Four Years

Of late years I have often explained Wilde to myself by his family history. His father, was a friend or acquaintance of my father’s father and among my family traditions there is an old Dublin riddle: ‘Why are Sir William Wilde’s nails so black?’ Answer, ‘Because he has scratched himself.’ And there is an old story still current in Dublin of Lady Wilde saying to a servant. ‘Why do you put the plates on the coal-scuttle? What are the chairs meant for?’ They were famous people and there are many like stories, and even a horrible folk story, the invention of some Connaught peasant, that tells how Sir William Wilde took out the eyes of some men, who had come to consult him as an oculist.