Charles Thomas Wooldridge Charles Thomas Wooldridge Charles Thomas Wooldridge (c.1866 – 7 July 1896) was a Trooper in the Royal Horse Guards who was executed in Reading Gaol for the murder of his wife and who, as 'C.T.W', was the dedicatee of Oscar Wilde's "The Ballad of Reading Gaol". The son of Eleanor (born c.1827) and Charles Wooldridge (born c.1824), Wooldridge was born in East Garston and joined the Royal Horse Guards in 1886. He married Laura Ellen "Nell" Glendell (1873–1896) in 1894 when his regiment was posted to Windsor. However, as his commanding officer had not given permission for the wedding to
Ballad of the Goodly Fere Ballad of the Goodly Fere The Ballad of the Goodly Fere is a poem by Ezra Pound, first published in 1909. The narrator is Simon Zelotes, speaking after the Crucifixion about his memories of Jesus (the "goodly fere"—Old English for "companion"—of the title). Pound wrote the poem as a direct response to what he considered inappropriately effeminate portrayals of Jesus, comparing Jesus—a "man o' men"—to "capon priest(s)"; he subsequently told "T.P.'s Weekly" that he had "been made very angry by a certain sort of cheap irreverence". Charles Elkin Mathews expressed his concerns that readers would find "Fere"s humanization of Jesus