1821-1896 [née Jane Frances Agnes Elgee, aka Francesca; pseud. “Speranza”; conventionally given as b.1826]; b. 27 Dec., in Wexford, dg. Archdeacon Charles Elgee (who died in India in 1824) and Sara Kingsbury, gd. of Dr Thomas Kingsbury, Commissioner of Bankrupts, in vicarage by the Bull Ring; purportedly descended from Dante Alighieri via Algiati, Italian immigrants, but actually descended from Durham builders who reached Ireland in the building-boom of the 1730s; related to C. R. Maturin; awakened to patriotism by reading poetry of Davis after having witnessed his funeral cortège in Dublin, 1845; contrib. poetry to The Nation, at first as John Fanshaw Ellis, from 1846; publishing her poem on the famine, “The Stricken Land”, in Nation (Jan. 23, 1847); assumed ed. of the Nation, 29 July 1848; wrote revolutionary editorials incl. “The Hour of Destiny”; accredited with authoring ‘Alea Iacta Est’ [‘O!, for a hundred thousand muskets, glimmering brightly in the light of Heaven!’], a piece actually by Margaret Callan, sis.-in-law of Charles Gavan Duffy, leading to the suppression of the paper; apocryphally said to have avowed authorship of the piece, charged to Duffy, from the the public gallery at his state trial, [July] 1848 (‘I am the culprit, if culprit there be’); 2 poems printed in Dublin University Magazine (1849); contrib. to Duffy’s Hibernian Magazine; issued trans. of Johann Wilhelm [var. Wilhem; Wildhelm] Meinhold as Sidonia the Sorceress (1849), and trans. of Lamartine’s History of the Girondins as Pictures of the First French Revolution (1850); also his Nouvelles Confidences as The Wanderer and his Home (1851); m. William Wilde (later Sir William [infra]), 12 Nov., 1851, honeymooning in Berlin, and visiting Denmark, from which representatives of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquities had visited Dublin the previous year; trans. Alexander Dumas’s Impression de Voyage en Suisse as The Glacier Land (1852); settled at Westland Row; a son William Charles Kingsbury Wilde, b. 26 Sept. 1852; a 2nd son, Oscar Wilde, b. 16 Oct. 1854 [infra]; remarked on his name, ‘Is that not a grand, misty and ossianic?’); dg. Isola Emily Francesca, b. 2 April, 1857 (d. 23 Feb., 1867); moved to 1, Merrion Sq., 1858; Poems (Duffy 1864); conducted weekly at homes (or ‘conversazione’, Saturdays. 4-7 p.m.); defended her husband in Dublin civil action against accusations of rape under laudanum levelled at him by Miss Travers, who dropped ‘nuisance letters’ in the door; costs of one farthing found against Mrs. Wilde; publ. “To Ireland”, poem, in National Review, Sept. 1868; moved to London on her husband’s death in 1876, and settled at Ovington Place, coming to be called ‘The Madame Recamier of Chelsea’; subject of encomium by her Oscar son in San Francisco, 1882 (reading out her “Trial of the Brothers Sheares in 1789”); received Royal Literary Fund grant, 1888 (stating her correct birthdate, as above); also received a Civil List pension of £300 [var. £70 p.a.] in recognition of her husband’s services to ‘statistical science and literature’, 1890, both grants being made through Oscar’s influence; greeted his novel Dorian Gray as the ‘most wonderful piece of writing in all the fiction of the day’; contrib. “Historic Women”, a poem, to Oscar’s magazine Women’s World; also a poem on Queen Victoria, approved by the Queen, and portions from Ancient Legends, here called “Irish Peasant Tales”; retired to bed during Oscar’s first trial in 1895; advised him not to flee to the continent; issued works of folklore, Driftwood from Scandanavia (1884) and Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms and Superstitions of Ireland (1887), the latter incl. such stories as “The Child That Went Away with the Fairies”; supported in latter years by her son Willie from his salary on the Daily Telegraph; received gifts from C. G. Duffy and others; issued Ancient Cures, Charms and Usages of Ireland (1890); also Men, Women and Books (1891) and Social Studies (1893); remembered for her poem ‘The Famine Year’; d. at home, of bronchitis, 3 Feb. 1896; a bibliography was published by James Coleman in Irish Book Lover, 20, (1932); the obituary of her brother, a judge, appeared in Evening News (30 Nov. 1864). DNB IF NCBE DIB DIW DIH DIL PI MKA RAF JMC OCIL
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Prose
Sidonia The Sorceress, translated from the German of Wilhem Meinhold [The Parlour Library vol. 29, 30] (1849), other edns. 1893, 1926; Pictures of the First French Revolution, being episodes from the History of the Girondists [sic], translated from the French of Lamartine de Prat [The Parlour Library, Vol. 45 (1850), another edn. Vol. 55 (1851); The Glacier Land, translated from the French of A. Dumas [The Bookcase, Vol. 7] (1852); Ugo Bassi, a Tale of the Italian Revolution, by Speranza (London 1857), verse [see OUP supra]; The First Temptation, or Eritus sicut Deus, 3 vols., translated from the German of M. Schwab (1863); Poems by Speranza (Dublin: James Duffy 1864) [infra], and Do. [another edn.] (Glasgow & London: Cameron & Ferguson [1871]); another edn. (Dublin: Gill & Son [1907]); Memoir of Gabriel Béranger [concluding part by Lady Wilde only] (1880); Driftwood from Scandinavia (London: R. Bentley 1884); Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms and Superstitions of Ireland2 vols. (London: Ward & Downey, 1887; US edn. 1888) [infra]; Do., new edn. (London: Chatto & Windus 1919), another edn. (NY: Sterling 1991); Ancient Cures, Charms and Usages of Ireland: Charms and Usages of Ireland: Contributions to Irish Lore (London: Ward & Downey 1890); Notes on Men, Women, and Books (London: Ward & Downey 1891); Social Studies (London: Ward & Downey 1893); attributed, Ugo Bassi, a Tale of the Italian Revolution, by Speranza (London 1857). QRY, Irish in America.
Poems by Speranza (Dublin: James Duffy 1864) [dedicated ‘to my Sons Willie and Oscar Wilde’, with the inscription, ‘I made them indeed/Speak plain the word country. I taught them no doubt/That a country’s a thing men should die for at need’; with title-page device showing her initials circled by buckled belt around which the words ‘Fidanza, Speranza, Constanza’, and commencing with ‘The Trial of the Brothers Sheares’]; &c. edns.
Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms and Superstitions of Ireland [by] Lady Wilde (‘Speranza’). With sketches of the Irish past, to which is appended a chap. on “The Ancient Race of Ireland” [address to Anthropological Section of the British Association, Belfast 1874] by the late Sir William Wilde (London: Ward & Downey 1888), xii, 347pp. CONTENTS incl. Main section, pp.1-144 [numerous individual legends dealing with topics incl. fairies, the dead, curses, love-charms, fenian knights, cave fairies, evil spells, festivals]; Legends of Animals, [146-180]; [Medicine and super-stitions, 181-214]; Legends of the Saints, [215-227]; Mysteries of Fairy Power [pp.228-235]; The Holy Wells [236-254]; Popular Notions concerning the Sidhe Race [256-271]; Sketches of the Irish past, [274-295, incl. Our Ancient Capital, 295ff]; Sir William Wilde’s ‘Ancient Races’, [329-47].
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General Studies
Anna, Comtesse de Brémont, Oscar Wilde and His Mother: A Memoir (London: Everett 1911).
Brian de Breffny, ‘Speranza’s Ancestry; Elgee, the Maternal Lineage of Oscar Wilde’, in The Irish Ancestor, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1972).
Henriette Corkran, Celebrities and I (London: Hutchinson 1902).
D. J. O’Donoghue, [no title] in, Irish Book Lover, Vol. 12 (1921) [q.p.].
Horace Wyndam, Speranza: A Biography of Lady Wilde (London: T. V. Boardman & Co. 1951), 247pp.
Patrick Byrne, The Wildes of Merrion Square: Family of Oscar Wilde (London: Staples Press 1953), 224pp. [also pb. 160pp.; no date].
Violet Wyndham, The Sphinx and Her Circle (London: André Deutsch 1963).
Eric Lambert, Mad with Much Heart: A Life of the Parents of Oscar Wilde (London: Frederick Muller 1967).
Terence de Vere White, The Parents of Oscar Wilde (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1967).
Horace Wyndam, Speranza: A Biogaphy of Lady Wilde (London: T. V. Boardman & Co. 1951).
Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde (OUP 1987).
Joy Melville, Mother of Oscar: The Life of Jane Francesca Wilde (London: John Murray 1994), 308pp.
Harry Furniss, Some Victorian Women (London: John Lane 1923).
G. B. Shaw, Prefatory Letter in Frank Harris, Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions (NY: Crown Pub. Co. 1930).
W. B. Yeats in Autobiographies (London: Macmillan 1955).
David Cecil, Max (London: Constable 1964).
Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic (Yale UP 1979).
Davis Coakley, Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Irish (Town House 1994), 246pp.
Victoria Glendinning, Genius In the Dining Room: The Literary Salon in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. Pete Quennell (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1980), 188pp., 37 ills.
Seamus Heaney, ‘Speranza in Reading: On "The Ballad of Reading Gaol"’, in The Redress of Poetry [Oxford Poetry Lectures] (London: Faber & Faber 1995), pp.83-102. espec. 98ff.
William Carleton referred to her as ‘the most extraordinary prodigy of a female that this country, or perhaps any other, has ever produced’, cited in Benedict Kiely, Poor Scholar, p.159.)
W. B. Yeats, ‘List of 30 Best Irish Books’, Dublin Daily Express, 27 Feb. 1895; in Wade, ed., Letters, pp.246-51; p.248).
Douglas Hyde, Beside the Fire [1898], Dublin: Irish Academic Press 1978 [facs. rep.], p.xix.
Benedict Kiely, Poor Scholar (1947; 1972), pp.105-06).
Victoria Glendenning on ‘Speranza’, in Times Literary Supplement, 23 May 1980 [2 full pages].
Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English, The Romantic Period, 1789-1850, Vol 1, 1980, Introduction, pp.30-31.
W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (1984).
Terence de Vere White, The Parents of Oscar Wilde (London:, Hodder & Stoughton 1967), p.234.
Brenda Maddox, review of Joy Melville, Mother of Oscar, the Life of Jane Francesca Wilde (London: John Murray 1994), Times Literary Supplement (1 July 1994); also reviewed by Jerusha McCormack, Irish Times (18 July 1994).
Merlin Wilde, Wilde Album (1997), p.16.
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Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English: The Romantic Period, 1789-1850 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980), Vol. 2, lists ‘The Madame Recamier of Chelsea’; first appeared in The Nation in 1846, publishing ‘The Stricken Land’ (V, 224, Jan. 23) in 1847, prior to the revolutionary editorials of 1848, ‘The Hour of Destiny’ and ‘Iacta Alea Est’, the latter responsible for the suppression of the paper; 2 poems in Dublin University Magazine [q. issue] (1849); Poems (Duffy 1864); Sidonia, The Sorceress, trans. [of] Wilhem Heinhold [sic] (1849); Pictures of the First French Revolution, trans. of Lamartine, History of the Girondins (1850); The Wanderer and His Home, trans. Lamartine, Nouvelles Confidences (1851); The Glacier Land, trans. A. Dumas, Impression de Voyage en Suisse (1852); Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms and Superstitions of Ireland with sketches of the Irish Past to which is appended a chapter on ‘The Ancient Races of Ireland’ by the late Sir William Wilde (London: Ward & Downey 1887); Ancient Cures (London 1890).
Christopher Morash, The Hungry Voice (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1989), b. Wexford, c.1824, d. London 3 Feb 1896; contrib. The Nation as ‘Speranza’, her article [sic] Jacta alea est’ responsible for the paper’s prosecution in 1848; m. William Wilde (knighted 1864); Poems (Dublin: James Duffy 1864); ‘The Enigma’, in The Nation vol. 6., No.293 (6 May 1848); ‘The Exodus’, in Poems (1864), p.43; ‘The Famine Year’, originally titled ‘The Stricken Land’ in The Nation, vol. 5 no. 224 (23 Jan 1847); ‘foreshadowings’, in The Nation, vol. 7, No. 3 (9 Sept. 1849); ‘France in ‘93, A lesson from Foreign History’, in The Nation vol. 5, no. 233 (27 March 1847); ‘A Lament for the Potato, A.D. 1739’ in Poems (1864), p.63; ‘A Supplication’, in The Nation, vol. 5 No. 272 (Dec. 18 1847); ‘The Voice of the Poor’ in The Nation, vol. 6, no 296 (13 May 1848); ‘Work While it is Called Day’, in The New Spirit of the Nation, ed. Martin MacDermott (1894), p.119. NOTE, other poems incl. one on the Sheares Brothers.
Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms and Superstitions of Ireland (London: Ward & Downey 1888), title page verso lists works by Lady Wilde: Driftwood from Scandanavia; Sidonia the Sorceress, from the German; Eritus Sicut Deus, or the First Temptation, from German, 3 vols.; The Glacier Land, from Dumas; The Wanderer and His Home, from Lamartine; Pictures from the First French Revolution; The future Life, Swedenburg; Poems, &c. &c.
Belfast Central Public Library holds various eds. viz, Wilde, Jane Francesca, Ancient Cures, Charms and Usages of Ireland (London: Ward & Downey 1890), 256pp.; Ancient Legends of Ireland (Galway: O’Gorman Ltd. 1971), 347pp. [orig. 1888]; Ancient Legends, mystic charms & superstitions of Ireland, with sketches of the Irish past by Lady Wilde, new ed. (London: Chatto and Windus 1902), 347p.; also rep. (Galway: O’Gorman 1971), 347pp [1st ed. Ward & Downey 1888]; Irish Cures, Mystic charms and superstitions (NY: Sterling Pub. Co., 1991), 128pp.
University of Ulster Library (Morris Collection) holds Wilde, Jane Francesca (Elgee), Poems of Speranza (1871).
Hyland Books (Cat. 224) lists Ancient Cures, Charms and Usages of Ireland: Contributions to Irish lore (1890)
Love story: The Nation (On 15th September 1849) contained a review article of William Wilde’s Superstitions, written by Miss Elgee (later Mrs. Wilde); the book included a quotation from her poetry.
Joyce connection: ‘A posse of Dublin Metropolitan police superintended by the Chief Commissioner in person maintained order in the vast throng for whom the York Street brass and reed band whiled away the intervening time by admirably rendering on their black draped instruments the matchless melody endeared to us from the cradle by Speranza’s plaintive muse’, (‘Cyclops’ episode of Ulysses, Bodley Head Edn., p.396)
Murderers/spoilers: her anti-British poetry took the form of ‘our murder[er]s, the spoilers of our land’; on leaving Dublin in 1878, she issued a blasting pamphlet called The Irish in America praising those who fled from the degraded position to which England had given Ireland in Europe; on the birth of her children, she wrote, ‘Alas! the FAtes are cruel./Behold Speranza making gruel.’ [See TLS Brenda Maddox’s review of Joy Melville, Mother of Oscar, above]. ALSO, ‘Genius should never wed’
Women’s Voices: Lady Wilde Wrote to ‘Mr. Editor’ (her son Oscar) of Women’s World, signing herself La Madere Dolorosa, and complaining at her omission from review of Women’s Voices (anthology): ‘Why didn’t you name me in the review of Mrs Sharp’s books? Me, who hold such an historic place in Irish literature? And you name Miss Tynan and Miss Mulholland!’ (Ellmann, Oscar Wilde, p.277).
W. B. Yeats quotes extensively Lady Wilde’s account from Ancient Legends of an old healer in the Island if Innis-Sark, in ‘Irish Fairies, Ghosts, Witches, &c.’, article in Lucifer [Theosophical Magazine] (15 Jan. 1889); see John P. Frayne, ed., Uncollected prose of W. B. Yeats, 1970, p.130ff; p.132-33.
Pathetic Treason: ‘I shall begin to think you are the "Eva" or the "Speranza" who write pathetic treason in the Nation’ (Annie Keary, Castle Daly, 1975, p.301).
Robert Harborough Sherard, The Life of Oscar Wilde (London: T. Werner Laurie 1906), incl. rep. of ‘Iacta Alea est’. [Jacqueline Wesley Catl. 1993.]
Countess Anna de Brémont wrote of Lady Wilde’s dress, with family medallions attached to her bosom, that she ‘wore that ancient finery with a grace and dignity that robbed it of its grotesqueries’ (Cited in Barbara Belford, Bram Stoker, 1996.)
Portrait: There is a drawing by John Hughes, in a satirical vein, in the National Gallery of Ireland [see Oxford Illust. Hist., infra], and a caricature in ink of Sir William and Lady Wilde, shown in a dorsal view, by Harry Furniss. ‘Jacta Alea Est [the Die is Cast], or properly ‘Jacta est alea’, was coined in Suetonius, Lives of the Twelve Caesars, where it is attributed to Julius Caesar.
William Morris undertook the re-edition of Lady Wilde’s translation ‘which he praised as an almost faultless reproduction of the past, its action really alive’ (Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde, London: Penguin Books 1987, p.19; cited by Maria Pulido, in PGLIB Conference 1998.)
Brigitte Anton, ‘Women of The Nation,’ History Ireland, 1, 3 (Autumn 1993), gives accounts of Ellen Mary Downing, with Mary Kelly (‘Eva’), Anna Francesca Elgee (‘Speranza’), Margaret Callan, née Hughes and Jenny Mitchel [née Verner].
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)