CHAPTER III--TRINITY, DUBLIN: MAGDALEN, OXFORD



Oscar Wilde did well at school, but he did still better at college, where the
competition was more severe. He entered Trinity on October 19th, 1871, just
three days after his seventeenth birthday. Sir Edward Sullivan writes me that
when Oscar matriculated at Trinity he was already "a thoroughly good classical
scholar of a brilliant type," and he goes on to give an invaluable snap-shot
of him at this time; a likeness, in fact, the chief features of which grew more
and more characteristic as the years went on.

"He had rooms in College at the north side of one of the older squares, known
as Botany Bay. These rooms were exceedingly grimy and ill-kept. He never
entertained there. On the rare occasions when visitors were admitted, an
unfinished landscape in oils was always on the easel, in a prominent place in
his sitting room. He would invariably refer to it, telling one in his
humorously unconvincing way that 'he had just put in the butterfly.' Those of us
who had seen his work in the drawing class presided over by 'Bully' Wakeman at
Portora were not likely to be deceived in the matter. . . . .

"His college life was mainly one of study; in addition to working for his
classical examinations, he devoured with voracity all the best English
writers.

"He was an intense admirer of Swinburne and constantly reading his poems;
John Addington Symond's works too, on the Greek authors, were perpetually in