Characters
Thomas Griffiths Wainewright
Critic, forger and poisoner
Wainewright is the subject of the essay: a painter, art critic and dandy who wrote for the London Magazine as Janus Weathercock and was a friend of Charles Lamb. Wilde presents him as a man of real taste who admired Turner, Blake and Wordsworth, and also as a forger and poisoner who killed for money, for revenge and perhaps from caprice. Transported to Van Diemen's Land, he kept painting portraits at Hobart Town, never lost his manners, and never gave up poisoning.