ct 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 "Sir William Wilde and Speranza." She employed one of the
persons bearing a placard to go about ringing a large hand bell which
she, herself, had given to him for the purpose. She even published
doggerel verses in the _Dublin Weekly Advertiser_, and signed them
"Speranza," which annoyed Lady Wilde intensely. One read thus:--

Your progeny is quite a pest
To those who hate such "critters";
Some sport I'll have, or I'm blest
I'll fry the Wilde breed in the West
Then you can call them Fritters.

She wrote letters to _Saunders Newsletter_, and even reviewed a book
of Lady Wilde's entitled "The First Temptation," and called it a
"blasphemous production." Moreover, when Lady Wilde was staying at
Bray, Miss Travers sent boys to offer the pamphlet for sale to the
servants in her house. In fine Miss Travers showed a keen feminine
ingenuity and pertinacity in persecution worthy of a nobler motive.

But the defence did not rely on such annoyance as sufficient
provocation for Lady Wilde's libellous letter. The plea went on to
state that Miss Travers had applied to Sir William Wilde for money
again and again, and accompanied these applications with threats of
worse pen-pricks if the requests were not acceded to. It was under
these circumstances, according to Lady Wilde, that