bitter letter.

It was admitted that for a year or more Miss Travers had done her uttermost
to annoy both Sir William Wilde and his wife in every possible way. The trouble
began, the defence stated, by Miss Travers fancying that she was slighted by
Lady Wilde. She thereupon published a scandalous pamphlet under the title of
"Florence Boyle Price, a Warning; by Speranza," with the evident intention
of causing the public to believe that the booklet was the composition of
Lady Wilde under the assumed name of Florence Boyle Price. In this pamphlet
Miss Travers asserted that a person she called Dr. Quilp had made an attempt
on her virtue. She put the charge mildly. "It is sad," she wrote, "to think
that in the nineteenth century a lady must not venture into a physician's
study without being accompanied by a bodyguard to protect her."

Miss Travers admitted that Dr. Quilp was intended for Sir William Wilde; indeed
she identified Dr. Quilp with the newly made knight in a dozen different ways.
She went so far as to describe his appearance. She declared that he had "an
animal, sinister expression about his mouth which was coarse and vulgar in the
extreme: the large protruding under lip was most unpleasant. Nor did the upper
part of his face redeem the lower part. His eyes were small and round, mean
and prying in expression. There was no candour in the doctor's countenance,
where one looked for candour." Dr. Quilp's quarrel with his victim, it
appeared, was that she was "unnaturally passionless."

The publication of such a pamphlet was calculated to injure both Sir William
and Lady Wilde in public esteem, and Miss Travers was not content to let the
matter rest there. She drew attention to the pamphlet by letters to the papers,
and on one occasion, when Sir William Wilde was giving a lecture to the Young
Men's Christian Association at the Metropolitan Hall, she caused large placards
to be exhibited in the neighbourhood having upon them in large letters the words