About William Wilde

The inspiration for this book was William Wilde’s classic work The Beauties of the Boyne and Blackwater which was first published in 1849 and reprinted as recently as 2003. When I was a young boy, my father would often consult our battered old copy before or after an excursion to one of the sights Wilde wrote about. I was keen to see what had changed and been learnt since Wilde’s time and what was still the same.

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Wilde was born in 1815 in Castlerea, Co. Roscommon. He qualified as a surgeon in 1837 but, suffering from asthma, he was recommended to accompany an invalid as his personal physician on a yacht tour of the Mediterranean. This made a huge impression on him – his book about the journey was published in 1839, the same year as Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle. It was an age of scientific curiosity and advancement and Wilde was fully in this mould.

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The next years saw him develop his career in multifarious ways as a successful surgeon, statistician and antiquarian. He became a member of the Royal Irish Academy and met with other important scholars of the time such as George Petrie, Eugene O’Curry and John O’Donovan, making full use of their pioneering work when it came to writing his Boyne book. One of his later achievements was the compilation of the first catalogue of the RIA’s collection of antiquities, a task that had defeated a committee of experts for years. One piece of advice he gives a potential visitor to the Boyne is to inspect this collection first, now in the National Museum of Ireland and much enhanced since his time. It is sound advice – the sites make more sense when you have seen the weapons, jewellery and sacred items used in the long ago.

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William Wilde married the poet Jane Frances Elgee, who wrote under the name ‘Speranza’, in 1851 and their first child, Willie, was born in 1852. Oscar arrived in October 1854 and the family moved to No. 1 Merrion Square, Dublin, a year later. A daughter, Isola was born in 1857. He became Surgeon Oculist in Ordinary to Queen Victoria and his career reached its apogee in 1864 when he was knighted at the age of 49 – although this was primarily for his work on the Irish Census.

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The same year he and his wife began to be harassed by a former friend, Mary Travers, who alleged that he had assaulted and raped her. This led to a court case that was to foreshadow the trial of Oscar thirty years later. The jury found for Travers but awarded her only a farthing in damages. Nevertheless, the result was devastating for the Wildes who had to pay the costs of the action.

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William Wilde died at No. 1 in 1876, aged 61. A fuller account of this remarkable man can be found in Chapter 1 of this book which is being published to mark the 150th anniversary of his death.

 

 

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