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 "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