s Repeal Association, although
they were becoming increasingly disillusioned with his vacillations and
authoritarian approach. Initially,
Jane wrote in the Nation under the
pseudonym, John Fanshawe Ellis, leading even the paper’s editor, Charles
Gavan Duffy to believe that she was a man. He was full of praise for the new
contributor, opining that ‘he’ ‘promises to rival … Mangan’[14]; a reference to the
brilliant, but ailing, poet, James Clarence Mangan. When Duffy discovered her gender, he
praised her for being ‘a woman of genius’, who ‘wrote as a man’.[15] At this point, Jane adopted the pen-name ‘Speranza’. |
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Despite Speranza’s privileged upbringing
as part of the Protestant Ascendancy, much of her early writing was concerned
with poverty and hunger. As the backdrop was the Irish Famine, this was not
surprising, but Speranza, more than any of her contemporaries, captured the
full horrors of the avoidable tragedy. On 23 January 1847 the Nation published
her most famous poem ‘The Famine Year’.
It was a searing indictment on the egregious policies of the British
government, but it was also a clarion call to Irish nationalists and radicals
to do something. Throughout, the language was impassioned and angry, as
befitted the times. |
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… But the stranger reaps our
harvest--the alien owns our soil. |
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… |
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When the repeal movement split in 1846,
Speranza sided with Young Ireland, writing a poem criticizing O’Connell for
betraying Ireland. She also supported
the uprising planned for autumn 1848. The British government clearly took the
threat of a Young Ireland rising in 1848 seriously, introducing a series of
draconian measures and arresting many of the movement’s leaders.[17] The arrest of Charles Gavan Duffy in July 1848 did not halt the
publication of the Nation as the editorship was taken over by Speranza
and Margaret Callan. On 29 July, just as the rebellion was unfolding in Widow
McCormick’s house in County Tipperary,
the Nation published an anonymous article, written by
Speranza, Jacta Alea Est (The Die is Cast), which amounted to a call to
arms. It resulted in the immediate
suppression of the paper. Duffy was blamed for the article, although Speranza
admitted authorship, despite the risk of being found guilty of treason. A
conservative Irish paper, the Saunder’s Journal, predicted – correctly
– that her gender and class would protect her from prosecution.[18] Nonetheless, the incident
alarmed Speranza so much that she stated ‘I will never write sedition again’.
[19] |
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A number of writers have claimed that
after 1848 Speranza moved away from nationalist politics.[20] This was far from being true. The failure of the Young Ireland
rising and the transportation, imprisonment or emigration of many of its
leaders left a political vacuum in nationalist politics. When the Nation was revived she contributed some poetry to it, but the
tenor of the new journal was very different from what it had been prior to
1848. Even Duffy, eight years after the failed uprising, emigrated to Australia,
claiming that politics in Ireland were dead. The revival in radical
nationalism was initiated by exiles residing in France and the United States,
who founded the Fenian movement in 1858. Although Speranza had little direct
contact with the Fenians, and disliked their democratic politics, she
defended those on trial and wrote a poem condemning the treatment of the
prisoners, appealing for their early release.[21] At the height of Fenian activity also, she published a poem in
the National Review, entitled ‘To
Ireland’, which was redolent of some of the poetry she had written for the Nation, twenty years earlier: |
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MY COUNTRY, wounded to the heart, |
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In 1851, Speranza married William Wilde,
a successful eye surgeon and compiler of the 1851 census of Ireland. Despite
marriage and motherhood (she had three children) she continued to publish
prolifically. Interestingly, when her husband was knighted in 1864, she
adopted the title ‘Lady’ but continued to publish as ‘Lady Francesca Speranza
Wilde’. In this way, she combined her
British title with her Irish radical roots.
When a volume of her poetry was published in 1871 the Dedication read,
‘for Ireland’. Her love for Ireland was
reciprocated by the ordinary people, as when she appeared on the streets of
Dublin she was cheered, and some of her early poetry had been transformed
into popular street ballads.[23] |
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Throughout her later life, she remained
in contact with Young Ireland leaders, remaining loyal to their memory and
sacrifice for Ireland. When John Mitchel, the most radical of this group,
visited Ireland in 1875, following his election as a MP, he dined with
Speranza and her family. She and her son Oscar remained friends with Gavan
Duffy throughout his long life. |
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Over thirty years after the failed Young
Ireland uprising, Speranza wrote a little-known book, The Irish Americans,
which demonstrated that her nationalist fervor had not diminished. Although Speranza admired Parnell, she
believed that Home Rule was a ‘hollow fiction’, based on the ‘feudal
distinctions of class and caste’. She believed that only independence based
on a republic and universal suffrage could give Ireland real freedom. [24] This publication indicated that Speranza was returning to the
politics of her youth and that her radicalism had not diminished. |
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Feminism |
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The Nation, unlike many
contemporary nationalist newspapers, included articles on the ‘woman
question’. Of the various female contributors to the paper, it was Speranza
and her colleague Eva who were most interested in women’s issues. In a number
of articles, Speranza argued that women should seek to have economic
independence and, even if married, they should place their career above the
demands of their family.[25] When the Irish writer,
William Carleton, suggested that the Nation should include a separate
woman’s page, Speranza objected on the grounds that it would ‘probably be the
only page unread’. [26] |
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Her interest in women and gender
differences continued throughout her life. Speranza, together with her
husband, attended the first meeting in Ireland to publically discuss women’s
suffrage, in April 1870.[27] She invited the English
suffragist, Millicent Fawcett, to her home to lecture on female liberation,
despite the fact that Fawcett opposed independence for Ireland and broke with
the Liberal Party in 1886 on this issue.[28] In 1892, Speranza signed
a petition asking that Trinity College permit women to take full degrees
there and in 1893, three years before her death, she published a pamphlet
entitled ‘The Bondage of Women’.[29] As with much of what she did, her public pronouncements seemed to
belie her more radical writings. In 1887 she declared that, notwithstanding
her own life-long interest in nationalist politics ‘the present state of
Irish affairs requires the strong guiding hand of men, there is no place any
more for the more passionate aspirations of a woman’s nature’.[30] |
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Despite suggesting that women’s
characteristics meant they were unsuited to late nineteenth-century politics,
Speranza was regarded as an inspiration to the next generation of female
‘advanced’ nationalists, including Alice Milligan, Maud Gonne and Countess
Markievicz. In their journals, such as
the Shan Van Vocht, Bean na hÉireann and the United Irishman,
they recounted tales of earlier generations of female activists, from Brigit
to Speranza.[31] Milligan, a Protestant
nationalist and feminist who was active in the Irish literary revival, wrote,
just a month after Speranza’s death, that because of her range of activities
it was impossible to do full justice to her contribution but that: |
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Today the best we can do is draw
attention to her life, to the persistent and consistent course which she
followed to the risks that she dared and the matchless spirit which in a time
of doubt, danger, and despair, she brought to the service of Ireland. [32] |
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For this generation of advanced
nationalists, Speranza provided a model of how cultural activities could be
linked with direct action.[33] When Gonne gave a series
of lectures on Irish nationalism in France, Holland and Belgium in 1892, she
was hailed as ‘the new Speranza’. [34] This epithet, however, was probably first used by W. B. Yeats,
who was acquainted with both women, and in love with Gonne. In January 1892,
Yeats published two articles in The
United Irishman in which he drew parallels between the political
activities of the two women. In the article that appeared on 19 January,
referring to Gonne’s political activities in Paris, he stated ‘ here is the new ‘Speranza’ who should do all
with the voice all, or more than all, the old ‘Speranza’ did with her pen’.[35] |
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London |
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Sir William Wilde died in 1876 leaving
Speranza virtually penniless. Three years later, she moved to London where
her two sons were living. She used her writing skills in order to boost her
income. Her increasing poverty led her to appeal for a small civil list
income, which she received. It is
generally assumed that she was awarded this income as a reward for her
services to literature, but some sources claim that she was given it in
recognition of her husband’s services to ‘statistical science and
literature’.[36] Ironically, though, the
pension meant that Speranza accepted financial support from a government that
she had despised for most of her adult life. She also drew a small income
from an estate in Ireland, which made her nervous about the activities of the
Land League. Again, political idealism clashed with pragmatism about her
straightened circumstances. |
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Despite her poverty, during her early
years in London Speranza continued a tradition that she and her husband had
commenced in Dublin, that of hosting literary salons. In her salons, she
cultivated young writers, both male and female. The popularity of the London salons was no
doubt helped by the appearance of her son, Oscar, at them. Oscars’ brilliance was juxtaposed against
the deliberate dimness of the rooms in which the gatherings were held, with
Speranza keeping the shades down and the lights low – allegedly as a way of
disguising her advancing years. An alternative view was offered by the
novelist, Gertrude Atherton, who attributed the poor lighting at Speranza’s
parties to the hostess’ poverty.[37] Despite receiving monetary
support, often surreptitiously, from Oscar, she continued to have financial
problems, even resigning from the Irish Literary Society in April 1894 as she
could no longer afford the subscription. The other members of the Society
refused to accept her resignation, making her an Honorary Member.[38] |
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Those who attended Speranza’s ‘at homes’ included
W. B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw and Katherine Tynan. The generosity she
showed to young, aspiring, writers was not always reciprocated, by some of
her guests. Both Yeats and Shaw later blamed Speranza for what they regarded
as Oscar’s aberrant sexual behavior.[39] The illustrator, Harry Furniss, not only drew a number of
caricatures of the various members of the Wilde family, but wrote ‘With all
the queer ways of this eccentric couple, it is no wonder that Oscar, their
genius of a son, grew into an eccentric unnatural being’.[40] Speranza’s height, style
of dress (multiple crinolines and shawls), and strong opinions, made her an
easy target for caricature, especially in the repressive atmosphere of late
Victorian society. Despite her early
upbringing, she felt that she and her writings did not belong in English
society. She said of her poetry that it was ‘not suited to English taste’.
She went on to say ‘Oh what an incubus this English government is on our
country. It strangles all life’.[41] Ironically, while she was fluent in a number of European language
and gifted translator, like many early nationalists, she had no knowledge of
Irish and so when, in later life, she wanted to learn and write about Irish
folk lore, she worked with a translator. |
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Conclusion |
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Speranza, daughter of the Irish
Protestant Ascendancy and patron of Irish and British artists, died in
poverty in London in 1896. Her brilliant and beloved son, Oscar, was in
prison at the time. Her request to visit him before she died was refused.
Speranza, who had inspired and helped so many people, was buried without a
headstone and in a common burial plot in Kensal Green Cemetery in London.
Before leaving for France, Oscar visited his mother’s grave. He like, his mother, was to die and be
buried outside their beloved Ireland. |
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Speranza’s passing was lamented in
Ireland. A notice in the Southern Star claimed that her death ‘sees
one of the few remaining links with the old movement and revolutionary modern
politics’. [42] Another Irish newspaper
described her as having been ‘one of Ireland’s most talented and patriotic
writers’, explaining that: |
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In the dark days of ’48 when Ireland
was laboring in the throes of persecution
and national supineness and servility were giving place to rebellion,
Speranza’s inspiring appeals through the Nation,
written with all the delicate grace of a cultured lady, yet replete with
the fire of an ardent patriot, sent hope and courage to the hearts of the despondent, and made those who
longer for freedom bid defiance to their persecutors.[43] |
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Like many women of her generation Speranza
had had few political outlets for her
beliefs, but she used her talent at writing as a medium for expressing her
views. Her writings, over a period of
fifty years, were imbued with her nationalist politics, her concern for the
poor, her views on women’s rights, and her constant love for Ireland. |
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In the early years of the twentieth
century, despite the revival in nationalism, Speranza’s poetry disappeared
from public view, becoming, in the words of a contemporary admirer ‘like
extinct volcanoes’.[44] By the late twentieth
century, as the cult of Oscar Wilde grew, there was a revival in interest in
her, although not her poetry, and increasingly Speranza was relegated to being
remembered primarily as Mother of Oscar. At the same time, her writings were
judged to be overly-sentimental, with little merit or intrinsic value. The writer Thomas Flannagan went as far as
averring that she was ‘one of the silliest women who ever set pen to paper’.[45] A similar opinion was
expressed by a reviewer in the Irish
Independent, writing in 1987, who described her as ‘a vain and silly
woman’.[46] During her lifetime, however, her poetry, prose and translations
were all well-received, and her collections of poems were reprinted many
times, both in Ireland and the United States.[47] Her involvement in
politics was judged to have been fleeting, insignificant and extreme. In 1953, one Irish newspaper wrote that in
the years after 1848 ‘she displayed
that silent indifference of Irish affairs which suggest a phase she would
willingly forget’. The article further
suggested that her involvement in the nationalist movement had been ‘greatly
exaggerated’.[48] This observation, however,
was not the view of nationalists in the nineteenth century as this quote from
the poet, John Boyle O’Reilly, demonstrates:
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In the stormy days of “Young Ireland”
from 1846-48, the poems of Speranza, next to those of Thomas Davis, were the
inspiration of the National Movement.[49] |
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As Alice Milligan acknowledged, it was
hard to do justice to the memory of Speranza.
Her life and politics were full
of contradictions, but her
contribution to nationalist and feminist thought in Ireland, to the emergence of cultural nationalism,
together with her fostering of the next generation of Irish writers (not
least her own son), was unique in the
nineteenth century. In 1882, Wilde had
conquered North America, helped by the fame of his mother. Fourteen years
later, in very different circumstances, from his cell in Reading Gaol, he
again paid tribute to his mother: |
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A week later, I am transferred here.
Three more months go over and my mother dies. No one knew how deeply I loved
and honoured her. Her death was terrible to me; but I, once a lord of
language, have no words in which to express my anguish and my shame. She and
my father had bequeathed me a name they had made noble and honoured, not
merely in literature, art, archaeology, and science, but in the public
history of my own country, in its evolution as a nation.[50] |
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As Oscar and many of her contemporaries
recognized, Speranza’s contribution to the emergence of the Irish nation,
both politically and culturally, was truly remarkable. |
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Professor Christine Kinealy completed
her PH.D on ‘The Irish Poor Law’ at Trinity College, Dublin. She is author of a number of books on the Great Famine, including This Great Calamity. The Irish Famine,
1845-52 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1994, and with a new Introduction,
2006). More recently, she has been researching the 1848 uprising in Ireland,
with special emphasis on the role play by women Young Irelanders. She currently lectures in Drew University
in the USA. |
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*Niobe – a tragic figure in Greek myth.
This phrase was first used by Lord Byron. |
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