16 October: Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde was born on this date in 1854. Here are some things you may not know about Oscar Wilde:

1. His mother was a poet and an Irish nationalist. She wrote poetry for the revolutionary Young Irelanders using the pseudonym "Speranza" (the Italian word for 'Hope').
2. His father, William, was a renowned ear and eye surgeon and philanthropist. He also wrote books about Irish archaeology and peasant folklore.
3. Wilde was baptised three times during his life. First, as a baby in St. Mark's Church, Dublin, the local Church of Ireland (Anglican) church. Later, his mother was befriended by a Catholic priest and would attend Mass with her sons. She asked for her sons to be baptised into the Catholic faith. On his deathbed, Wilde asked to be baptised as a Catholic again. As a young man, he'd arranged to be baptised as he was seriously considering joining the church, but at the last minute changed his mind and at the appointed time of his baptism, sent a bunch of altar lilies to the priest instead.
4. In Oxford, Wilde was a Freemason for a time, reaching the rank of "Sublime Degree of Master Mason". His biggest regret about joining the Catholic church was having to give up Freemasonry.
5. As a student, he decorated his rooms with peacock feathers, lilies, Sunflowers, blue china and other objets d'art, once remarking to friends, "I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china."
6. While Wilde and his friends generally refused to take part in "manly" sports, Wilde did box a little. Enough to fight off four fellow students who physically attacked him once, much to everyone's surprise.
7. Despite being known for homosexual affairs, Wilde did have relationships with women. His childhood sweetheart, Florence Balcombe, married Bram Stoker. Wilde married Constance Lloyd and they had two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan.
8. When it was first published, The Picture of Dorian Gray was slated by critics. The Daily Chronicle called it "unclean", "poisonous", and "heavy with the mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction".
9. After prison, Wilde left Britain for good. Wanting to revitalise his spiritual life, he applied to the Society of Jesus requesting a six-month Catholic retreat. They turned him down. During his exile, he used the name "Sebastian Melmoth", after Saint Sebastian, and the titular character of Melmoth the Wanderer; a Gothic novel by Charles Maturin, Wilde's great-uncle.
10. His tomb in Paris bears the epitaph: "And alien tears will fill for him/Pity's long-broken urn,/For his mourners will be outcast men,/And outcasts always mourn." This is a verse from The Ballad of Reading Gaol.