Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde; but he appears to have suffered
from the pompous string only in extreme youth. At school he concealed
the "Fingal," as a young man he found it advisable to omit the
"O'Flahertie."

In childhood and early boyhood Oscar was not considered as quick or
engaging or handsome as his brother, Willie. Both boys had the benefit
of the best schooling of the time. They were sent as boarders to the
Portora School at Enniskillen, one of the four Royal schools of
Ireland. Oscar went to Portora in 1864 at the age of nine, a couple of
years after his brother. He remained at the school for seven years and
left it on winning an Exhibition for Trinity College, Dublin, when he
was just seventeen.

The facts hitherto collected and published about Oscar as a schoolboy
are sadly meagre and insignificant. Fortunately for my readers I have
received from Sir Edward Sullivan, who was a contemporary of Oscar
both at school and college, an exceedingly vivid and interesting
pen-picture of the lad, one of those astounding masterpieces of
portraiture only to be produced by the plastic sympathies of boyhood
and the intimate intercourse of years lived in common. It is love
alone which in later life can achieve such a miracle of representment.
I am very glad to be allowed to publish this realistic miniature, in
the very words of the author.

"I first met Oscar Wilde in the early part of 1868 at Portora Royal
School. He was thirteen or fourteen years of age. His long straight
fair hair was a striking feature of his appearance. He was then, as he
remained for some years after, extremely boyish in nature, very
mobile, almost restless when out of the schoolroom. Yet he took no
part in the school games at any time. Now and then he would be seen in
one of the school boats on Loch Erne: yet he was a poor hand at an
oar.

"Even as a schoolboy he was an excellent talker: his descriptive power
being far above the average, and his humorous exaggerations of school
occurrences always highly amusing.

"A favourite place for the boys to sit and gossip in the late
afternoon in winter time was round a stove which stood in 'The Stone
Hall.' Here Oscar was at his best; although his brother Willie was
perhaps in those days even better than he was at telling a story.

"Oscar would frequently vary the entertainment by giving us extremely
quaint illustrations of holy people in stained-glass attitudes: his
power of twisting his limbs