Constance: The Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs. Oscar Wilde

by Franny Moyle

  By 26 October, Constance was preparing to leave the capital again, this time heading off to look after Aunt Emily, who had fallen ill. Emily Lloyd had moved to the seaside town of St Leonards after John Horatio’s death. Constance was not looking forward to the trip, complaining to Georgina that she faced a ‘fortnight’s purgatory away from my bairns and all that I love’. Resentful that she faced missing Vyvyan’s fifth birthday, she felt ‘like a flower (a very weedy flower) transplanted into other soil that does not belong to it’.27 When she arrived, Constance discovered she disliked the nurse Aunt Emily had hired and found herself sulkily knitting gloves for both her aunt and Georgina to pass the time.

  But now Constance got ill again. She began to suffer from bouts of what she termed rheumatism. It was so severe in her arms that, like her or not, she was forced to ask this nurse to continually rub them for her. This episode of ill health would continue throughout the late autumn and winter months of 1891. She was regularly bedridden.

  The one thing she looked forward to during her stay in St Leonards was Oscar’s letters from Paris. ‘Oscar writes in very good spirits from Paris, and never leaves me now without news, which is dear of him after all my grumbles,’ she told Georgina, adding a few days later ‘he really is very good in writing’. Oscar had told her she could read the play – which at this time still had the working title of A Good Woman – to her aunt. ‘I think it very interesting, and hope it is going to be a great success, but one cannot tell unless one has great stage experience, how a play will act.’28

  By mid-November Constance had waved goodbye to St Leonards and was back in Tite Street. Instantly her frantic London life resumed. Positive news from Paris buoyed her. Oscar had written to tell her that the French actor Coquelin thought A Good Woman ‘faultless in construction and has recommended him a translator, and when it is translated will help him to get it acted in Paris!’ Further news that her husband was embarking on ‘writing a one-act play in French, and enjoying Paris and French people who are very kind to him seemed to cheer her further’.29

  She took Cyril for portrait sittings – almost certainly with Laura Hope, a pastel artist of some renown who is known to have drawn him. She went to political meetings and she dined with the Palmers, who were in town, meeting Jean Palmer’s Catholic father, Mr Craig. As a High-Church Anglican, Constance found Catholicism tempting, as did her husband and many other people moving in Aesthetic circles at the time.30

  Once again it was not long before Constance made another excursion out of town, this time in connection with Vyvyan. She was worried about the general health of her younger son and she decided he would do well to stay with the Palmers for a month. Constance’s determination to send a five-year-old away for a month feels brutal. It also adds credibility to Vyvyan’s persistent feeling throughout his life that he was treated differently from his brother. In her letters to Georgina, Constance makes constant mention of Cyril. Vyvyan, by contrast, is rarely mentioned, except to express concerns. In 1891 alone Cyril has his portrait painted and Vyvyan does not. Constance sends Lady Mount-Temple Cyril’s photograph, but no such picture of Vyvyan is offered. Georgina, who kept birds, sends Cyril two canaries, but apparently nothing to Vyvyan. Cyril sees his father off at the station, but Vyvyan does not. Cyril is referred to as his mother’s ‘Lovebird’ in Constance’s letters; Vyvyan is not described in such overtly passionate terms.

  Cyril was clearly a deeply affectionate child. When Constance’s aches and pains left her no alternative but to retreat to her bed, Cyril brought her hot-water bottles and proved attentive in a manner that his younger sibling did not and perhaps could not. ‘He is my Dove now just come out of the egg,’ Constance cooed.31 Vyvyan was less demonstrative towards his mother, and generally more difficult.

  The nurse who looked after both boys did her best to make up for what she saw as an inequality in their treatment. This did not go down well with Constance at all. Revealing the tougher, intolerant streak in her character, she complained to Georgina on this subject.

  I am getting more & more convinced that my nurse is not wise, and my cook tells me that she is ruining that dear little Vyvyan by indulgence, and that I should not allow it. What I am to do? She is so angry now at me sending Vyvyan away from her … She is kind and devoted to the child, but she is uneducated … it is becoming almost a monomania with her to think that every-one but herself is unkind to Vyvyan. She can never love Vyvyan as much as I do. I love him to the full as much as Cyril, but he is not interesting yet, because his soul has not awaked.32

  When Constance returned to London, she came up with a plan that addressed the issues she had with the children’s nurse. She sent her to Reading to assist in Vyvyan’s care there. This, of course, left Constance more fully in charge of Cyril during the day. So now her already packed schedule was burdened further. In between visits to St Barnabas, attendances at lectures on Dante at University Hall, sessions with her phrenologist, Rational Dress Committee meetings at Lady Harberton’s and visits to check on Speranza, who had now moved to nearby Oakley Street, she found herself also in charge of children’s tea parties.

  At this point Georgina lost patience with Constance. She could see a not very well woman rushing around and pushing herself to the limit. She told Constance to calm down and spend more time at home rather than being either endlessly out and about in town, or dashing up and down the country. Constance did not take kindly to being told some home truths.

  ‘I have given up heaps of things since you asked me to do less,’ she wrote at the end of November,

  and I don’t want to live like a root! I am very well, and everyone says I am looking so well. I can’t imagine what you want me to be like. I do a great deal of needle work and a fair amount of reading, and these things I can only do at home, and I spend dreary evenings by myself after Cyril goes to bed unless I go and see Lady Wilde. You talk to me as if I were never quiet and gadded about and I don’t and I am very cross at your thinking so, and I shall not tell you any more what I do!!!33

  Georgina’s concern seems to have focused on the fact that, in being away from home so often, Constance was not only exhausting herself but also contributing to her husband’s absences. Georgina sensed a growing alienation between Oscar and Constance that matched their lack of time together. Georgina, like many women of her generation, believed that women’s domestic duties were paramount. If a wife neglected these, then only she would be to blame if her household began to collapse.

  Hurt by Georgina’s criticisms of her, Constance was presented with what she considered proof of the love that still prevailed at the heart of her marriage when another letter from Oscar, who was still in Paris, arrived in the last week of November. If people were saying she was not paying sufficient attention to her husband, Constance was suddenly armed with evidence that, regardless of what they might think, Oscar loved her more than anything else in his life.

  On Saturday 21 November 1891 a package arrived at Tite Street addressed to Constance. When she opened it, she discovered that it was Oscar’s second book of fairy tales, The House of Pomegranates, hot off the press. On Oscar’s instructions the publishers had sent Constance the first copy. She discovered the book was dedicated to her in the most loving terms. A day later a letter from Oscar in Paris revealed the full significance of the dedication.

  ‘The book is dedicated to Constance Mary Wilde, and each separate story to one of his friends,’ Constance wrote triumphantly to Georgina. She then dutifully copied out the private explanation Oscar had given her for the dedication. Her transcription provides one of the few remnants of the letters between Oscar and Constance that have been lost.

  ‘And now see how the beloved Oscar writes this to me,’ she continued.

  I shall not tell others, they would not understand, but you will: ‘To you the Cathedral is dedicated. The individual side chapels are to other saints. This is in accordance with the highest ecclesiastical custom! So accept the book as your own and made for you. The
candles that burn at the side altars are not so bright or beautiful as the great lamp of the shrine which is of gold, and has a wonderful heart of restless flame.’34

  For Constance this was written testimony of the understanding on which her marriage now operated. Oscar had many claims on his affection and time, but in spite of this Constance remained at the centre of everything, the object of his profound and solid love. It was there in black and white. Joyous, she told Georgina that her feelings towards Oscar were entirely reciprocal.

  ‘I have a cathedral for Oscar with a Lady-Chapel for the beloved mother, and there I always keep burning my lamp with its heart of restless flame, and there are times when one flies to the Lady-Chapel for sympathy and love, and here I fly now.’

  Oscar also sent a copy of The House of Pomegranates to Lady Mount-Temple. In the accompanying note that he wrote, he explained how grateful he was to the elderly lady for the kindness she was showing his wife. ‘You have allowed my wife to be one of your friends, have indeed given her both love and sympathy, and brought into her life a gracious and notable influence, which will always abide with her, and indeed has a sacramental efficacy over her days.’35

  In light of the terrible scandal that would engulf Oscar within a few years, and in light of his persistent pursuit of men at this time, it is easy to assume that Oscar’s words were quite hollow. With the letters he clearly dutifully wrote to his wife at this time lost, it is even harder to endorse Constance’s belief that in 1891 her husband still loved her deeply. However, some of his unfinished work also suggests his continuing devotion to Constance in spite of his appetite for adventure elsewhere.

  Before writing A Good Woman, or Lady Windermere’s Fan as it would be re-titled, Oscar had begun a play titled The Wife’s Tragedy. It was the beginning of an exploration of adultery with the plot involving a married poet by the name of Gerald Lovel who has an affair with another woman. While adultery was not, of course, an act confined to Oscar, there is perhaps a sense that he drew on his own relationship with Constance to deal with how marriage is not necessarily negated by extramarital affairs. ‘Life is a stormy sea,’ Gerald proclaims in the play, adding, ‘My wife is a harbour of refuge.’ And this was exactly true of Oscar’s life with Constance. They now had different interests and were much apart, but there were still moments when Oscar was grateful for his family life with Constance and the children.

  That Oscar still sought such quiet refuge in his deeply private life with Constance and his family is best evidenced by the holiday they took together the following year. On 19 August 1892 Constance wrote triumphantly to tell Georgina that she and Oscar were off to Grove Farm, Felbrigg, near Cromer, ‘where Oscar will write his play and I shall vegetate and do nothing’. This play would be Oscar’s follow-up to Lady Windermere, A Woman of No Importance.

  Constance’s sense of triumph was not misplaced. She and Oscar had left the decision to take a holiday by the English seaside far too late, and Constance, having found all the usual hotels and guest houses fully booked, had spent days ‘telegraphing about’ for accommodation.

  The prelude to their holiday was a period of increasingly busy professional activity, and an increasingly precarious personal life, for Oscar. In the ten months since Constance had opened the package containing that first copy of The House of Pomegranates the pace of Oscar’s life had accelerated further, as had the controversy surrounding him. Oscar’s sojourn in Paris had extended until late December 1891. He had become intoxicated with the intellectual life of the French capital and had grown bolder in displaying his homosexual appetites in a sexually liberated city. He had forged new flirtatious relationships with young poets and writers such as Pierre Louÿs and André Gide, and had indulged his hunger for experience, whether it was to be found in the ‘lowest dives’ or the most ‘elegant cafés’.36

  Not only was his social life acquiring a different dimension, but his professional career had also accelerated. After his return from Paris, Oscar was thrown into rehearsals for Lady Windermere’s Fan, as the play was now called. On the play’s opening night on 20 February, Oscar’s friends flocked to see what would be quickly recognized as a triumph. Constance sat in a box with her aunt Mary Napier and the solicitor Arthur Clifton.

  But Oscar’s own performance on the night was indicative of the way in which his persona was changing. No longer the ‘respectable married man’ whom journalists had noted at Constance’s side a few years earlier, he now presented himself as a more challenging figure. After the curtain fell on that first night, Oscar went on stage to be admired by his audience. But the tone he struck, rather than delighting an audience he should have had in his hands, astounded many of them. With his cigarette still alight in one hand and his mauve gloves pressed in another, Oscar complimented the audience on their good taste. It was a joke, of course. But for many the underlying egotism was too rich a taste, particularly when combined with smoking in public – an act considered by those outside the bohemian circles in which Oscar and Constance moved to be impolite and particularly discourteous to women.

  The American writer Henry James was among the audience on that first night, and he also noted another distasteful aspect of Oscar’s persona. He was wearing in his buttonhole a strange metallic blue flower. In fact, it was a carnation, dipped in a solution of malachite green dye, which, when absorbed by the flower, turned the white petals a green/blue colour.

  But it was not just Oscar who was wearing this deeply unusual coloured flower. In the audience many of the young men to whom Oscar had given tickets were also wearing at his bidding what became known as green carnations. Robbie Ross was there, along with his friend More Adey. John Gray was there too. All were wearing the dyed flower.

  In this one gesture the sea-change in his life must have been apparent to many. Once it was Constance who had dressed in outfits to match or complement her husband’s. Once it had been she who had been paraded by him through galleries and premieres. But at the opening of his own play, although Constance was in attendance, it was Oscar’s young male friends who were engaged in his theatrical antics.

  After the show Constance and her aunt headed off. Oscar, however, was not staying at home. There were issues with the drains in Tite Street. Constance and Cyril were staying with Georgina Mount-Temple in her home on Cheyne Walk, and Vyvyan had once again been dispatched to stay with the Palmers in Reading. Oscar meanwhile had taken rooms at the Albemarle Hotel. And it was back to this establishment that Oscar went with another young man, the publishing clerk Edward Shelley. For the past few days Shelley and Oscar had been much in one another’s company. Unbeknown to Constance, Shelley not only went to the Albemarle with Oscar that night, but he did not leave.

  By May, Oscar’s affair with Shelley had waned, and instead Bosie had once again come into the frame. In the spring of ’92 Bosie was blackmailed and turned to Oscar for help. Oscar immediately sought the counsel of his old family friend the solicitor George Lewis and managed to pay off the blackmailers and extricate Bosie for the sum of £IOO. It was this act of salvage and generosity that finally clinched Bosie for Oscar. By June they were in a sexual relationship with one another, and from this moment Oscar embarked on what would become the most intense and profound love affair he had ever had.

  Meanwhile the play he had written during his last trip to Paris, Salome, had gone into rehearsal at the Palace Theatre with Sarah Bernhardt cast in the title role, only to be shut down by the Lord Chamberlain’s Office because of its combination of biblical and sexual content. With controversy once again surrounding him, in early July, Oscar, exhausted and stressed, headed for the German spa town of Bad Homburg, where, conveniently, Bosie was also on holiday. While he was away, the press speculated on whether Oscar would now leave Britain to live permanently in France, a threat Oscar had indeed offered on the banning of Salome.

  Constance’s friends rallied around her while Oscar was away. ‘People are very kind to me,’ she told Otho; ‘I dine out, and go to the theatre and
enjoy myself.’37 But Constance was troubled at night. The boys had had whooping cough. Constance slept with one or other of them at night, but Vyvyan’s coughing meant a broken night, and if she slept with Cyril he was wide awake by half-past six.

  No wonder, then, that by the time Oscar returned to British shores Constance was desperate for a holiday. So on 20 August, after her admirable efforts to find rooms at short notice, Constance and Oscar arrived at Felbrigg with a view to staying there until the end of the first week in September. It was time for quiet recuperation, and time to regain that sense of family which had become diluted by recent activities.

  The boys were on holiday together at Hunstanton in Cambridgeshire, and as she settled in, Constance began to make plans for the forthcoming weeks. It is clear that at this stage, although Oscar’s relationship with Bosie had begun in earnest, it had not negated that with his family. Far from it: Constance was still a significant source of solace and calm for him, his sons a genuine font of joy. What is more, she was still very much in charge of arrangements.

  ‘We are in such a fascinating farm in sweet air and country, 2 miles from Cromer,’ Constance informed Georgina the day after they arrived in Norfolk.

  It seems difficult to get from here to Hunstanton, but I shall try and fetch Cyril for a week he will be so happy here with dogs and turkeys, and geese, and ducks and chickens, sheep and cows and all things to delight a child. The only thing I fear is that Oscar will get bored to death, but we have heaps of room and can ask people down to cheer him up … Cromer Church is far off but there is a little old church in the Park about a mile from here where the farm owner has taken me this morning.38

  Mr and Mrs Wilde quickly settled into a routine. In the mornings and evenings they would work: Oscar writing A Woman of No Importance and Constance corresponding with the various societies and causes to which she was attached. But then in the afternoon they were together and would often go walking ‘into Cromer where we generally come across some friend to have tea with. It is doing us both so much good, and I am already quite well, I recover as quickly as I get ill.’39