His Lordship recalled the jury at Mr. Butt's request to say that in assessing
damages they might also take into consideration the fact that the defence was
practically a justification of the libel. The fair-mindedness of the judge was
conspicuous from first to last, and was worthy of the high traditions of the
Irish Bench.
After deliberating for a couple of hours the jury brought in a verdict which
had a certain humour in it. They awarded to Miss Travers a farthing damages
and intimated that the farthing should carry costs. In other words they rated
Miss Travers' virtue at the very lowest coin of the realm, while insisting that
Sir William Wilde should pay a couple of thousands of pounds in costs for having
seduced her.
It was generally felt that the verdict did substantial justice; though the
jury, led away by patriotic sympathy with Lady Wilde, the true "Speranza,"
had been a little hard on Miss Travers. No one doubted that Sir William Wilde
had seduced his patient. He had, it appeared, an unholy reputation, and the
girl's admission that he had accused her of being "unnaturally passionless"
was accepted as the true key of the enigma. This was why he had drawn away from
the girl, after seducing her. And it was not unnatural under the circumstances
that she should become vindictive and revengeful.
Such inferences as these, I drew from the comments of the Irish papers at the
time; but naturally I wished if possible to hear some trustworthy contemporary
on the matter. Fortunately such testimony was forthcoming.
A Fellow of Trinity, who was then a young man, embodied the best opinion of
the time in an excellent pithy letter. He wrote to me that the trial simply
established, what every one believed, that "Sir William Wilde was a pithecoid
person of extraordinary sensuality and cowardice (funking the witness-box left
him without a defender!) and that his wife was a highfalutin' pretentious
creature whose pride was as extravagant as her reputation founded on second-rate
verse-making. . . . . Even when a young woman she used to keep her rooms in
|