Although he was to become best known as the father of the flamboyant and ultimately tragic literary genius Oscar, surgeon William Wilde best personifies the concept of the 19th-century committed amateur antiquarian. It was a time when archaeology or anti-quarianism was dominated by the rich and leisured, many of whom were far more than indulgent gentleman intellectuals. Like Wilde, their scholarship was formidable.
He was to prove he was not only gifted, learned and colourful, he was also highly practical as his still-valuable Catalogue of the Contents of the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, which appeared in three volumes between 1858 and 1862, confirms. If Wilde's mind moved in many directions, he was also blessed with an unusual ability to manage his time with enviable efficiency. In addition to charming observations such as his travelogues The Beauties of the Boyne and the Blackwater (1849) and Lough Corrib and Lough Mask (1867), Wilde published Practical Observations on Aural Surgery and The Nature and Treatment of Diseases of the Eye in 1853, the year in which he was appointed, at the age of 38, Surgeon Oculist to the Queen in Ireland. Some four years earlier he had convincingly argued in a booklet, The Closing Years of the Life of Dean Swift, that the poet pamphleteer was not insane but ill during his last years. His work for the Irish Census and the study The Epidemics of Ireland earned him his knighthood in 1864. His use of statistics in the Census over his 30-year involvement with the project represents a pioneering approach to a methodology so commonly used today.
It was Wilde who first identified the tumuli at the Bend of the Boyne as the Brugh na Boinne of early Irish literature. It was he who first noted the crannog or artificial lake-dwelling at a former lake at Lagore, Co Meath. Together with George Petrie, 25 years his senior, he began to research the Lagore crannog. It was the first such monument investigated in Ireland.
Wilde duly published his findings in The Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy in 1840. Petrie, plagued by his inherent lack of organisation, never completed his section of the project. William Robert Wills Wilde was born in 1815, in Castlerea, Co Roscommon, the third of three sons. His father, Dr Thomas Wilde, was a well-known local figure who made his house calls on horseback until shortly before his death, aged 78, on January 1st, 1838. Young William, the only son to follow him in medicine, was apprenticed at 17 to a famous doctor of the day, Abraham Colles. Wilde was a resident student in the Medical School at Dr Steeven's Hospital in Dublin. On completion of his training in 1837, Wilde received his licence from the Royal College of Surgeons. During his student years he was curator of the hospital's medical museum, suggesting even then an interest in the pursuits that would dominate his life. While the equivalent of an undergraduate, he read a paper on spina bifida to the Medioc-Philosophical Society. Shortly after qualifying, he was off on a voyage to the Mediterranean, having been recommended for the post of personal physician to a wealthy Scot, Mr Robert Meiklam, owner of a private yacht, Crusader. The cruise lasted nine months. It gave Wilde an opportunity not only to test his powers of observation, it encouraged him to write them down in his first book. Narrative of a Voyage to Madeira, Tenerife and Along the Shores of the Mediterranean was published in 1840 in two volumes, all 1,250 copies selling, while a second edition four years later included further research. It is a classic Victorian travel book showcasing Wilde's interest in and curiosity about people and things as well as his relaxed, often witty prose-style. Alongside colourful vignettes is a wealth of information on culture, folk customs, history, antiquities, natural science and politics. Throughout his travels he never lost sight of the hardships facing the poor.
Having returned to Ireland from his trip in June 1838, Wilde rented rooms and set about writing his travel book and also preparing a series of lectures for the Royal Irish Academy, the Royal Dublin Society and the British Association for the Advancement of Sciences. Meanwhile, he was pursuing further medical studies. These took him to London, Vienna, Prague and Berlin, financed by his travel book.
While in Vienna, he gathered material for another book. Austria: Its Literary, Scientific and Medical Institutions was published in 1843. It remains a valuable reference source for the Vienna of that period. Wilde's father had died while his son was on his Mediterranean travels, between Algiers and Malta. In 1840, Wilde had moved to 15, Westland Row. His mother and sister had left Castlerea to join him in Dublin. He had by then decided to specialise in diseases of the eye and ear.
Blindness was at that time commonplace in Ireland. Wilde's first clinic was in a stable at the rere of 11, Molesworth Street. The poor made their way to him in their hundreds and were treated free of charge. In time the wealthy also sought his help. His clinic moved to an abandoned almshouse in Mark Street and became known as St Mark's Hospital. As early as 1843 more than 1,000 patients had been treated.
Wilde also taught at the hospital, mainly post-graduate students as well as a small number of other students. Attendance at St Mark's was recommended to Trinity College medical students and was made compulsory in 1870. For many years, St Mark's was to be the only hospital in these islands where aural surgery was taught. Although busy as a surgeon, teacher, lecturer and writer, Wilde, who also designed a number of surgical instruments, including Wilde's forceps and Wilde's angled snare, never lost contact with his beloved west and had a fishing lodge on Lough Fee. In 1864 work on his favourite home, Moytura House, built on his mother's family land near Cong, Co Mayo was completed. He also spent a great deal of time researching the Boyne Valley, a place that also satisfied his needs as an angler.
When his mother died in 1848, Wilde and his sister moved to 21, Westland Row. This would be the home to which he would bring his bride, Jane Francesca Elgee, later known as "Speranza", a self-styled patriot, in 1851. Having witnessed the funeral of Thomas Davis in 1845, she had read his poems and become an ardent nationalist. Her poetry and prose appeared in the Nation under her famous pen-name. The couple entertained the Dublin literati and intelligentsia with much gusto. In 1852, their son William was born; Oscar followed in 1854.
THOMAS LARCOM of the Ordnance Survey had most probably recommended Wilde as the ideal candidate to work on the Census. This connection also led to his being given the job of cataloguing and describing the 10,000 artefacts held in the Royal Irish Academy's antiquarian collection. It was a huge task with only four months to complete it in. Wilde loved the challenge. True to his practicality, he opted to classify the items according to use rather than chronology. The catalogue, possibly his finest achievement, earned him in 1873 the Cunningham Gold Medal, the highest honour of the Royal Irish Academy.
Not only is it the first scientific museum catalogue in these islands, it remains a standard (if understandably old-fashioned) reference work and testifies to Wilde's extraordinary meticulousness. The catalogue brought the work of the Ordnance Survey a step further - and it was also a major development in the story of international as well as Irish archaeology.
Meanwhile, Wilde was at the centre of a libel case brought by Mary Josephine Travers, one of his former patients and self-proclaimed mistress of some 10 years, against Mrs Wilde. Travers was represented by Isaac Butt yet, although costs were granted against Wilde, damages for Travers amounted to only a farthing. It was messy, but Wilde's infidelities were no secret. His son Henry Wilson, born in 1838, before his marriage, had been educated and trained as a doctor by Wilde, whom he assisted at St Mark's. There were also two daughters, Emily and Mary, both raised by his eldest brother, the Rev Ralph Wilde, as his wards. The girls died together, tragically, aged 24 and 22, at a party in 1871 after one of their dresses caught fire and the other sister ran to her help. Wilde grieved. Isola, his daughter by Speranza, had died four years earlier, aged eight years. He survived tragedies and scandal to complete the first volume of his biography of the 18th-century illustrator, Gabriel Beranger, a Huguenot who had settled in Dublin in 1750 and worked for a patron, William Burton Conyingham of Slane Castle. Wilde died on April 19th, 1876, his Beranger work unfinished. His wife, who moved to London after his death, surviving him by 20 years, completed it and included a eulogy to the life and achievements of the remarkable, apparently tireless and resourceful Sir William Wilde.