William Wordsworth

EARLY LIFE

William Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770 in what is now named Wordsworth House in Cockermouth, Cumberland. It is part of the scenic region in north western England known as the Lake District.

Portrait of William Wordsworth by Benjamin Robert Haydon 

His father was John Wordsworth, an Attorney and agent for James Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale. Lowther was one of the most important (and despised) men in the area. Through his connections, John Wordsworth and his family lived in a large mansion in the small town.

His mother Ann Cookson Mum died in 1778 (when William was 8) and his father in 1783 (when William was 13).

William was the second of five children. He was close to his sister Dorothy especially after  his favourite brother died when William was 13.

A volatile child, on one occasion on suffering an indignity, William went up to the attic intending to kill himself with a fencing sword.

Wordsworth was taught to read by his mother and attended, first, a tiny school of low quality, Cockermouth Free School. The Mutiny of the Bounty leader, Fletcher Christian, was there at the same time as William.

William went on to a school in Penrith for the children of upper-class families. It was at the school in Penrith that he met the Hutchinsons, including Mary, who later became his wife.

With the death of his mother in 1778, William's father sent him as a boarder to Hawkshead Grammar School in Cumbria.

At Hawkshead Grammar School, William fell in love with countryside and nature and began to write poetry. But in 1783, his father, died leaving little to his offspring.

Hawkshead Grammar School. By FFNick 

Although many aspects of his boyhood were positive, William recalled bouts of loneliness and anxiety. He would hug trees knowing they wouldn't wiggle out of his embrace. It took him many years, and much writing, to recover from the death of his parents and his separation from his siblings.

Wordsworth began attending St John's College, Cambridge in 1787, where he was an average student. The following year, he graduated from Cambridge without distinction.

CAREER RECORD  

Wordsworth made his debut as a writer in 1787 when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine.

In 1790 Wordsworth went on a walking tour of Europe, during which he toured the Alps extensively, and visited nearby areas of France, Switzerland, and Italy. The following year he returned to France and joined the Fighters for Freedom in the French Revolution. However, the Reign of Terror later made Wordsworth change his mind.

Between 1792-95 Wordsworth lived aimlessly without any plans for a profession.

In 1795, after receiving a legacy from a friend, Raisley Calvert, Wordsworth was able to devote his life to poetry.

Wordsworth in 1798

At first the public were not attuned to Wordsworth's radical but simple verse exhorting the experience of nature; but as time went on he became a celebrity and many would trail to visit him and his devoted Dorothy at his cottage in the Lake District.

When his father died, the Earl of Lonsdale owed him £4500; however, despite a judgement against him, did not pay his debt. His son, however, paid a substantial portion of it in 1802, which freed Wordsworth up financially.

In 1813 Wordsworth was appointed Stamp Distributor for Westmoreland at a salary of £400pa. This was his first and only job.

The government awarded Wordsworth a civil list pension amounting to £300 a year in 1842.

Wordsworth became Poet Laureate in 1843. He at first declined because at 73 he was too old but changed his mind when Prime Minister Robert Peel told him "you shall have nothing required of you". As Poet Laureate he wrote no official poetry.

WORKS 

Wordsworth was famed for his descriptive powers. He did much to change contemporary views of landscape moved from story based poetry to appreciation of nature. He said: "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings...recollected in tranquillity".

The year 1793 saw the first publication of poems by Wordsworth with the collections An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches.

Lyrical Ballads, a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was first published in 1798. The Preface to Lyrical Ballads is considered a central work of Romantic literary theory. In it, Wordsworth discusses what he sees as the elements of a new type of poetry, one based on the "real language of men" and which avoids the poetic diction of much eighteenth-century poetry.

Wordsworth's first attempt to unionise man and nature in his writing, the collection was the start of a new era in English poetry.

Wordsworth gave Humphry Davy the task of assisting his friend Cottle, the poet's publisher, in correcting the second edition of Lyrical Ballads.

Poems, in Two Volumes, a collection of Wordsworth's poetry, was published in 1807. The collection includes:

(a) "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802". A Petrarchan sonnet by Wordsworth describing London and the River Thames, viewed from Westminster Bridge in the early morning.
Actually when the collection was first published in 1807, Wordsworth gave the year as 1803, but this was later corrected to 1802. Research has shown that he didn't compose it on September 3 anyway but on July 31.

Westminster Bridge as it appeared in 1808

When the verse was inscribed on a plaque at the London Eye in 2000, one line was omitted in error. A spokesman said at the time: “We are not quite sure how it happened, but it is being replaced.”

(b) "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud". William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy came upon a "long belt" of daffodils besides Ullswater one spring day in 1802. They inspired him to pen "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud."  The poem is known for its vivid imagery and use of natural elements to convey a sense of wonder and joy. It remains one of Wordsworth's most famous and beloved works. In a 1995 BBC poll it was voted the UK's fifth most popular poem.

Hand-written manuscript of  'I wandered lonely as a cloud'

(c) Ode: Intimations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood". This was Wordsworth's own favourite amongst his poems.

The Prelude, Wordsworth's autobiographical epic which he was forever revising was published posthumously in 1850. Although it failed to arouse much interest at that time, it has since come to be widely recognised as his masterpiece.

According to John Julius Norwich in Observer Magazine, Wordsworth's two worst opening lines were:

"Spade! with which Wilkinson hath tilled his lands".

"Clarkson! It was an obstinate hill to climb".

BELIEFS 

A pantheist, (God is everywhere, he is in everything) Wordsworth did much to change contemporary views of landscape moved from story-based poetry to the appreciation of nature. He declared to Lady Beaumont, "To be incapable of a feeling of poetry in my sense of the word, is to be without love of human nature and reverence for God."

Wordsworth originally thought the French Revolution was "bliss". “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive” he wrote in Prelude. Once he got his revolutionary ideals out of his system in France, he became fiercely patriotic and a monarchist. In fact, Wordsworth turned so far to the Right that by 1818 he was canvassing for the Tory party.

The poet's more radical admirers were shocked by Wordsworth's changing political views. Robert Browning wrote a poem "The Lost Leader" in 1845 to express his disappointment over the way Wordsworth had lost his revolutionary zeal. It included the famous lines of regret "never glad confident morning again."

APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER 

Wordsworth was a sturdy, clumsy figure with a large, loud nose and burning eyes.

He had unattractive legs of which Thomas de Quincey said: "His legs were pointedly condemned by all female connoisseurs in legs".

Surprisingly the poet, who was famous for his appreciation of nature, has no sense of smell.

In the Lake District it was a common sight to see Wordsworth trampling over the fells in his rough clothes, straw hat and huge boots.

Arrogant and passionate, Wordsworth rehearsed his poetry in a Cumberland murmur. When living in Somerset some locals thought Wordsworth and his wife were French as they didn't understand their Cumbrian accents.

RELATIONSHIPS 

In November 1791, Wordsworth visited Revolutionary France where he fell in love with a French woman, Annette Vallon, She gave birth the following year to their child, Caroline.

Because of lack of money and Britain's tensions with France, Wordsworth returned alone to England in 1792,

The Reign of Terror estranged Wordsworth from the Republican movement and the war between France and Britain prevented him from seeing Annette and Caroline again for several years. He supported the pair as best he could in later life.

In 1802, Lowther's heir, William Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale, paid the £4,000 owed to Wordsworth's father through Lowther's failure to pay his aide. This repayment afforded Wordsworth the financial means to marry.

After The Treaty of Amiens was signed on March 25, 1802, Wordsworth was able to return to France and he and his sister Dorothy visited Annette and Caroline in Calais. The purpose of the visit was to prepare Annette for the fact of his forthcoming marriage to his childhood friend Mary Hutchinson.

Wordsworth married Mary at All Saints' Church in the village of Brompton-by-Sawdon on October 4, 1802. Dorothy did not appreciate the marriage at first, but lived with the couple and later grew close to her sister-in-law.

Two of their children, Thomas and Catherine, died (aged 11 & 12) within months of each other in 1812.

William never got over the death of his adored daughter, Dora in 1847. The other two children John and Willy were still alive after their father's passing.

His nephew, Charles Wordsworth, was co-founder of the Boat Race in 1829.

His sister, Dorothy (December 25, 1771 – January 25, 1855) lived with William all of his adult life - she was virtually a sister servant. Dorothy declined into premature senility in the last 15 years they were together.

Dorothy in middle age. Wikipedia

In 1795 Wordsworth met the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. They became close friends; Wordsworth would play the straight man to the jokey Coleridge.

Dorothy fell in love with Coleridge. Coleridge said of himself and the Wordsworths "We are three people, but one soul".

Both Coleridge's health and his relationship to Wordsworth began showing signs of decay in 1804. They fell out and the estrangement never really healed.

HOMES 

Wordsworth was born and brought up in in an 18th century house in Wordsworth House, Main Street, Cockermouth. It had originally been built  in 1745 for the Sheriff of Cumberland.

A small legacy allowed Wordsworth and Dorothy to set up house at Racedown Lodge near Bettiscombe, Dorset in 1795. They lived there for two years.

In 1797 Wordsworth settled with Mary and Dorothy in Alfoxden, Somerset to be near Coleridge so they could collaborate together. They had charge there of the son of friend Basil Montagu.

Wordsworth wrote Lyrical Ballads at Quantock Hills, the rented ancestral seat of the St Albyn family in Deer Park at the foot of Quantock Hills.

From 1798-99 Wordsworth and Dorothy lived in Gostar, Germany but he was homesick and complained of the cold.

Wordsworth first encountered Dove Cottage on the edge of Grasmere when on a walking tour of the Lake District with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The house was available for rent, and they took up residence on December 20, 1799 paying £5 a year to John Benson of Grasmere.

The primitive Dove Cottage was Wordsworth's cramped home for nine years until 1808 with Dorothy.  Both Coleridge and his fellow romantic poet Robert Southey were frequent visitors to Dove Cottage. In later years, the essayist Thomas de Quincey became a long-term guest.

Dove Cottage. By Christine Hasman,

Wordsworth and his family, including Dorothy, moved to Rydal Mount, Ambleside (between Grasmere and Rydal Water) in 1813. He spent the rest of his life there.

HOBBIES AND INTERESTS 

William Wordsworth was a keen walker; he tramped thousands of miles over the Lake District and walked 2,000 miles across Europe. It was said he frightened fell walkers in the Lake District by booming out lines from his poems.

The Terrace walk above the River Derwent was a favourite playing ground for Wordsworth and Dorothy.

The English poet celebrated his 60th birthday by climbing Scarfill, England's highest peak.

Wordsworth was an ardent skater who is said always to have been the first on the ice and to have been so expert in its art that he could cut his name with skates.

DEATH 

William Wordsworth died at home at Rydal Mount from an aggravated case of pleurisy on April 23, 1850. He was buried at St Oswald's Church, Grasmere.

The actor Mike Myers is the first cousin, seven times removed of Wordsworth.   

Sources Daily Express, British Book of Lists, Europress Encyclopedia

Oscar Wilde

EARLY LIFE  

Oscar Wilde was born at 21 Westland Row, Dublin on October 16, 1854.

Photograph taken in 1882 by Napoleon Sarony

He was the second of three children born to surgeon Sir William Wilde and Jane Wilde, two years behind William ("Willie").

William Wilde (March 1815 –April 19, 1876) was Ireland's leading ear and eye surgeon. He invented the "Ophtholmosope" an instrument for inspecting the interior of the eye especially for focusing on the retina. Also he was the commissioner for Irish Census and discoverer of prehistoric dwellings in the bogs writing books on archaeology and folklore.

He was a renowned philanthropist, and his dispensary for the care of the city's poor, situated in Lincoln Place at the rear of Trinity College, Dublin was the forerunner of the Dublin Eye and Ear Hospital, now located at Adelaide Road.

Sir William was knighted in 1864 for his services as medical adviser and assistant commissioner to the censuses of Ireland.

Wilde's mother Jane (December 27, 1821 – February 3, 1896) was herself a successful writer and an Irish nationalist. A revolutionary poet under the pen name "Speranza" and authority on Celtic folklore, she read the Young Irelanders' poetry to Oscar and Willie, inculcating a love of these poets in her sons. Lady Wilde's interest in the neo-classical revival showed in the paintings and busts of ancient Greece and Rome in her home.

Lady Wilde by Frank Harris

Oscar adored his mother, who was heartbroken when her son was imprisoned. She refused to leave her house and died when he was in jail.

Oscar was brought up at Westland Row. In June 1855, the family moved to 1 Merrion Square, a fashionable residential area. Here, Lady Wilde held a regular Saturday afternoon salon with guests including such figures as Sheridan le Fanu, Samuel Lever, George Petrie, Isaac Butt and Samuel Ferguson.

Wilde family home on Merrion Square. By Pi3.124 

Between 1864 to 1871, Oscar spent the summer months with his family in rural Waterford, Wexford and at William Wilde's family home in Mayo. Here the Wilde brothers played with the future novelist George Moore.

Oscar was educated at home up to the age of nine. He attended the fee paying Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, Fermanagh from 1864 to 1871.

Oscar won a royal scholarship to Trinity College, Dublin where he studied the classics from 1871 to 1874. He was an outstanding student, and won the Berkeley Gold Medal, the highest award available to classics students at Trinity gaining first class honours in Classics and Humanities.

He was granted a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, where Oscar continued his studies from 1874 to 1878. He led there an aesthetic circle and won the 1878 Oxford Newdigate Prize for his poem "Ravenna". He graduated with a double first.

Oscar Wilde at Oxford

CAREER 

Wilde once quipped "I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do-the day after." Despite giving the impression he was lazy, in fact Wilde worked hard; by the late 1880s he was a father, an editor, and a writer.

Wilde had been publishing lyrics and poems in magazines since entering Trinity College, especially in Kottabos and the Dublin University Magazine. In mid-1881, a collection of his works titled Poems was published. It sold out its first print run of 750 copies, prompting further printings.

After leaving Oxford, Wilde travelled around deliver lectures on the new "English Renaissance in Art" and interior decoration. He made a huge impression in 1882 in Canada and the USA with his flamboyant style during his lecture tour.

Keller cartoon from the Wasp of San Francisco depicting Wilde on the occasion of his visit there in 1882

After marrying Constance Lloyd in 1884 Wilde moved around English high society gaining his reputation as a wit supported by his wife's fortune.

With a family to support, in mid-1887 Wilde became the editor of The Lady's World magazine. He promptly renamed it The Woman's World and raised its tone, adding serious articles on parenting, culture, and politics, keeping discussions of fashion and arts.

Oscar Wilde was jailed for two years in 1895 for homosexual offences with Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas. His reputation was banjaxed by the trial.

When he was released two years later, Wilde was an outcast from society. He spent his last three years penniless, in self-inflicted exile from artistic circles. He quipped: "When I was young I used to think money is the most important thing in life; Now that I am old, I know it."

Wilde's death merited only a few sentences in the newspapers of the day.

TRIAL AND IMPRISONMENT 

In mid-1891 Wilde was introduced to Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas. By 1893 they were consorting together regularly in a tempestuous affair.

Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas in 1893

On February 18, 1895, Lord Douglas' father the Marquess of Queensberry left his calling card at Wilde's club, the Albemarle, inscribed: "For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite" [sic].

Wilde, encouraged by Douglas and against the advice of his friends, initiated a private prosecution against Queensberry for libel. During the trial Wilde's true relationship with Bosie came to light. This led to Irishman's own arrest and trial for gross indecency with men. After two more trials Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour.

Wilde in the dock, from The Illustrated Police News, 4 May 1895

Standing handcuffed on his way to prison in the pouring rain, Wilde quipped "If this is the way Queen Vic treats her convicts, she doesn't deserve to have any."

When Wilde was publicly derided at Clapham Junction while being transferred to Reading Jail, he saw a parallel between his plight and the mockery of the arrested Jesus Christ.

When he was released on May 19, 1897, Wilde moved to France under the assumed name of 'Sebastian Melmoth', after the central character of the gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer.

WORKS 

Wilde wrote one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, which was first published complete in the July 1890 issue of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. An intense autobiographical novel, Dorian Gray achieved eternal youth by his portrait ageing on his behalf.  It was severely criticised as immoral.

Wilde was deeply impressed by the English writers John Ruskin and Walter Pater, who argued for the central importance of art in life. He later commented ironically on this view when he wrote, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, "All art is quite useless". This quote also reflects Wilde's support of the aesthetic movement's basic principle: "Art for art's sake".

The Duchess of Padua was a five-act melodramatic tragedy set in Padua. Wilde wrote the play in blank verse for the actress Mary Anderson in early 1883 while she was in Paris. After she turned it down, it was abandoned until its first performance at the Broadway Theatre in New York City under the title Guido Ferranti on January 26, 1891, where it ran for just three weeks. Wilde's reaction to its failure was "The play itself was a profound success- but the audience was a profound failure".

Wilde's play Salome tells in one act the Biblical story of the stepdaughter of the tetrarch Herod Antipas, who, to her stepfather's dismay but to the delight of her mother Herodias, requests the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter as a reward for dancing the dance of the seven veils. The play was written in French but was banned in 1892 by Lord Chamberlain on the grounds of portraying biblical characters. It was eventually premiered in Paris on February 11, 1896, while Wilde was in prison.

Wilde wrote four successive comical plays in the 1890s. The first one was Lady Windermere's Fan, which was written for the actress Lilly Langtry in 1892. It was first performed on February 20, 1892, at the St James's Theatre in London.

A Woman of No Importance premièred on April 19, 1893 at London's Haymarket Theatre. Like Wilde's other society plays, it satirized English upper-class society.

An Ideal Husband opened on January 3, 1895 and continued for 124 performances until Wilde's arrest for "gross indecency." His most autobiographical play, it's ironic that An Ideal Husband was the last play before Wilde's fall as it features Sir Robert Chiltern MP who is faced with public disgrace.

His witty comedy The Importance of Being Earnest was first performed on February 14, 1895 at the St James's Theatre in London. Though it was Wilde's most successful play it closed the same year as it opened due to the scandal involving the playwright and Lord Douglas.

The original production of The Importance of Being Earnest in 1895 

Dame Edith Evans once said she'd played Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest everywhere except underwater.

Wilde wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol whilst incarcerated there for homosexual offences. The finished poem was published by Leonard Smithers on February 13, 1898 under the name C.3.3., which stood for cell block C, landing 3, cell 3.

APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER 

The face that launched a thousand quips was covered by long, flowing hair.

Wilde reclining with Poems, by Napoleon Sarony in New York in 1882.

While at Magdalen College, Oscar Wilde became particularly well known for his role in the aesthetic and decadent movements. He began wearing his hair long and openly scorning so-called "manly" sports, and began decorating his rooms with peacock feathers, lilies, sunflowers, blue china and other objets d'art.

Wilde's behaviour cost him a dunking in the River Cherwell in addition to having his rooms trashed, but the cult spread among certain segments of society to such an extent that languishing attitudes, "too-too" costumes and Aestheticism generally became a recognized pose. Aestheticism was caricatured by Gilbert and Sullivan in their 1881 mocking operetta Patience.

Oscar Wilde had an enormous centre parting with a necktie attachment and often wore a cravat and knee breeches. He habitually carried a huge lily or sunflower and was known for wearing a green carnation. The green carnation thence became a symbol of homosexuality in the early 20th century, especially through the book The Green Carnation and Noël Coward's song, "We All Wear a Green Carnation" in his operetta, Bitter Sweet.

Wilde desired to bring some color and ornamentation back into the Victorian drab costumes and he favoured velvet jacket, flowing ties and fancy waistcoats together with jewelled watch chains and flower buttonholes, silk stockings and satin knee breeches.

Oscar Wilde in 1889

He lost his Irish accent when underground mockery forced Wilde to switch to an Edwardian toff's drawl.

Full of bon mots, Wilde made a living from his wit. "Are you enjoying yourself, Mr Wilde?" enquired the hostess. "Certainly" he replied, there is nothing else here to enjoy."
"The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it".
"We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities."
"I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar and often convincing."
"The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on."

The word “dude” was coined by Wilde and his friends as a hybrid of duds” (slang for clothes) and “attitude”.

RELATIONSHIPS 

After graduating from Magdalen, Wilde returned to Dublin, where he met and fell in love with Florence Balcome. She in turn became engaged to Bram Stoker, the creator of Dracula. On hearing of her engagement, Wilde wrote to her stating his intention to leave Ireland permanently.

In London, Wilde met in 1879 Constance Lloyd, daughter of the wealthy QC, Horace Lloyd. A demure, religious, happy and pretty girl, he fell head over heels in love. Oscar described Constance as a “grave, slight, violet-eyed little artemis”.

When Oscar was on his lecture tours, he and Constance telegraphed each other twice a day. They were besotted during their courtship.

Constance Lloyd. Painting by Louis Desanges 1882

Constance was visiting Dublin in 1884 when Oscar was in the city to give lectures at the Gaiety Theatre. He proposed to her and they married on May 29, 1884 in Paddington, London.

They honeymooned in Paris and set up home at 16 Tite Street, Chelsea. Constance's allowance of £250 allowed the Wildes to live in relative luxury. He said "Town life nourishes and perfects all the more civilised elements in man"

The couple had two sons, Cyril (1885) and Vyvyan (1886).

Oscar, Constance and Cyril

However, problems were occurring, Constance was soon putting on weight and sickening; her heavy, bloated body started sickening Oscar, whose eyes began wondering. She was finding it more and more difficult to chide Oscar's mocking of her Christian beliefs and their marriage.

Wilde's sexual orientation has variously been considered bisexual or gay, depending on how the terms are defined. His inclination towards relations with younger men was relatively well-known within his circles. In 1886 he embarked on his first homosexual affair with Robbie Ross, a Cambridge student.

More and more rumours were reaching Constance's ears of Oscar's affairs. In 1895 Wilde sued the Marquess of Queensberry, for libel and as a result Wilde's true relationship with his son Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas. came to light. Wilde was subsequently jailed for two years in 1895 for homosexual offences with Lord Douglas.

Wilde's marriage finally broke up because of the scandal involving him and Lord Douglas. Constance changed her surname to Holland and sent her sons to Switzerland to be educated while she travelled on the European continent. Being deprived of his sons was Oscar’s biggest grief.

Constance 1896 in Heidelberg

In 1898 Constance had spinal surgery in Genoa and died soon after on April 7th. She was buried in Staglieno Cemetery in Genoa, Italy.

Cyril was killed in France in World War I. Vyvyan survived the war and went on to become an author and translator.

HOBBIES AND INTERESTS 

He liked the music of Mozart and Chopin.

Wilde: "I like Wagner's music better than any other music. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without people hearing what one says. That is a great advantage."

Oscar Wilde once asserted the only exercise he took was breakfast in bed. He also quipped "Football is a game for rough little girls not delicate little boys."

Despite this he was very physically strong. At Oxford University when a gang of students tried to beat Wilde up he booted out the first, virtually knocked out the second with a punch, threw out the third through the air then carried the fourth downstairs and buried him beneath his own furniture.

Wilde briefly took up rowing but insisted on maintaining a stately and unhurried pace. He was a strictly non-playing member of Magdalen College, Oxford Cricket Club.

He never took up hunting. Wilde said that fox hunting was, "the English country gentleman galloping after a fox - the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable."

Oscar Wilde had a curious habit of tearing off the top corner of a page as he read it, rolling the paper into a ball and then popping it into his mouth.

DRINK 

When the flamboyant Wilde lectured his way round America he ended up drinking gold miners under the saloon tables of the Wild West.

When arrested for homosexual offences, Wilde was drinking hock wine and talking to Lord Douglas at London's Cardogan hotel.

The wit and playwright liked champagne and regularly frequented the Café Royal at 68 Regent Street, London, a French style restaurant.

HEALTH 

Wilde is believed to have had syphilis for a number of years having originally caught it from a female prostitute whilst at Oxford. By the 1890s his teeth had turned black from the mercury he took for it.

On one occasion whilst staying with friends at a country house, the Irish writer and wit came down for breakfast looking very pale. "I'm afraid you are ill" remarked someone, "No not ill" replied Wilde. Only tired. The fact is I picked a primrose in the wood yesterday and it was so ill I have been up with it all night."

During his stay at Reading Gaol, Wilde suffered from a long-term infected ear. Earlier after a failed operation by an ear specialist Wilde was informed how much it had cost. He replied "Oh well then, I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means."

Wilde's cell in Reading Gaol. By Jack1956

BELIEFS 

Though Wilde lived a bohemian lifestyle, he spent his life wondering whether to become a Catholic or not. However, he still couldn't resist using his legendary wit to mock religion alongside everything else he did. "Truth in matters of religion is simply the opinion that has survived." he once quipped.

By 1900 Oscar Wilde was dying in a shabby Paris bedroom. He had seen into the depths of his own soul after a lifetime of deprivation and his time in prison had led him to reflect on his moral errors. On his deathbed when asked by Father Cuthbert Dunne if he wished to be received into the Catholic Church, the dying writer raised his hand.

DEATH 

Oscar Wilde died of cerebral meningitis on November 30, 1900.

There are two versions of Wilde's last words in a Paris bedroom. Either accepting a drink of champagne, he remarked so "I am dying beyond my means". Or staring at his shabby Paris bedroom, "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or other of us has got to go."

Different opinions are given on the cause of the meningitis; His biographer Richard Ellmann claimed it was syphilitic; Wilde's physicians, Dr. Paul Cleiss and A'Court Tucker reported that the condition stemmed from an old suppuration of the right ear and do not allude to syphilis. Most modern scholars and doctors agree that syphilis was unlikely to have been the cause of his death.

Wilde was buried in the Cimetière de Bagneux outside Paris but was later moved to Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

The tomb of Oscar Wilde in Père Lachaise Cemetery. By Agateller

Oscar Wilde's grave is covered with old lipstick kisses from his female fans.

Sources That's Life, A History Of Fashion by J. Anderson Black and Madge Garland

Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman is considered one of the most important and influential American poets both for the style and subject matter of his work.

Whitman as photographed by Mathew Brady

Walter Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, Town of Huntington, Long Island.

His parents were Walter (1789–1855) and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman (1795–1873). He was immediately nicknamed "Walt" to distinguish him from his father.

Walt dropped out of school at the age of eleven to support his family; they were struggling financially in part due to bad investments. He worked as a law office assistant and later as an apprentice and printer's devil for the weekly Long Island newspaper The Patriot, edited by Samuel E. Clement.

Whitman went onto work for several other newspapers and even founded one himself in Huntington.. The Long-Islander, for which Whitman served as publisher, editor, pressman, and distributor and even provided home delivery, was first published in 1838.

The young Walt Whitman was known as a loafer. He would arrive at the offices of newspaper where he worked at around 11.30am, and leave at 12.30 for a two-hour lunch break. He would work for another hour after lunch before calling it a day.

Whitman at age 28

He contributed freelance fiction and poetry throughout the 1840s and by 1850 had determined to become a poet.

Whitman preached an American version of individual freedom and human brotherhood. His work was considered very controversial in its time, particularly his free verse poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which scandalized the public with for its overt celebration of sexuality.

The first edition of Leaves of Grass was published on July 4, 1855. Whitman paid for it himself and had it printed at a local print shop. A total of 795 copies were printed.

Whitman anonymously published fawning reviews of Leaves of Grass in order to boost sales.

Leaves of Grass was so controversial for its reference to open sexuality and homosexuality, that a major literary weekly publication recommended in its review that Whitman kill himself.

The first edition of Leaves of Grass was 95 pages long and contained 12 poems. It did not sell well.

Whitman kept adding material to Leaves of Grass and expanded the book many times during his life

Among the poems in the collection are "Song of Myself," "I Sing the Body Electric," "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking."

Leaves of Grass 1860 edition

Here are some songs inspired by Leaves of Grass:
I Sing The Body Electric by Cast of Fame
Out Of The Cradle by Rush
Song of Myself by Nightwish
Body Electric by Lana Del Rey
The Body Electric by Hurray for the Riff Raff

Whitman volunteered as a nurse during the American Civil War. He wrote countless letters on behalf of soldiers, some of whom were illiterate or were dying, back home to their loved ones.

In 1865 Whitman published Drum Taps, a volume inspired by his work as an army nurse doing the Civil War.

His 1865 poem "O Captain! My Captain!" was written on the occasion of the death of Abraham Lincoln. First published in The Saturday Press on November 4, 1865, Whitman later included it in his later Leaves of Grass collections and recited the poem at several lectures on Lincoln's assassination. One of Walt Whitman's most popular poems, he grew to be "almost sorry" he wrote it. "

Whitman later wrote three other poems about Lincoln,"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", and "Hush'd Be the Camps To-Day" also in 1865 and "This Dust Was Once the Man" in 1871. 

Whitman published a self-help series called Manly Health and Training under a pen name. It recommended beards, nude sunbathing, getting up early, plenty of fresh air, bathing daily in cold water, eating meat almost exclusively and comfortable shoes.

He never married and is generally assumed to have had a homosexual or bisexual orientation on the basis of his poetry.

Whitman was deeply influenced by deism. He denied any one faith was more important than another, and embraced all religions equally. In "Song of Myself", he gave an inventory of major religions and indicated he respected and accepted all of them.

Whitman spent his last years at his home in Camden, New Jersey. Today, it is open to the public as the Walt Whitman House.

Walt Whitman House. By Midnightdreary 

Walt Whitman died on March 26, 1892. The cause of death was officially listed as "pleurisy of the left side, consumption of the right lung, general miliary tuberculosis and parenchymatous nephritis".

Virgil

EARLY LIFE 

Virgil was born Publius Vergilius Maro in the village of Andes, near Mantua in the valley of the River Po on October 15, 70 BC. At the time Andes was in Cisalpine Gaul part of the Roman empire.

Not much is known about Virgil's parents but it seems his father was a wealthy cattle farmer and beekeeper.

Virgil's father was prosperous enough to give his son the best education. He received his earliest schooling at Cremona and Milan. At the age of 17 Virgil went to Rome to study rhetoric, medicine, and astronomy, which he soon abandoned for philosophy.

CAREER 

Under the rule of second Triumvirate, Octovian (who became Emperor Augustus), Mark Antony and Lepidus, the lands of the idle rich were confiscated and allotted to war veterans. Cemetery plots and mausoleums were exempted. According to legend, the wily Virgil spent 800,000 Sesteries ($150,000) on an elaborate funeral for what he claimed was his special pet fly. An orchestra was on hand and Virgil's patron gave a long, moving eulogy to the deceased insect. Thus his home was transformed into a mausoleum. However, the triumvirate still confiscated Virgil's farm.

Virgil became friendly with Octovian who was soon to become Emperor Augustus. His portrayal of the Emperor Augustus as successor to a long line of Roman heroes helped give Augustus the authority he needed to govern his empire.

Virgil Reading the Aeneid to Augustus, Octavia, and Livia by Jean-Baptiste Wicar

Macenas, the chief imperial minister of Augustus, became Virgil’s best friend and his influential patron. Because of Macenas’ financial help, Virgil was freed from financial worries and was able to devote himself to literature.

Maecenas sought to counter sympathy for Antony among the leading families by rallying Roman literary figures to Augustus' side. As a result Virgil came to know many of the other leading literary figures of the time.

WRITINGS

The Eclogues also called the Bucolics, is the first of Virgil's three major works. An anthology of ten poems telling of shepherds in an imaginative pastoral world, who despite suffering political oppression and love sickness, find happiness in inner peace. The Eclogues took Virgil five years to write and it is thought that the collection was published around 39–38 BC.

In Eclogues 3 93 Virgil wrote "Latet anguus inherba" which means "a snake is lurking in the grass" thus originating the phrase "snake in the grass".

Page from the beginning of the Eclogues in the 5th-century Vergilius Romanus

Sometime after the publication of the Eclogues, Virgil became part of the circle of Maecenas. At the suggestion of Maecenas, Virgil spent the ensuing years on the long didactic hexameter poem called the Georgics (from Greek, "On Working the Earth"). The overriding theme of the Georgics is instruction in the methods of running a farm and praise of Roman rural life. The finished work comprises four books on farming and cultivating corn, cultivating olives and vines, raising livestock, and beekeeping, respectively.

Completed in 29 BC the Georgics established Virgil as the foremost poet of his age.

Georgics Book III, Shepherd with Flocks, Roman Virgil.

Virgil spent the last decade of his life working on his epic poem the Aeneid, which in 12 books tells the story of the legendary founding of Rome from the fall of Troy. It was designed to create an epic for Rome as Homer did for Greece with his Odyssey and Iliad.

The poem's hero, Aeneas (a relative of Hector of Homer's Iliad fame) was a Trojan warrior who escaped from Troy and settled in Latium. After much wandering, Aeneas was driven by a storm to Carthage where he won the love of Dido. He afterwards made his way to Latium in Italy where Latinus, the king promised him his daughter Lavina in marriage. After killing Turnus, a rival suitor, Aeneas married Lavinia and became ancestor of the Romans. Killed in battle, he was worshipped as a god.

The Aeneid can be read as indirect propaganda in favour of Augustus, the Roman Emperor of the day.

Aeneas flees burning Troy, Federico Barocci, 1598 Galleria Borghese

Virgil died having failed to complete the Aeneid. He had left instructions for his classic to be burnt on his death as he'd have no time to polish it and he felt he'd failed in his aim of matching Homer's grand works. Fortunately Emperor Augustus stepped in. The emperor had others apply the finishing polish and ordered the work to be published.

The Greeks would turn to a page of the Aeneid at random and regard the word or passage that first met the eye as an omen.

In 1553 the Aeneid was translated into English, the first Latin poetry to do so.

BELIEFS 

Virgil was influenced by Epicurean philosophy that taught inner could be developed by living a virtuous and simple life and avoiding excessive pleasures.

His fourth Eclogue contained a passage which some interpreted as a prediction of the birth of Christ. Despite Virgil being an unbaptized pagan, this led to his acceptance as an "honorary Christian" by the medieval church and Dante made Virgil his guide to hell and purgatory in The Divine Comedy. Scholars of the Middle Ages knew his writing as well as they knew the Bible.

Virgil teaching, a miniature from a 15C French manuscript of the Georgics

PRIVATE LIFE 

Modest with a gentle disposition, Virgil was an unsophisticated man, physically awkward, who may have been embarrassed by his provincial accent.

His early home was on a farm in the village of Andes. After the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey the family farm was seized.

Virgil, who never married, spent most of his adult life in an Epicurean colony in Naples.

DEATH 

Virgil traveled to Greece in about 19 BC to revise the Aeneid. He caught a fever while visiting a town near Megara. After crossing to Italy by ship, weakened with disease, Virgil died in Brundisium harbor on September 21, 19 BC having failed to complete his 10-year-old epic, the Aeneid.

Virgil purportedly wrote in his own epitaph, "I sang of pastures, of cultivated fields, and of rulers."

Source What-when-how

Alfred Tennyson

EARLY LIFE 

Alfred Tennyson was born a rector's son at a local house which was the former rectory on August 6, 1809 in Somersby, Lincolnshire, England. He was the fourth of 11 children. 

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, by George Frederic Watts (1817-1904)

Alfred's father was the Reverend George Tennyson Rector of Somersby, Lincolnshire. His paternal grandfather was an MP who had violated tradition by making his younger son his heir and arranged for George to enter the ministry. Whilst Alfred's aunt and uncle lived in a castle the future poet laureate was brought up in relatively straightened circumstances. 

The Reverend George Tennyson had fallen out with his family and been disinherited; he drank heavily, was an opium addict and had become mentally unstable.

Alfred's mother, Elizabeth (Fytche) Tennyson, was the daughter of Stephen Fytche, vicar of St. James Church, Louth (1764) and rector of Withcall (1780).

Alfred and two of his elder brothers, Charles and Frederick were writing poetry in their teens. A collection of poems by Alfred and Charles entitled Poems by Two Brothers, was published locally when Alfred was seventeen.

An illustration by W. E. F. Britten showing Somersby Rectory, where Tennyson was raised and began writing

Charles Tennyson later married Louisa Sellwood, younger sister of Alfred's future wife.

Alfred was educated at of King Edward VI Grammar School, Louth. He did not enjoy his schooldays there.

He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1827, where he joined the intellectual discussion group called the Cambridge Apostles.

Tennyson continued writing poems as a student at Cambridge and he won a medal for one of his first pieces, "Timbuktu". 

When Tennyson’s father died in 1831 he was forced to leave Cambridge. He shared the responsibility for his widowed mother and her large brood of children. They were allowed to stay in the rectory for some time, but later moved to Essex.

CAREER 

Tennyson was left a small sum by his grandfather which meant he could concentrate on writing poetry rather than getting a regular job. However, he risked his small inheritance on an ecclesiastical scheme for mass producing wood carvings using steam power. The business collapsed and Tennyson lost just about everything he owned. 

As a result of Tennyson's resulting depression and decline, his friends got together and persuaded Robert Peel, the PM, to give Tennyson a civil list pension of £200 a year. (Peel had never heard of him.

In 1850 Tennyson was appointed to the position of Poet Laureate.

When Alfred Tennyson was appointed Poet Laureate, he borrowed the same suit to wear to the palace that William Wordsworth wore on his appointment to the same post seven years before. Both borrowed their court dress from the poet Samuel Rogers. 

Tennyson held the position of Poet Laureate until his own death in 1892, the longest tenure of any laureate before or since. 

Alfred Tennyson, portrait by P. Krämer

By 1860 he was the most widely read living poet. The Victorians reveled in Tennyson's poems of lovelorn maidens and gallant knights. He was the media idol of his age.

Tennyson liked adulation but hated publicity and when his fans flocked to his Isle of Wight home he was forced to move. His life was made a misery by the public besieging him.  

In 1884 Queen Victoria created him Baron Tennyson, of Aldworth in the County of Sussex and of Freshwater in the Isle of Wight. He took his seat in the House of Lords on March 11, 1884. Tennyson was the first English writer to win so high a title for his work alone.

POETRY 

The archetype Victorian poet composed his poetry in his head due to his extreme shortsightness, constantly revising them in his mind.  and habitually using a rhyming dictionary, before committing it to paper once fully satisfied. 

Tennyson's rhyming words seemed to fall into place naturally and effortlessly but time and time again they were the result of studying a rhyming dictionary to find a word which would rhyme. 

Tennyson would read his poetry aloud in a deep chant.

His first publication was a joint collection of "his boyish rhymes" with those of his elder brother Charles entitled Poems by Two Brothers, published when he was 17.

In 1833 Tennyson published Poems, his second book of poetry, which notably included the first version containing 20 stanzas of his lyrical ballad "The Lady of Shalott." The volume met heavy criticism, which so discouraged Tennyson that he did not publish again for close to a decade, although he did continue to write.

Tennyson wrote a second version of "The Lady of Shalott" which was published in 1842, this time containing 19 stanzas. The revised version has a significantly different ending.

"The Lady of Shalott" was particularly popular with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which shared Tennyson's interest in Arthuriana. Decades later Holman Hunt created his charming, magical 1905 painting "The Lady of Shalott". 

Holman Hunt's Lady of Shalott (1905)

In a 1995 Poll of BBC listeners, "Lady of Shalott" was voted second most popular poem of all time. (In case you're wondering, Rudyard Kipling's "If" came out on top). 

In 1833 Tennyson's close friend Hallam died suddenly and unexpectedly after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage while on a holiday in Vienna. Hallam's death had a profound impact on Tennyson and inspired several poems, including and the long work In Memoriam A.H.H. Completed in 1849, it established Tennyson's fame and is widely considered to be one of the great poems of the 19th century and won him the appointment of Poet Laureate. 

In Memorium, Tennyson coined the phrase, "Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

Title page of 1st edition (1850)

Maud, and Other Poems was published in 1855. It contained the dark and controversially suggestive "Maud" and sold 5,000 copies on the day of publication.

The well-known song "Come into the garden, Maud" appears at the end of the first part of "Maud". Tennyson composed "Come into the Garden Maud" at Swainston Manor, Calbourne, Isle of Wight. The poet earned so much from the work he was able to buy the neighboring mansion that he was renting and live there for the next 40 years.

English actor Kenneth Branagh's first production as an entrepreneur was a 1983 one man show called The Madness, based on "Maud." It was not successful.

Another of the "other poems" in Tennyson's Maud, and Other Poems collection was "The Charge of the Light Brigade", which glamorized the inept charge. He composed the poem while walking near his Isle of Wight home after reading a newspaper report of the carnage. The work was first published in The Examiner, only a few weeks after the Crimean War debacle.

Tennyson's epic poem "Enoch Arden" was the title work of Enoch Arden and Other Poems, which sold 17,000 copies on the day of its publication in 1864. Tennyson made £6000 from the collection in his first year. 

The poem "Enoch Arden" tells the story of a husband who disappears. He returns years later to find his wife (still pining for him) married to another.

Enoch Arden (watercolour painting by George Goodwin Kilburne)

Written in blank verse on the Isle of Wight, Idylls of the King was published between 1859 and 1885. A cycle of twelve narrative poems, it retells the story of King Arthur. The work is arguably the most famous Victorian adaptation of the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table

RELATIONSHIPS 

As an impoverished nobody, the young Tennyson would visit his beloved Rosa Baring at Harrington Hall, three miles away. He was not considered a fitting suitor and the affair caused him much unhappiness. 

Tennyson first met Emily Sellwood (1813-96) at his brother's wedding in 1836. They became engaged but in 1840 Emily's father opposed the marriage of his daughter to the young, lanky penniless poet. He disapproved of Tennyson because of his bohemianism, addiction to port and tobacco and liberal religious views.

Alfred and Emily didn't forget each other and in 1850 Sellwood at last gave his permission (Tennyson was by now famous and raking in the money). 

The 41 year old Alfred Tennyson, who had never kissed another woman, married the 37 year old Emily Sellwood at Shiplake, Oxfordshire on June 13, 1850. 

They had a happy marriage. The devoted, steady, dutiful Emily kept house and managed her poet husband's writing tasks, becoming a secretary for him.

Tennyson and Emily doted on their children, Hallam and Lionel who were made to wear dove colored frocks and had long golden hair.

Tennyson with his wife Emily (1813–1896) and his sons Hallam (1852–1928) and Lionel (1854–1886)

Tennyson's grandson by Hallam, Lionel, later Lord Tennyson, played nine cricket tests for England captaining them for three. Hallam later became Governor General of all of Australia. 

At Cambridge, Tennyson met Arthur Hallam, who became his close friend and later became  engaged to the poet's sister Emilia. The death in his youth of Arthur Hallam, bought Tennyson great sorrow, but the result was In Memorium, which is widely considered to be one of the great poems of the 19th century.

APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER 

Gypsy looking when younger, Tennyson was tall with a full beard and receding hairline; he grew his beard to mask sunken cheeks caused by teeth problems. 

Lord Tennyson in middle age

Tennyson was fine and dignified looking with a lofty brow, aquiline nose, long black, sloppy unkempt hair, sallow complexion. 

Queen Victoria wrote in her diary: "I went to see Tennyson, who is very peculiar-looking, tall, dark, with a fine head, long black flowing hair and a beard, oddly dressed, but there is no affection about him. I told him how much comfort I found in his Memorium." 

Tennyson made a striking figure striding through London in his swirling Spanish cloak and great sombrero though frequently his clothes were dirty and his fingernails filthy.

Words used to describe Tennyson's character include melancholic, broody, shambolic, energetic, conventional, pious, cleverer,  coarse, lazy and selfish.

BELIEFS 

Tennyson had an unorthodox, even idiosyncratic Christian belief. Best described as a Christian socialist, he ran a soup kitchen at his Isle of Wight home. 

He believed in Heaven, a place where one would be reunited with loved ones and "someone who watches over us."

Tennyson once wrote of God, "closer is he than breathing and nearer than hands or feet."

HOMES 

Tennyson spent the first 28 years of his life living in the hamlet of Somersby, in Lincolnshire. The green and lovely scenery of the Lincolnshire Wolds was an unending source of inspiration to him.

Tennyson and his family first rented the 18th century Farringford House at Bedbury Lane, Freshwater Bay on the Isle of Wight on November 25, 1853, eventually buying three the property years later. 

Tennyson's wife, Emily ran their Isle of Wight, Farringford farm successfully. Her wheat grown there won international prizes.

Farringford

He eventually found that there were too many starstruck tourists who pestered him in Farringford, so in 1869 Tennyson built Aldworth House at Blackdown, Haslemere, in the secluded West Sussex countryside. However, he retained Farringford, and regularly returned there to spend the winters. 

HOBBIES AND INTERESTS 

Tennyson was a cricket enthusiast and wrote articles on his favorite sport. 

He liked to walk down to The Needles at the Western tip of the Isle of Wight from his home everyday. He said "the air up here is worth 6 pence a pint". Tennyson often composed his poems whilst walking.

Tennyson was interested in science and habitually carried with him a pocket microscope.

A voracious reader, Tennyson read a novel a day, often romantic fiction. 

Tennyson felt that the best poem ever written ancient or modern was The Old Testament Book of Job.

Tennyson drank at least one bottle of port a day.

When not smoking a cigar, Tennyson smoked his pipe constantly. He smoked shag tobacco non-stop in his black clay pipe and he stank of it.

Tennyson kept a pony named Fanny, which used to pull Emily along in a daily wheelchair.

HEALTH 

Tennyson was very short-sighted, indeed without a monocle he couldn't even see to eat. 

Tennyson also had problems with his teeth, as his false ones were fitted badly. 

Tennyson had a fear of mental illness, for several men in his family had a mild form of epilepsy.

LAST YEARS AND DEATH. 

Tennyson continued writing into his eighties. He died on October 6, 1892 at Aldworth, aged 83, with his hand resting on a copy of his hero Shakespeare's Cymbeline. His last words were, "Oh that press will have me now!"

Lord Tennyson's death was widely mourned, and he was buried at Westminster Abbey.

A memorial to Tennyson was erected on Tennyson Down, Freshwater. on the Isle of Wight. 

Monument to Tennyson on Tennyson Down, Isle of Wight. By Mypix 

He was succeeded as 2nd Baron Tennyson by his son, Hallam.