Oscar Wilde renewal. He immediately wrote to the Society of Jesus requesting a six-month Catholic retreat; when the request was denied, Wilde wept. "I intend to be received into the Catholic Church before long", Wilde told a journalist who asked about his religious intentions. He spent his last three years impoverished and in exile. He took the name "Sebastian Melmoth", after Saint Sebastian and the titular character of "Melmoth the Wanderer" (a Gothic novel by Charles Maturin, Wilde's great-uncle). Wilde wrote two long letters to the editor of the "Daily Chronicle", describing the brutal conditions of English prisons and advocating penal reform.
Charlotte Melmoth occurred. Some time in the early 1770s, she entered into a marital-like relationship with a clergyman, Samuel Jackson Pratt, who, as a result of the scandal, left the church to pursue an ultimately unsuccessful acting career and who eventually became a well-known writer. According to "A History of The City of Brooklyn", Charlotte "had been duped into a sham marriage, while at boarding school, by a Mr. Pratt (known in the literary and theatrical circles of that day as Courtney Melmoth), and with him went upon the stage, playing in several companies both in England and Ireland." Pratt's parents strongly